NO advertising patronage was lost to The Guardian as the result of the luncheon-conference. But Jeremy Robson’s offer to let a committee investigate his circulation was costly. More than fifteen per cent of The Guardian’s list proved either “phony” or dubious. Jeremy reconstituted his rate card in accordance with the actual figures, and cut recklessly into his free list. Appeased by this practical and to them profitable concession, the Retailers’ Association abandoned the issue of rebates. For the time, at least, they accepted the new proprietor’s distasteful decision as to “readers.” The matter of “courtesies” extended to advertisers was left in abeyance. That was sure to come up in the inevitable course of events. The general status was that of a truce, with one side wary and the other disgruntled.

Unsatisfactory though this might be to the mercantile element, it was more so to the newspaper. For The Guardian simply could not make a living at the reduced rates. There was but one thing to be done: increase circulation, thereby giving the paper augmented advertising value, and raise the advertising rates proportionately. It had been agreed between the Retailers’ Association committee and Jeremy that in view of his reduction of tariff, there would be no opposition to an increase when the circulation should warrant it. Ellison and the other committeemen did not believe that The Guardian could add to its circulation materially. Jeremy and his general manager did. They did n’t know just how. They only knew that it had to, or pass ignominiously out of existence!

So they took the customary business-man’s gamble. In the hope of making money they spent money. The paper began to swell out and look lively and prosperous. But Jeremy’s bank account evidenced the ravages of a galloping consumption. And though the public talked about The Guardian and speculated interestedly upon its future, it did not fall over itself to subscribe. It waited to see and be convinced. The public has that habit.

Meanwhile two able gentlemen with no ostensible interest in journalism were quietly watching and estimating the course of The Guardian. President Montrose Clark, of the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation, and his legal aide-de-camp Judge Selden Dana, a pair far more potent in Fenchester’s political affairs than Fenchester’s undisceming citizenry ever dreamed, were concerned with the newspapers as affecting their own plans, and were specially concerned with Jeremy Robson’s newspaper because they possessed no reliable data on young Mr. Robson.

“Do you know him?” asked Judge Dana.

“No,” replied Montrose Clark, whose interview with the “rippawtah” of The Record had failed to leave any memory of the young man’s name.

“What do you think of The Guardian since he got it?”

“It’s silly,” pronounced Mr. Clark loftily.

“Silly? Would you call it silly?”

“I have called it silly. It is beginning to show leanings toward a half-baked radicalism.”

“Robson is very young.”

“Even socialistic tendencies,” pursued the other.

“Socialism is anything that holds up our programme,” grinned the lawyer, who occasionally permitted himself the private luxury of frankness.

The public utilitarian frowned. “Have you been reading the articles on tax-dodgers?”

“I have.”

“What is the purpose of them, if not to stir up socialistic unrest?”

“Sensation, I should say. The series has been popular. When Mr. Average Citizen reads in his paper that he is being taxed twice as heavily as Mr. Rich Man next door, he’s interested. He begins to think the paper is a devil of a paper. He talks about it. That helps.”

“Suppose The Guardian should attack Us on the tax issue?”

“That also would be interesting,” remarked Dana. “But they won’t. Our trail is too well covered. It would take them a year to get at the facts.”

“But what’s the young fool driving at, anyway, Dana?” The lawyer rubbed his long angular jaw, and the somnolent look of his eyes deepened into musing. “I figure he’s making a bid for the radical support. The radicals have never had a show here, and he may be able to rally them to him.”

“What do they amount to, the radicals! A newspaper has got to have the support of people with money.”

“That’s the accepted theory,” admitted the lawyer. “What do you know of young Robson’s financial status!”

“Quite a bit. I handled the sale for Wymett.”

“Yes; yes. A good bargain for Wymett. Eh?”

“A stroke of fortune.”

“How much has Robson got behind him?”

“Not much. Twenty thousand. Perhaps twenty-five.”

Mr. Clark looked relieved. “I think we need have no misgivings.”

“I’m not so sure. A paper with radical leanings might find material in that transfer ordinance of ours when it comes up again. Even some of our good friends balk at that as pretty raw.”

“An essential step to our expansion, Dana,” said the public utilitarian blandly.

“Exactly. But an uncharitable mind mightn’t see it that way. Which reminds me: Embree is threatening a legislative investigation if the ordinance goes through.”

“Local matters are no affair of Embree’s,” declared the other angrily. “Fortunately he has no newspaper backing.”

“Has n’t he? I wish I were sure.”

“You don’t think that young Robson has sold out to Embree already?”

“No.”

“Very well, then—”

“Not sold out. It is n’t a question of cash. This boy is n’t A. M. Wymett.”

“Nevertheless a newspaper is a business proposition,” opined Montrose Clark dryly.

“It ought to be. Much simpler if it were. But this boy is a bit of a sentimentalist. I’m afraid he’s in the way of being influenced by Smiling Mart’s line of clap-trap.”

“Then we must act promptly.” The public utilitarian sat, thoughtful. “We’ll start a campaign of public education on the transfer question, through the newspapers,” he decided. “Including, of course, The Guardian.”

“Straight-out, a-d-v kind of advertising?”

“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.

“Garson,” barked Montrose Clark, in the tone which he deemed appropriate.

The hand-perfected secretary bowed.

“Bring in The Guardian advertising account.”

The secretary bowed again and disappeared. Almost immediately he was back, bowing once more over a neatly typed single sheet of paper.

“What is our total expenditure in The Guardian for the current year, up to date?”

“For display advertising, eleven hundred and forty-seven dollars, sixty cents. For reading matter, two hundred and seventy-five.”

“That includes editorial matter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And in The Record?”

“Seventeen hundred and twenty, sir. All display. They make no charge for editorials or readers, you recall, sir.”

“True. We pay them a higher rate for display, and the editorial support is—er—”

“By way of gratitude,” suggested Dana.

“Exactly. Do you think, Dana, that either paper is in a position to discard the P.-U.‘s support?”

“Just a moment,” said the lawyer. “That display advertising bill of The Guardian’s; what was the bill as rendered?”

Looking to Montrose Clark for permission and receiving it in a nod, the hand-perfected secretary replied, “Sixteen hundred dollars.”

“Scaled down to a net of about eleven hundred and fifty.”

“Yes. With discounts and rebates.”

“Wymett fooled Robson worse than I had supposed. The young fool bought on the basis of the book rates. Discounts and rebates are going to be an unpleasant surprise to him.”

“All of which will make him the easier to handle.”

“Maybe. With gloves.”

“It is not my habit,” said the local potentate austerely, “to concern myself deeply with other people’s over-sensitiveness, when it is a matter of business.”

“Go easy with him,” insisted the other. “He’s got a temper. There’s a kind of a you-be-damned-ness about him. He’s a little puffed up with his new sense of power, and we’ve got to allow for that.”

“Sense of power?” The magnate looked puzzled for the moment. “Oh, you mean his paper!” He laughed. “All right, Dana. I’ll be tactful with him. But of course I shan’t tolerate any nonsense.”

The retort, “I doubt if he will, either,” was on the tip of the lawyer’s tongue. He suppressed it. It would only have irritated Montrose Clark’s vanity which, under friction, was prone to develop prickly heat.

Let him find out for himself how to handle human nettles if he could n’t take cannier men’s advice!