“As how?” queried Jeremy.
“Our plan is to present the new system to the public through a series of advertisements. Education, you understand. The modern way: through the press. Would you like to see the outline?”
“Come to the point. What’s the amount?”
Where the hand-perfected Garson would have seen hope in the question, the warier lawyer scented danger to his plans. Nevertheless he went ahead. “Five hundred, minimum. Perhaps as high as a thousand, if the public is slow to learn. Our total advertising appropriation this year,” stated Judge Dana with great deliberation, “will run to five thousand dollars. There is no reason why The Guardian should not get a half of it. At least a half.”
“Did Mr. Clark ever get the message that I sent him by Garson, as to bribes?”
“Bribes?” The lawyer looked properly startled. “I don’t know. I doubt it.”
“I sent word to Clark that when I got ready to take bribes, I’d take them direct, in the form of cash.”
“But I’m not offering to bribe you or The Guardian,” protested the other. “It’s a matter of simple business. We institute an advertising campaign in a newspaper. We don’t ask it to advocate our measures; to a finicking mind that might seem to be a form of bribery. No; we only ask that, having published our advertising and accepted us as customers, the paper refrain from rendering the service we’ve paid for useless or worse than useless, by attacking our arguments editorially. Is n’t that fair and reasonable?” pleaded the lawyer, with a plausible gesture of laying the matter out for equitable judgment.
Jeremy passed the argument. “Do you think Garson ever delivered my message?”
“I should think it unlikely,” returned the other, taken slightly aback.