“Hardly. The usual thing. Well-prepared articles. Perhaps a careful editorial or two. Do you think it too early?”
“Not too early. Too late for The Guardian. It won’t take ’em.”
“Oh, I think it will,” returned the other comfortably. “At our special rate.”
“Not at any price, the editorials. The ‘readers,’ yes. But they’ll have the ‘a-d-v’ sign at the bottom. Maybe the ‘P.-U.’ trade-mark also.”
Montrose Clark’s face puffed red. “Where do you get your information?”
“From inside,” answered Dana, whose special virtue and value was to be “inside” on all available sources of information. “Those are the new orders.”
“Robson’s?”
“I suppose so. Andrew Galpin may have a hand in it. He’s in general charge.”
“I think I can persuade those young gentlemen,” remarked Montrose Clark sardonically, “that it is not to their interest to impose troublesome restrictions upon the corporation.”
He pressed a button. There arrived upon the scene, with an effect of automatic response, that smooth, flawless, noiseless, expressionless piece of human mechanism, Edward Garson, the hand-perfected private secretary who, besides his immediate duties about the great man’s person, acted as go-between in minor matters, press-agent, and advertising manager for the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation. Concerning him, Judge Dana had once remarked that the queerest thing about it was that it also had brains.