“As a basis to understanding, you’d have to read the paper.”
“I have. Everyday. All of it.”
He gave her a quick, reckoning look which she sustained with a slight deepening of color. “The advertisements, too?” She nodded. “What do you think of them?”
“Some of them are too disgusting to discuss.”
“Did it occur to you to compare them with the lofty standards of our young friend’s editorials?”
“What has he to do with the advertisements?” she countered.
“Assume, for the sake of the argument, that he has nothing to do with them. You may have noticed a recent editorial against race-track gambling, with the suicide of a young bank messenger who had robbed his employer to pay his losses as text.”
“Well? Surely that kind of editorial makes for good.”
“Being counsel for that bank, I happen to know the circumstances of the suicide. The boy had pinned his faith to one of the race-track tipsters who advertise in The Patriot to furnish a list of sure winners for so much a week.”
“Do you suppose that Mr. Banneker knew that?”