"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