"Please answer my question."
"Well--yes; I suppose it is so."
"Then you"re simply operating a blackmailing scheme to get the Certina advertising for the "Clarion.""
"The Certina advertising?" repeated Sterne in obvious surprise.
"Certina doesn"t advertise locally. Most patent medicines don"t. It"s a sort of fashion of the trade not to," explained Ellis.
"What on earth is all this about, then?"
The two newspaper men exchanged a glance. Obviously the new boss understood little of his progenitor"s extensive business interests.
"Might as well know sooner as later," decided Ellis, aloud. "It"s the Neverfail Company of Cincinnati that we got turned down on."
"What is the Neverfail Company?"
"One of Dr. Surtaine"s alia--one of the names he does business under.
Every other paper in town gets their copy. We don"t. Hence the roast."
"What sort of business is it?"
"Relief Pills. Here"s the ad. in this morning"s "Banner.""
The name struck chill on Hal"s memory. He stared at the sinister oblong of type, vaguely sensing in its covert promises the taint, yet failing to apprehend the full villainy of the lure.
"Whatever the advertising is," said he, "the principle is the same."
"Precisely," chirped Ellis.
"And you call that decent journalism?"
"No: my extremely youthful friend, I do not. What"s more, I never did."
"If you want a retraction published," said Sterne, spreading wide his hands as one offering fealty, "wouldn"t it be just as well to preface it with an announcement of the taking-over of the paper by yourself?"
"That itself would be tantamount to an announced reversal of policy,"
mused Hal.
Again Sterne and Ellis glanced at each other, but with a different expression this time. The look meant that they had recognized in the intruder a flash of that mysterious sense vaguely known as "the newspaper instinct," with which a few are born, but which most men acquire by giving mortgages on the blest illusions of youth.
"Cor-_rect_," said Ellis.
"Let the retraction rest for the present. I"ll decide it later."
The door was pushed open, and a dark man of perhaps thirty, with a begrimed and handsome face, entered. In one hand he held a proof.
"About this paragraph," he said to Sterne in a slightly foreign accent.
"Is it to run to-morrow?"
"What paragraph is that?"
"The one-stick editorial guying Dr. Surtaine."
"Kill it," said Sterne hastily. "This is Mr. Harrington Surtaine. Mr.
Surtaine, this is Max Veltman, foreman of our composing-room."
Slowly the printer turned his fine, serious face from one to the other.
"Ah," he said presently. "So it is arranged. We do not print this paragraph. Good!"
Impossible to take offense at the tone. Yet the smile which accompanied it was so plainly a sneer that Hal"s color rose.
"Mr. Surtaine is the new owner of the "Clarion,"" explained Ellis.
"In that case, of course," said Veltman quietly. "Good-night, gentlemen."
"Good-looking chap," remarked Hal. "But what a curious expression."
"Veltman"s a thinker and a crank," said Ellis. "If he had a little more balance he"d make his mark. But he"s a sort of melancholiac. Ill-health, nerves, and a fixed belief in the general wrongness of creation."
"Well. I"ll get to know more about the shop to-morrow," said Hal. "I"m for home and sleep just now. See you at--what time, by the way?"
"Noon," said Sterne. "If that suits you."
"Perfectly. Good-night."
Arrived at home, Hal went straight to the big ground-floor library where, as the light suggested, his father sat reading.
"Dad, do you want a retraction printed?"
"Of the "Clarion" article?"
"Yes."
"From "Want" to "Get" the road runs rocky," said the senior Surtaine whimsically.
"I"ve just come from removing a few of the rocks at the "Clarion"
office."
"Go down to lick the editor?" Dr. Surtaine"s eyes twinkled.
"There may have been some such notion in the back of my head."
"Expensive exercise. Did you do it?"
"No. He had a club."
"If I were running a slander-machine like the "Clarion" I"d want six-inch armor-plate and a quick-fire battery. Well, what did you do?"