Banneker felt a new and surprised respect for his host. He could forecast the kind of small city newspaper that Smith would make; careful, conscientious, regular in politics, loyal to what it deemed the best interests of the community, single-minded in its devotion to the Smith family and its properties; colorless, characterless, and without vision or leadership in all that a newspaper should, according to Banneker’s opinion, stand for. So he talked with the fervor of an enthusiast, a missionary, a devotee, who saw in that daily chronicle of the news an agency to stir men’s minds and spur their thoughts, if need be, to action; at the same time the mechanism and instrument of power, of achievement, of success. Fentriss Smith listened and was troubled in spirit by these unknown fires. He had supposed respectability to be the final aim and end of a sound newspaper tradition.
The apparent intimacy which had sprung up between twenty-five-dollar Smith and the reserved, almost hermit-like Banneker was the subject of curious and amused commentary in The Ledger office. Mallory hazarded a humorous guess that Banneker was tutoring Smith in the finer arts of journalism, which was not so far amiss as its proponent might have supposed.
The Great Heat broke several evenings later in a drench of rain and wind. This, being in itself important news, kept Banneker late at his writing, and he had told his host not to wait, that he would join him on the yacht sometime about midnight. So Smith had gone on alone.
The next morning Tommy Burt, lounging into the office from an early assignment, approached the City Desk with a twinkle far back in his lively eyes.
“Hear anything of a shoot-fest up in the Bad Lands last night?” he asked.
“Not yet,” replied Mr. Greenough. “They’re getting to be everyday occurrences up there. Is it on the police slips, Mr. Mallory?”
“No. Nothing in that line,” answered the assistant, looking over his assortment.
“Police are probably suppressing it,” opined Burt.
“Have you got the story?” queried Mr. Greenough.
“In outline. It isn’t really my story.”