“Paid editorials. Paid political articles. Paid puffs and roasts. Brewery checks. Railroad checks. P.-U. checks. Paving and other contractors’ checks. You can read it all in the back files, if you’re newspaper man enough to read between the lines.”
“I never saw any of that on The Record.”
“It ain’t there. The Record don’t do it that way; a little more decent. The Record’s a kept-lady. We’re on the street—or were.”
“‘Were’ is right.” Jeremy ran his hands through his hair and regarded his companion anxiously. “Andy?” he said.
“Ay-ah?”
“Were you—Did you—Never mind. It does n’t matter.”
“Ay-ah; it matters all right. You were going to ask me whether I had to write any of that bought-and-paid-for stuff. And you were afraid to. Is that right?”
Jeremy turned red.
“It’s right,” confirmed the other. “Well, I never did. I would n’t. I gave ’em notice that I was fired the noon of the morning I got one of those jobs. They were decent about it. But I had to do the next worse thing. I had to let myself be called off a story so that some other guy could write it, and write it crooked.”
“Have we had any—any offers since we took hold of the paper?”