Nobody noticed Sam standing in the doorway, sweating into his coat after climbing a flight of stairs. He moved across the room as if invisible, fingering his letter of introduction from Cousin Hugh, until he was close enough to hear the muffled voices behind the glass door, stenciled Thos. Clawson, Editor. “That black son of a bitch has gone and done it this time!” the short man ranted. Clawson, Sam figured.

“Now, Tom, get hold of yourself.”

“You get hold of yourself, Harry. I don’t want to get hold of myself.”

“You’re the one sold him that Jonah Hoe printing press,” Harry said. He was tall and bent, with a shock of white hair and a florid face—an aristocrat gone to seed.

“I want it back! I want him out of this town!”

“Rumor has it Alex Manly already left town,” Harry said casually. “I hear he’s in New Jersey.” Sam had the distinct impression that Harry was enjoying all the hullabaloo. His bloodshot eyes were smiling.

“Well, somebody wrote that trash!”

“Mr. Clawson,” the third man said, “don’t you hear the clarion call?” He was a lean blade of a man in his mid-thirties. Sam sized him up: pale, a man who spent his days indoors, in offices, clubs, smoke-filled meeting rooms, hammering out the fine print of stock-for-cash deals, bond issues, third-party real-estate transfers.

Clawson wheeled to face the third man. “What are you talking about?”

“Reprint the damned thing.” He spoke softly, with authority.

“Print the damned thing?” Clawson pounced on the discarded newspaper and waved it around, reading, “ ‘We suggest that the whites guard their women more closely’!”

Harry said, “No need to sell papers that way, Tom. We can’t keep up with circulation now.”

“In the meantime,” the third man said, “buy up all the spare copies you can get your hands on and pass them out free on every street corner in the city.”

Harry studied his own copy of Alex Manly’s Daily Record. “A cut above his usual style, wouldn’t you say? Pithy, active verbs, right to the point. A bit bold for Manly.” Then he doubled over in a spasm of coughing. He fished out a soiled handkerchief from his immaculate white linen suit.

Clawson ignored him and kept reading, still marching back and forth: “ ‘Our experience among the poor white women of the country teaches us that women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men, than are the white men with colored women’!”

Harry recovered. “Nobody reads that nigrah paper.”

The third man trimmed a lean cigar and fired it from a wooden match. “Exactly my point—put it in the Messenger. They’ll sure read it then.”

Clawson wasn’t listening. “ ‘Every Negro lynched is called a big, burly, black brute, when in fact many of those who have thus been dealt with had white men for their fathers—’ ”