"Or not to get paid for suppressing it," grinned Ives.

"But does Banneker understand that it's fear of his pen, and not of being killed, that binds Bussey?"

Ives nodded. "I've taken care to rub that in. Told him of other cases where the old Major was threatened with all sorts of manhandling; scared out of his wits at first, but always got over it and came back in The Searchlight, taking his chance of being killed. The old vulture really isn't a coward, though he's a wary bird."

"Would Banneker really kill him, do you think?"

"I wouldn't insure his life for five cents," returned the other with conviction. "Your editor is crazy-mad over this Mrs. Eyre. So there you have him delivered, shorn and helpless, and Delilah doesn't even suspect that she's acting as our agent."

Marrineal's eyes fixed themselves in a lifeless sort of stare upon a far corner of the ceiling. Recognizing this as a sign of inward cogitation, the vizier of his more private interests sat waiting. Without changing the direction of his gaze, the proprietor indicated a check in his ratiocination by saying incompletely:

"Now, if she divorced Eyre and married Banneker—"

Ives completed it for him. "That would spike The Searchlight's guns, you think? Perhaps. But if she were going to divorce Eyre, she'd have done it long ago, wouldn't she? I think she'll wait. He won't last long."

"Then our hold on Banneker, through his ability to intimidate The Searchlight, depends on the life of a paretic."

"Paretic is too strong a word—yet. But it comes to about that. Except—he'll want a lot of money to marry Io Eyre."

"He wants a lot, anyway," smiled Marrineal.

"He'll want more. She's an expensive luxury."

"He can get more. Any time when he chooses to handle The Patriot so that it attracts instead of offends the big advertisers."

"Why don't you put the screws on him now, Mr. Marrineal?" smirked Ives with thin-lipped malignancy.

Marrineal frowned. His cold blood inclined him to be deliberate; the ophidian habit, slow-moving until ready to strike. He saw no reason for risking a venture which became safer the further it progressed. Furthermore, he disliked direct, unsolicited advice. Ignoring Ives's remark he asked:

"How are his investments going?"

Ives grinned again. "Down. Who put him into United Thread? Do you know, sir?"

"Horace Vanney. He has been tipping it off quietly to the club lot. Wants to get out from under, himself."

"There's one thing about it, though, that puzzles me. If he took old Vanney's tip to buy for a rise, why did he go after the Sippiac Mills with those savage editorials? They're mainly responsible for the legislative investigation that knocked eight points off of United Thread."

"Probably to prove his editorial independence."

"To whom? You?"

"To himself," said Marrineal with an acumen quite above the shrewdness of an Ives to grasp.

But the latter nodded intelligently, and remarked: "If he's money-crazy you've got him, anyway, sooner or later. And now that he's woman-crazy, too—"

"You'll never understand just how sane Mr. Banneker is," broke in Marrineal coldly. He was a very sane man, himself.

"Well, a lot of the sane ones get stung on the Street," moralized Ives. "I guess the only way to beat that game is to get crazy and take all the chances. Mr. Banneker stands to drop half a year's salary in U.T. alone unless there's a turn."

Marrineal delivered another well-thought-out bit of wisdom. "If I'm any judge, he wants a paper of his own. Well ... give me three years more of him and he can have it. But I don't think it'll make much headway against The Patriot, then."

"Three years? Bussey and The Searchlight ought to hold him that long. Unless, of course, he gets over his infatuation in the meantime."

"In that case," surmised Marrineal, eyeing him with distaste, "I suppose you think that he would equally lose interest in protecting her from The Searchlight."

"Well, what's a woman to expect!" said Ives blandly, and took his dismissal for the day.

It was only recently that Ives had taken to coming to The Patriot office. No small interest and conjecture were aroused among the editorial staff as to his exact status, stimulus to gossip being afforded by the rumor that he had been, from Marrineal's privy purse, shifted to the office payroll. Russell Edmonds solved and imparted the secret to Banneker.

"Ives? Oh, he's the office sandbag."

"Translate, Pop. I don't understand."

"It's an invention of Marrineal's. Very ingenious. It was devised as a weapon against libel suits. Suppose some local correspondent from Hohokus or Painted Post sends in a story on the Honorable Aminadab Quince that looks to be O.K., but is actually full of bad breaks. The Honorable Aminadab smells money in it and likes the smell. Starts a libel suit. On the facts, he's got us: the fellow that got pickled and broke up the Methodist revival wasn't Aminadab at all, but his tough brother. If it gets into court we're stung. Well, up goes little Weaselfoot Ives to Hohokus. Sniffs around and spooks around and is a good fellow at the hotel, and possibly spends a little money where it's most needed, and one day turns up at the Quince mansion. 'Senator, I represent The Patriot.' 'Don't want to see you at all. Talk to my lawyer.' 'But he might not understand my errand. It relates to an indictment handed down in 1884 for malversasion of school funds.' 'Young man, do you dare to intimate—' and so forth and so on; bluster and bluff and threat. Says Ives, very cool: 'Let me have your denial in writing and we'll print it opposite the certified copy of the indictment.' The old boy begins to whimper; 'That's outlawed. It was all wrong, anyway.' Ives is sympathetic, but stands pat. Drop the suit and The Patriot will be considerate and settle the legal fees. Aminadab drops, ten times out of ten. The sandbag has put him away."

"But there must be an eleventh case where there's nothing on the man that's suing."

"Say a ninety-ninth. One libel suit in a hundred may be brought in good faith. But we never settle until after Ives has done his little prowl."

"It sounds bad, Pop. But is it so bad, after all? We've got to protect ourselves against a hold-up."

"Dirty work, but somebody's got to do it: ay—yes? I agree with you. As a means of self-defense it is excusable. But the operations of the sandbag have gone far beyond libel in Ives's hands."

"Have they? To what extent?"

"Any. His little private detective agency—he's got a couple of our porch-climbing, keyhole reporters secretly assigned to him at call for 'special work'—looks after any man we've got or are likely to have trouble with; advertisers who don't come across properly, city officials who play in with the other papers too much, politicians—"

"But that's rank blackmail!" exclaimed Banneker.

"Carried far enough it is. So far it's only private information for the private archives."

"Marrineal's?"

"Yes. He and his private counsel, old Mark Stecklin, are the keepers of them. Now, suppose Judge Enderby runs afoul of our interests, as he is bound to do sooner or later. Little Weaselfoot gets on his trail—probably is on it already—and he'll spend a year if necessary watching, waiting, sniffing out something that he can use as a threat or a bludgeon or a bargain."

"What quarrel have we got with Enderby?" inquired Banneker with lively interest.

"None, now. But we'll be after him hot and heavy within a year."

"Not the editorial page," declared Banneker.

"Well, I hope not. It would be rather a right-about, wouldn't it? But Marrineal isn't afraid of a right-about. You know his creed as to his readers: 'The public never remembers.' Of course, you realize what Marrineal is after, politically."

"No. He's never said a word to me."

"Nor to me. But others have. The mayoralty."

"For himself?"

"Of course. He's quietly building up his machine."

"But Laird will run for reelection."

"He'll knife Laird."

"It's true Laird hasn't treated us very well, in the matter of backing our policies," admitted Banneker thoughtfully. "The Combined Street Railway franchise, for instance."

"He was right in that and you were wrong, Ban. He had to follow the comptroller there."

"Is that where our split with Enderby is going to come? Over the election?"

"Yes. Enderby is the brains and character back of the Laird administration. He represents the clean government crowd, with its financial power."

Banneker stirred fretfully in his chair. "Damn it!" he growled. "I wish we could run this paper as a newspaper and not as a chestnut rake."

"How sweet and simple life would be!" mocked the veteran. "Still, you know, if you're going to use The Patriot as a blunderbuss to point at the heads of your own enemies, you can't blame the owner if he—"

"You think Marrineal knows?" interposed Banneker sharply.

"About The Searchlight matter? You can bet on one thing, Ban. Everything that Ely Ives knows, Tertius Marrineal knows. So far as Ives thinks it advisable for him to know, that is. Over and above which Tertius is no fool, himself. You may have noticed that."

"It's bothered me from time to time," admitted the other dryly.

"It'll bother both of us more, presently," prophesied Edmonds.

"Then I've been playing direct into Marrineal's hands in attacking Laird on the franchise matter."

"Yes. Keep on."

"Strange advice from you, Pop. You think my position on that is wrong."

"What of that? You think it's right. Therefore, go ahead. Why quit a line of policy just because it obliges your employes? Don't be over-conscientious, son."

"I've suspected for some time that the political news was being adroitly manipulated against the administration. Has Marrineal tried to ring you in on that?"

"No; and he won't."

"Why not?"

"He knows that, in the main, I'm a Laird man. Laird is giving us what we asked for, an honest administration."

"Suppose, when Marrineal develops his plans, he comes to you, which would be his natural course, to handle the news end of the anti-Laird campaign. What would you do?"

"Quit."

Banneker sighed. "It's so easy for you."

"Not so easy as you think, son. Even though there's a lot of stuff being put over in the news columns that makes me sore and sick. Marrineal's little theory of using news as a lever is being put into practice pretty widely. Also we're selling it."

"Selling our news columns?"

"Some of 'em. For advertising. You're well out of any responsibility for that department. I'd resign to-morrow if it weren't for the fact that Marrineal still wants to cocker up the labor crowd for his political purposes, and so gives me a free hand in my own special line. By the way, he's got the Veridian matter all nicely smoothed out. Oh, my, yes! Fired the general manager, put in all sorts of reforms, recognized the union, the whole programme! That's to spike McClintick's guns if he tries to trot out Veridian again as proof that Marrineal is, at heart, anti-labor."

"Is he?"

"He's anti-anything that's anti-Marrineal, and pro-anything that's pro-Marrineal. Haven't you measured him yet? All policy, no principle; there's Mr. Tertius Marrineal for you.... Ban, it's really you that holds me to this shop." Through convolutions of smoke from his tiny pipe, the old stager regarded the young star of journalism with a quaint and placid affection. "Whatever rotten stuff is going on in the business and news department, your page goes straight and speaks clear.... I wonder how long Marrineal will stand for it ... I wonder what he intends for the next campaign."

"If my proprietor runs for office, I can't very well not support him," said Banneker, troubled.

"Not very well. The pinch will come as to what you're going to do about Laird. According to my private information, he's coming back at The Patriot."

"For my editorials on the Combined franchise?"

"Hardly. He's too straight to resent honest criticism. No; for some of the crooked stuff that we're running in our political news. Besides, some suspicious and informed soul in the administration has read between our political lines, and got a peep of the aspiring Tertius girding himself for contest. Result, the city advertising is to be taken from The Patriot."

It needed no more than a mechanical reckoning of percentages to tell Banneker that this implied a serious diminution of his own income. Further, such a procedure would be in effect a repudiation of The Patriot and its editorial support.

"That's a rotten deal!" he exclaimed.

"No. Just politics. Justifiable, too, I should say, as politics go. I doubt whether Laird would do it of his own motion; he plays a higher game than that. But it isn't strictly within his province either to effect or prevent. Anyhow, it's going to be done."

"If he wants to fight us—" began Banneker with gloom in his eyes.

"He doesn't want to fight anybody," cut in the expert. "He wants to be mayor and run the city for what seems to him the city's best good. If he thought Marrineal would carry on his work as mayor, I doubt if he'd oppose him. But our shrewd old friend, Enderby, isn't of that mind. Enderby understands Marrineal. He'll fight to the finish."

Edmonds left his friend in a glum perturbation of mind. Enderby understood Marrineal, did he? Banneker wished that he himself did. If he could have come to grips with his employer, he would at least have known now where to take his stand. But Marrineal was elusive. No, not even elusive; quiescent. He waited.

As time passed, Banneker's editorial and personal involvements grew more complex. At what moment might a pressure from above close down on his pen, and with what demand? How should he act in the crisis thus forced, at Marrineal's slow pleasure? Take Edmonds's Gordian recourse; resign? But he was on the verge of debt. His investments had gone badly; he prided himself on the thought that it was partly through his own immovable uprightness. Now, this threat to his badly needed percentages! Surely The Patriot ought to be making a greater profit than it showed, on its steadily waxing circulation. Why had he ever let himself be wrenched from his first and impregnable system of a straight payment on increase of circulation? Would it be possible to force Marrineal back into that agreement? No income was too great, surely, to recompense for such trouble of soul as The Patriot inflicted upon its editorial mouthpiece.... Through the murk of thoughts shot, golden-rayed, the vision of Io.

No world could be other than glorious in which she lived and loved him and was his.



CHAPTER XI

Sheltered beneath the powerful pen of Banneker, his idyll, fulfilled, lengthened out over radiant months. Io was to him all that dreams had ever promised or portrayed. Their association, flowering to the full amidst the rush and turmoil of the city, was the antithesis to its budding in the desert peace. To see the more of his mistress, Banneker became an active participant in that class of social functions which get themselves chronicled in the papers. Wise in her day and her protective instinct of love, Io pointed out that the more he was identified with her set, the less occasion would there be for comment upon their being seen together. And they were seen together much.

She lunched with him at his downtown club, dined with him at Sherry's, met him at The Retreat and was driven back home in his car, sometimes with Archie Densmore for a third, not infrequently alone. Considerate hostesses seated them next each other at dinners: it was deemed an evidence of being "in the know" thus to accommodate them. The openness of their intimacy went far to rob calumny of its sting. And Banneker's ingrained circumspection of the man trained in the open, applied to les convenances, was a protection in itself. Moreover, there was in his devotion, conspicuous though it was, an air of chivalry, a breath of fragrance from a world of higher romance, which rendered women in particular charitable of judgment toward the pair.

Sometimes in the late afternoon Banneker's private numbered telephone rang, and an impersonal voice delivered a formal message. And that evening Banneker (called out of town, no matter how pressing an engagement he might have had) sat in The House With Three Eyes, now darkened of vision, thrilling and longing for her step in the dim side passage. There was risk of disaster. But Io willed to take it; was proud to take it for her lover.

Immersed in a happiness and a hope which vivified every motion of his life, Banneker was nevertheless under a continuous strain of watchfulness; the qui vive of the knight who guards his lady with leveled lance from a never-ceasing threat. At the point of his weapon cowered and crouched the dragon of The Searchlight, with envenomed fangs of scandal.

As the months rounded out to a year, he grew, not less careful, indeed, but more confident. Eyre had quietly dropped out of the world. Hunting big game in some wild corner of Nowhere, said rumor.

Io had revealed to Banneker the truth; her husband was in a sanitarium not far from Philadelphia. As she told him, her eyes were dim. Swift, with the apprehension of the lover to read the loved one's face, she saw a smothered jealousy in his.

"Ah, but you must pity him, too! He has been so game."

"Has been?"

"Yes. This is nearly the end. I shall go down there to be near him."

"It's a long way, Philadelphia," he said moodily.

"What a child! Two hours in your car from The Retreat."

"Then I may come down?"

"May? You must!"

He was still unappeased. "But you'll be very far away from me most of the time."

She gleamed on him, her face all joyous for his incessant want of her. "Stupid! We shall see almost as much of each other as before. I'll be coming over to New York two or three times a week."

Wherewith, and a promised daily telephone call, he must be content.

Not at that meeting did he broach the subject nearest his heart. He felt that he must give Io time to adjust herself to the new-developed status of her husband, as of one already passed out of the world. A fortnight later he spoke out. He had gone down to The Retreat for the week-end and she had come up from Philadelphia to meet him, for dinner. He found her in a secluded alcove off the main dining-porch, alone. She rose and came to him, after that one swift, sweet, precautionary glance about her with which a woman in love assures herself of safety before she gives her lips; tender and passionate to the yearning need of her that sprang in his face.

"Ban, I've been undergoing a solemn preachment."

"From whom?"

"Archie."

"Is Densmore here?"

"No; he came over to Philadelphia to deliver it."

"About us?"

She nodded. "Don't take it so gloomily. It was to be expected."

He frowned. "It's on my mind all the time; the danger to you."

"Would you end it?" she said softly.

"Yes."

Too confident to misconstrue his reply, she let her hand fall on his, waiting.

"Io, how long will it be, with Eyre? Before—"

"Oh; that!" The brilliance faded from her eager loveliness. "I don't know. Perhaps a year. He suffers abominably, poor fellow."

"And after—after that, how long before you can marry me?"

She twinkled at him mischievously. "So, after all these years, my lover makes me an offer of marriage. Why didn't you ask me at Manzanita?"

"Good God! Would it possibly—"

"No; no! I shouldn't have said it. I was teasing."

"You know that there's never been a moment when the one thing worth living and fighting and striving for wasn't you."

"And success?" she taunted, but with tenderness.

"Another name for you. I wanted it only as the reflex of your wish for me."

"Even when I'd left you?"

"Even when you'd left me."

"Poor Ban!" she breathed, and for a moment her fingers fluttered at his cheek. "Have I made it up to you?"

He bent over the long, low chair in which she half reclined. "A thousand times! Every day that I see you; every day that I think of you; with the lightest touch of your hand; the sound of your voice; the turn of your face toward me. I'm jealous of it and fearful of it. Can you wonder that I live in a torment of dread lest something happen to bring it all to ruin?"

She shook her head. "Nothing could. Unless—No. I won't say it. I want you to want to marry me, Ban. But—I wonder."

As they talked, the little light of late afternoon had dwindled, until in their nook they could see each other only as vague forms.

"Isn't there a table-lamp there?" she asked. "Turn it on."

He found and pulled the chain. The glow, softly shaded, irradiated Io's lineaments, showing her thoughtful, somber, even a little apprehensive. She lifted the shade and turned it to throw the direct rays upon Banneker. He blinked.

"Do you mind?" she asked softly. Even more softly, she added, "Do you remember?"

His mind veered back across the years, full of struggle, of triumph, of emptiness, of fulfillment, to a night in another world; a world of dreams, magic associations, high and peaceful ambitions, into which had broken a voice and an appeal from the darkness. He had turned the light upon himself then that she might see him for what he was and have no fear. So he held it now, lifting it above his forehead. Hypnotized by the compulsion of memory, she said, as she had said to the unknown helper in the desert shack:

"I don't know you. Do I?"

"Io!"

"Ah! I didn't mean to say that. It came back to me, Ban. Perhaps it's true. Do I know you?"

As in the long ago he answered her: "Are you afraid of me?"

"Of everything. Of the future. Of what I don't know in you."

"There's nothing of me that you don't know," he averred.

"Isn't there?" She was infinitely wistful; avid of reassurance. Before he could answer she continued: "That night in the rain when I first saw you, under the flash, as I see you now—Ban, dear, how little you've changed, how wonderfully little, to the eye!—the instant I saw you, I trusted you."

"Do you trust me now?" he asked for the delight of hearing her declare it.

Instead he heard, incredulously, the doubt in her tone. "Do I? I want to—so much! I did then. At first sight."

He set down the lamp. She could hear him breathing quick and stressfully. He did not speak.

"At first sight," she repeated. "And—I think—I loved you from that minute. Though of course I didn't know. Not for days. Then, when I'd gone, I found what I'd never dreamed of; how much I could love."

"And now?" he whispered.

"Ah, more than then!" The low cry leapt from her lips. "A thousand times more."

"But you don't trust me?"

"Why don't I, Ban?" she pleaded. "What have you done? How have you changed?"

He shook his head. "Yet you've given me your love. Do you trust yourself?"

"Yes," she answered with a startling quietude of certainty. "In that I do. Absolutely."

"Then I'll chance the rest. You're upset to-night, aren't you, Io? You've let your imagination run away with you."

"This isn't a new thing to me. It began—I don't know when it began. Yes; I do. Before I ever knew or thought of you. Oh, long before! When I was no more than a baby."

"Rede me your riddle, love," he said lightly.

"It's so silly. You mustn't laugh; no, you wouldn't laugh. But you mustn't be angry with me for being a fool. Childhood impressions are terribly lasting things, Ban.... Yes, I'm going to tell you. It was a nurse I had when I was only four, I think; such a pretty, dainty Irish creature, the pink-and-black type. She used to cry over me and say—I don't suppose she thought I would ever understand or remember—'Beware the brown-eyed boys, darlin'. False an' foul they are, the brown ones. They take a girl's poor heart an' witch it away an' twitch it away, an' toss it back all crushed an' spoilt.' Then she would hug me and sob. She left soon after; but the warning has haunted me like a superstition.... Could you kiss it away, Ban? Tell me I'm a little fool!"

Approaching footsteps broke in upon them. The square bulk of Jim Maitland appeared in the doorway.

"What ho! you two. Ban, you're scampin' your polo practice shamefully. You'll be crabbin' the team if you don't look out. Dinin' here?"

"Yes," said Io. "Is Marie down?"

"Comin' presently. How about a couple of rubbers after dinner?"

To assent seemed the part of tact. Io and Ban went to their corner table, reserved for three, the third, Archie Densmore, being a prudent fiction. People drifted over to them, chatted awhile, were carried on and away by uncharted but normal social currents. It was a tribute to the accepted status between them that no one settled into the third chair. The Retreat is the dwelling-place of tact. All the conversationalists having come and gone, Io reverted over the coffee to the talk of their hearts.

"I can't expect you to understand me, can I? Especially as I don't understand myself. Don't sulk, Ban, dearest. You're so un-pretty when you pout."

He refused to accept the change to a lighter tone. "I understand this, Io; that you have begun unaccountably to mistrust me. That hurts."

"I don't want to hurt you. I'd rather hurt myself; a thousand times rather. Oh, I will marry you, of course, when the time comes! And yet—"

"Yet?"

"Isn't it strange, that deep-seated misgiving! I suppose it's my woman's dread of any change. It's been so perfect between us, Ban." Her speech dropped to its lowest breath of pure music:

"'This test for love:—in every kiss, sealed fast To feel the first kiss and forebode the last'—

So it has been with us; hasn't it, my lover?"

"So it shall always be," he answered, low and deep.

Her eyes dreamed. "How could any man feel what he put in those lines?" she murmured.

"Some woman taught him," said Banneker.

She threw him a fairy kiss. "Why haven't we 'The Voices' here! You should read to me.... Do you ever wish we were back in the desert?"

"We shall be, some day."

She shuddered a little, involuntarily. "There's a sense of recall, isn't there! Do you still love it?"

"It's the beginning of the Road to Happiness," he said. "The place where I first saw you."

"You don't care for many things, though, Ban."

"Not many. Only two, vitally. You and the paper."

She made a curious reply pregnant of meanings which were to come back upon him afterward. "I shan't be jealous of that. Not as long as you're true to it. But I don't think you care for The Patriot, for itself."

"Oh, don't I!"

"If you do, it's only because it's part of you; your voice; your power. Because it belongs to you. I wonder if you love me mostly for the same reason."

"Say, the reverse reason. Because I belong so entirely to you that nothing outside really matters except as it contributes to you. Can't you realize and believe?"

"No; I shouldn't be jealous of the paper," she mused, ignoring his appeal. Then, with a sudden transition: "I like your Russell Edmonds. Am I wrong or is there a kind of nobility of mind in him?"

"Of mind and soul. You would be the one to see it.

'.............the nobleness that lies Sleeping but never dead in other men, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own'"—

he quoted, smiling into her eyes.

"Do you ever talk over your editorials with him?"

"Often. He's my main and only reliance, politically."

"Only politically? Does he ever comment on other editorials? The one on Harvey Wheelwright, for instance?"

Banneker was faintly surprised. "No. Why should he? Did you discuss that with him?"

"Indeed not! I wouldn't discuss that particular editorial with any one but you."

He moved uneasily. "Aren't you attaching undue importance to a very trivial subject? You know that was half a joke, anyway."

"Was it?" she murmured. "Probably I take it too seriously. But—but Harvey Wheelwright came into one of our early talks, almost our first about real things. When I began to discover you; when 'The Voices' first sang to us. And he wasn't one of the Voices, exactly, was he?"

"He? He's a bray! But neither was Sears-Roebuck one of the Voices. Yet you liked my editorial on that."

"I adored it! You believed what you were writing. So you made it beautiful."

"Nothing could make Harvey Wheelwright beautiful. But, at least, you'll admit I made him—well, appetizing." His face took on a shade. "Love's labor lost, too," he added. "We never did run the Wheelwright serial, you know."

"Why?"

"Because the infernal idiot had to go and divorce a perfectly respectable, if plain and middle-aged wife, in order to marry a quite scandalous Chicago society flapper."

"What connection has that with the serial?"

"Don't you see? Wheelwright is the arch-deacon of the eternal proprieties and pieties. Purity of morals. Hearth and home. Faithful unto death, and so on. Under that sign he conquers—a million pious and snuffy readers, per book. Well, when he gets himself spread in the Amalgamated Wire dispatches, by a quick divorce and a hair-trigger marriage, puff goes his piety—and his hold on his readers. We just quietly dropped him."

"But his serial was just as good or as bad as before, wasn't it?"

"Certainly not! Not for our purposes. He was a dead wolf with his sheep's wool all smeared and spotted. You'll never quite understand the newspaper game, I'm afraid, lady of my heart."

"How brown your eyes are, Ban!" said Io.



CHAPTER XII

Politics began to bubble in The Patriot office with promise of hotter upheavals to come. The Laird administration had shown its intention of diverting city advertising, and Marrineal had countered in the news columns by several minor but not ineffective exposures of weak spots in the city government. Banneker, who had on the whole continued to support the administration in its reform plans, decided that a talk with Willis Enderby might clarify the position and accordingly made an evening appointment with him at his house. Judge Enderby opened proceedings with typical directness of attack.

"When are you going to turn on us, Banneker?"

"That's a cheerful question," retorted the young man good-humoredly, "considering that it is you people who have gone back on The Patriot."

"Were any pledges made on our part?" queried Enderby.

Banneker replied with some spirit: "Am I talking with counsel under retainer or with a personal friend?"

"Quite right. I apologize," said the imperturbable Enderby. "Go on."

"It isn't the money loss that counts, so much as the slap in the face to the paper. It's a direct repudiation. You must realize that."

"I'm not wholly a novice in politics."

"But I am, practically."

"Not so much that you can't see what Marrineal would be at."

"Mr. Marrineal has not confided in me."

"Nor in me," stated the lawyer grimly. "I don't need his confidence to perceive his plans."

"What do you believe them to be?"

No glimmer of a smile appeared on the visage of Judge Enderby as he countered, "Am I talking with a representative of The Patriot or—"

"All right," laughed Banneker. "Touche! Assume that Marrineal has political ambitions. Surely that lies within the bounds of propriety."

"Depends on how he pushes them. Do you read The Patriot, Banneker?"

The editor of The Patriot smiled.

"Do you approve its methods in, let us say, the political articles?"

"I have no control over the news columns."

"Don't answer my question," said the lawyer with a fine effect of patience, long-suffering and milky-mild, "if it in any way discommodes you."

"It all comes to this," disclosed Banneker. "If the mayor turns on us, we can't lie down under the whip and we won't. We'll hit back."

"Of course."

"Editorially, I mean."

"I understand. At least the editorials will be a direct method of attack, and an honest one. I may assume that much?"

"Have you ever seen anything in the editorial columns of The Patriot that would lead you to assume otherwise?"

"Answering categorically I would have to say 'No.'

"Answer as you please."

"Then I will say," observed the other, speaking with marked deliberation, "that on one occasion I have failed to see matter which I thought might logically appear there and the absence of which afforded me food for thought. Do you know Peter McClintick?"

"Yes. Has he been talking to you about the Veridian killings?"

Enderby nodded. "One could not but contrast your silence on that subject with your eloquence against the Steel Trust persecutions, consisting, if I recall, in putting agitators in jail for six months. Quite wrongly, I concede. But hardly as bad as shooting them down as they sleep, and their families with them."

"Tell me what you would have done in my place, then." Banneker stated the case of the Veridian Mills strike simply and fairly. "Could I turn the columns of his own paper on Marrineal for what was not even his fault?"

"Impossible. Absurd, as well," acknowledged the other

"Can you even criticize Marrineal?"

The jurist reared his gaunt, straight form up from his chair and walked across to the window, peering out into the darkness before he answered with a sort of restrained passion.

"God o' mercies, Banneker! Do you ask me to judge other men's acts, outside the rules of law? Haven't I enough problems in reconciling my own conscience to conserving the interests of my clients, as I must, in honor, do? No; no! Don't expect me to judge, in any matter of greater responsibilities. I'm answerable to a small handful of people. You—your Patriot is answerable to a million. Everything you print, everything you withhold, may have incalculable influence on the minds of men. You can corrupt or enlighten them with a word. Think of it! Under such a weight Atlas would be crushed. There was a time long ago—about the time when you were born—when I thought that I might be a journalist; thought it lightly. To-day, knowing what I know, I should be terrified to attempt it for a week, a day! I tell you, Banneker, one who moulds the people's beliefs ought to have the wisdom of a sage and the inspiration of a prophet and the selflessness of a martyr."

A somber depression veiled Banneker. "One must have the sense of authority, too," he said at length with an effort. "If that is undermined, you lose everything. I'll fight for that."

With an abrupt motion his host reached up and drew the window shade, as it might be to shut out a darkness too deep for human penetration.

"What does your public care about whether The Patriot loses the city advertising; or even know about it?"

"Not the public. But the other newspapers. They'll know, and they'll use it against us.... Enderby, we can beat Bob Laird for reelection."

"If that's a threat," returned the lawyer equably, "it is made to the wrong person. I couldn't control Laird in this matter if I wanted to. He's an obstinate young mule—for which Heaven be praised!"

"No; it isn't a threat. It's a declaration of war, if you like."

"You think you can beat us? With Marrineal?"

"Mr. Marrineal isn't an avowed candidate, is he?" evaded Banneker.

"I fancy that you'll see some rapidly evolving activity in that quarter."

"Is it true that Laird has developed social tendencies, and is using the mayoralty to climb?"

"A silly story of his enemies," answered Enderby contemptuously. "Just the sort of thing that Marrineal would naturally get hold of and use. In so far as Laird has any social relations, they are and always have been with that element which your society reporters call 'the most exclusive circles,' because that is where he belongs by birth and association."

"Russell Edmonds says that social ambition is the only road on which one climbs painfully downhill."

The other paid the tribute of a controlled smile to this. "Edmonds? A Socialist. He has a gnarled mind. Good, hard-grained wood, though. I suppose no man more thoroughly hates and despises what I represent—or what he thinks I represent, the conservative force of moneyed power—than he does. Yet in any question of professional principles, I would trust him far; yes, and of professional perceptions, too, I think; which is more difficult. A crack-brained sage; but wise. Have you talked over the Laird matter with him?"

"Yes. He's for Laird."

"Stick to Edmonds, Banneker. You can't find a better guide."

There was desultory talk until the caller got up to go. As they shook hands, Enderby said:

"Has any one been tracking you lately?"

"No. Not that I've noticed."

"There was a fellow lurking suspiciously outside; heavy-set, dark clothes, soft hat. I thought that he might be watching you."

For a man of Banneker's experience of the open, to detect the cleverest of trailing was easy. Although this watcher was sly and careful in his pursuit, which took him all the way to Chelsea Village, his every move was clear to the quarry, until the door of The House With Three Eyes closed upon its owner. Banneker went to bed very uneasy. On whose behoof was he being shadowed? Should he warn Io?... In the morning there was no trace of the man, nor, though Banneker trained every sharpened faculty to watchfulness, did he see him again.... While he was mentally engrossed in wholly alien considerations, the solution materialized out of nothing to his inner vision. It was Willis Enderby who was being watched, and, as a side issue, any caller upon him. That evening a taxi, occupied by a leisurely young man in evening clothes, drove through East 68th Street, where stood the Enderby house, dim, proud, and stiff. The taxi stopped before a mansion not far away, and the young man addressed a heavy-bodied individual who stood, with vacant face uplifted to the high moon, as if about to bay it. Said the young man:

"Mr. Ives wishes you to report to him at once."

"Huh?" ejaculated the other, lowering his gaze.

"At the usual place," pursued the young man.

"Oh! Aw-right."

His suspicions fully confirmed, Banneker drove away. It was now Ives's move, he remarked to himself, smiling. Or perhaps Marrineal's. He would wait. Within a few days he had his opportunity. Returning to his office after luncheon, he found a penciled note from Ives on his desk, notifying him that Miss Raleigh had called him on the 'phone.

Inquiring for the useful Ives, Banneker learned that he was closeted with Marrineal. Such conferences were regarded in the office as inviolable; but Banneker was in uncompromising mood. He entered with no more of preliminary than a knock. After giving his employer good-day he addressed Ives.

"I found a note from you on my desk."

"Yes. The message came half an hour ago."

"Through the office?"

"No. On your 'phone."

"How did you get into my room?"

"The door was open."

Banneker reflected. This was possible, though usually he left his door locked. He decided to accept the explanation. Later he had occasion to revise it.

"Much obliged. By the way, on whose authority did you put a shadow on Judge Enderby?"

"On mine," interposed Marrineal. "Mr. Ives has full discretion in these matters."

"But what is the idea?"

Ives delivered himself of his pet theory. "They'll all bear watching. It may come in handy some day."

"What may?"

"Anything we can get."

"What on earth could any but an insane man expect to get on Enderby?" contemptuously asked Banneker.

Shooting a covert look at his principal, Ives either received or assumed a permission. "Well, there was some kind of an old scandal, you know."

"Was there?" Banneker's voice was negligent. "That would be hard to believe."

"Hard to get hold of in any detail. I've dug some of it out through my Searchlight connection. Very useful line, that."

Ives ventured a direct look at Banneker, but diverted it from the cold stare it encountered.

"Some woman scrape," he explicated with an effort at airiness.

Banneker turned a humiliating back on him. "The Patriot is beginning to get a bad name on Park Row for this sort of thing," he informed Marrineal.

"This isn't a Patriot matter. It is private."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Banneker in disgust. "After all, it doesn't matter. You'll have your trouble for your pains," he prophesied, and returned to 'phone Betty Raleigh.

What had become of Banneker, Betty's gay and pure-toned voice demanded over the wire. Had he eschewed the theater and all its works for good? Too busy? Was that a reason also for eschewing his friends? He'd never meant to do that? Let him prove it then by coming up to see her.... Yes; at once. Something special to be talked over.

It was a genuine surprise to Banneker to find that he had not seen the actress for nearly two months. Certainly he had not specially missed her, yet it was keenly pleasurable to be brought into contact again with that restless, vital, outgiving personality. She looked tired and a little dispirited and—for she was of that rare type in which weariness does not dim, but rather qualifies and differentiates its beauty—quite as lovely as he had ever seen her. The query which gave him his clue to her special and immediate interest was:

"Why is Haslett leaving The Patriot?" Haslett was the Chicago critic transplanted to take Gurney's place.

"Is he? I didn't know. You ought not to mourn his loss, Betty."

"But I do. At least, I'm afraid I'm going to. Do you know who the new critic is?"

"No. Do you? And how do you? Oh, I suppose I ought to understand that, though," he added, annoyed that so important a change should have been kept secret from him.

With characteristic directness she replied, "You mean Tertius Marrineal?"

"Naturally."

"That's all off."

"Betty! Your engagement to him?"

"So far as there ever was any."

"Is it really off? Or have you only quarreled?"

"Oh, no. I can't imagine myself quarreling with Tertius. He's too impersonal. For the same reason, and others, I can't see myself marrying him."

"But you must have considered it, for a time."

"Not very profoundly. I don't want to marry a newspaper. Particularly such a newspaper as The Patriot. For that matter, I don't want to marry anybody, and I won't!"

"That being disposed of, what's the matter with The Patriot? It's been treating you with distinguished courtesy ever since Marrineal took over charge."

"It has. That's part of his newspaperishness."

"From our review of your new play I judge that it was written by the shade of Shakespeare in collaboration with the ghost of Moliere, and that your acting in it combines all the genius of Rachel, Kean, Booth, Mrs. Siddons, and the Divine Sarah."

"This is no laughing matter," she protested. "Have you seen the play?"

"No. I'll go to-night."

"Don't. It's rotten."

"Heavens!" he cried in mock dismay. "What does this mean? Our most brilliant young—"

"And I'm as bad as the play—almost. The part doesn't fit me. It's a fool part."

"Are you quarreling with The Patriot because it has tempered justice with mercy in your case?"

"Mercy? With slush. Slathering slush."

"Come to my aid, Memory! Was it not a certain Miss Raleigh who aforetime denounced the ruffian Gurney for that he vented his wit upon a play in which she appeared. And now, because—"

"Yes; it was. I've no use for the smart-aleck school of criticism. But, at least, what Gurney wrote was his own. And Haslett, even if he is an old grouch, was honest. You couldn't buy their opinions over the counter."

Banneker frowned. "I think you'd better explain, Betty."

"Do you know Gene Zucker?"

"Never heard of him."

"He's a worm. A fat, wiggly, soft worm from Boston. But he's got an idea."

"And that is?"

"I'll tell you in a moment." She leaned forward fixing him with the honest clarity of her eyes. "Ban, if I tell you that I'm really devoted to my art, that I believe in it as—as a mission, that the theater is as big a thing to me as The Patriot is to you, you won't think me an affected little prig, will you?"

"Of course not, Betty. I know you."

"Yes. I think you do. But you don't know your own paper. Zucker's big idea, which he sold to Tertius Marrineal together with his precious self, is that the dramatic critic should be the same identical person as the assistant advertising manager in charge of theater advertising, and that Zucker should be both."

"Hell!" snapped Banneker. "I beg your pardon, Betty."

"Don't. I quite agree with you. Isn't it complete and perfect? Zucker gets his percentage of the advertising revenue which he brings in from the theaters. Therefore, will he be kind to those attractions which advertise liberally? And less kind to those which fail to appreciate The Patriot as a medium? I know that he will! Pay your dollar and get your puff. Dramatic criticism strictly up to date."

Banneker looked at her searchingly. "Is that why you broke with Marrineal, Betty?"

"Not exactly. No. This Zucker deal came afterward. But I think I had begun to see what sort of principles Tertius represented. You and I aren't children, Ban: I can talk straight talk to you. Well, there's prostitution on the stage, of course. Not so much of it as outsiders think, but more than enough. I've kept myself free of any contact with it. That being so, I'm certainly not going to associate myself with that sort of thing in another field. Ban, I've made the management refuse Zucker admittance to the theater. And he gave the play a wonderful send-off, as you know. Of course, Tertius would have him do that."

Rising, Banneker walked over and soberly shook the girl's hand. "Betty, you're a fine and straight and big little person. I'm proud to know you. And I'm ashamed of myself that I can do nothing. Not now, anyway. Later, perhaps...."

"No, I suppose you can't," she said listlessly. "But you'll be interested in seeing how the Zucker system works out; a half-page ad. in the Sunday edition gets a special signed and illustrated feature article, a quarter-page only a column of ordinary press stuff. A full page—I don't know what he'll offer for that. An editorial by E.B. perhaps."

"Betty!"

"Forgive me, Ban. I'm sick at heart over it all. Of course, I know you wouldn't."

Going back in his car, Banneker reflected with profound distaste that the plan upon which he was hired was not essentially different from the Zucker scheme, in Marrineal's intent. He, too, was—if Marrineal's idea worked out—to draw down a percentage varying in direct ratio to his suppleness in accommodating his writings to "the best interests of the paper." He swore that he would see The Patriot and its proprietor eternally damned before he would again alter jot or tittle of his editorial expression with reference to any future benefit.

It did not take long for Mr. Zucker to manifest his presence to Banneker through a line asking for an interview, written in a neat, small hand upon a card reading:

The Patriot—Special Theatrical Features E. Zucker, Representative.

Mr. Zucker, being sent for, materialized as a buoyant little person, richly ornamented with his own initials in such carefully chosen locations as his belt-buckle, his cane, and his cigarettes. He was, he explained, injecting some new and profitable novelties into the department of dramatic criticism.

"Just a moment," quoth Banneker. "I thought that Allan Haslett had come on from Chicago to be our dramatic critic."

"Oh, he and the business office didn't hit it off very well," said little Zucker carelessly.

"Oh! And do you hit it off pretty well with the business office?"

"Naturally. It was Mr. Haring brought me on here; I'm a special departmental manager in the advertising department."

"Your card would hardly give the impression. It suggests the news rather than the advertising side."

"I'm both," stated Mr. Zucker, brightly beaming. "I handle the criticism and the feature stuff on salary, and solicit the advertising, on a percentage. It works out fine."

"So one might suppose." Banneker looked at him hard. "The idea being, if I get it correctly, that a manager who gives you a good, big line of advertising can rely on considerate treatment in the dramatic column of The Patriot."

"Well, there's no bargain to that effect. That wouldn't be classy for a big paper like ours," replied the high-if somewhat naive-minded Mr. Zucker. "Of course, the managers understand that one good turn deserves another, and I ain't the man to roast a friend that helps me out. I started the scheme in Boston and doubled the theater revenue of my paper there in a year."

"I'm immensely interested," confessed Banneker. "But what is your idea in coming to me about this?"

"Big stuff, Mr. Banneker," answered the earnest Zucker. He laid a jeweled hand upon the other's knee, and removed it because some vestige of self-protective instinct warned him that that was not the proper place for it. "You may have noticed that we've been running a lot of special theater stuff in the Sunday." Banneker nodded. "That's all per schedule, as worked out by me. An eighth of a page ad. gets an article. A quarter page ad. gets a signed special by me. Haffa page wins a grand little send-off by Bess Breezely with her own illustrations. Now, I'm figuring on full pages. If I could go to a manager and say: 'Gimme a full-page ad. for next Sunday and I'll see if I can't get Mr. Banneker to do an editorial on the show'—if I could say that, why, nothin' to it! Nothin' at-tall! Of course," he added ruminatively, "I'd have to pick the shows pretty careful."

"Perhaps you'd like to write the editorials, too," suggested Banneker with baleful mildness.

"I thought of that," admitted the other. "But I don't know as I could get the swing of your style. You certainly got a style, Mr. Banneker."

"Thank you."

"Well, what do you say?"

"Why, this. I'll look over next Sunday's advertising, particularly the large ads., and if there is a good subject in any of the shows, I'll try to do something about it."

"Fine!" enthused the unsuspecting pioneer of business-dramatic criticism. "It's a pleasure to work with a gentleman like you, Mr. Banneker."

Withdrawing, even more pleased with himself than was his wont, Mr. Zucker confided to Haring that the latter was totally mistaken in attributing a stand-offish attitude to Banneker. Why, you couldn't ask for a more reasonable man. Saw the point at once.

"Don't you go making any fool promises on the strength of what Banneker said to you," commented Haring.

With malign relish, Banneker looked up in the Sunday advertising the leading theater display, went to the musical comedy there exploited, and presently devoted a column to giving it a terrific and only half-merited slashing for vapid and gratuitous indecency. The play, which had been going none too well, straightway sold out a fortnight in advance, thereby attesting the power of the press as well as the appeal of pruriency to an eager and jaded public. Zucker left a note on the editorial desk warmly thanking his confrere for this evidence of cooeperation.

Life was practicing its lesser ironies upon Banneker whilst maturing its greater ones.



CHAPTER XIII

In the regular course of political events, Laird was renominated on a fusion ticket. Thereupon the old ring, which had so long battened on the corruption or local government, put up a sleek and presentable figurehead. Marrineal nominated himself amidst the Homeric laughter of the professional politicians. How's he goin' to get anywhere, they demanded with great relish of the joke, when he ain't got any organization at-tall! Presently the savor oozed out of that joke. Marrineal, it appeared, did have an organization, of sorts; worse, he had gathered to him, by methods not peculiarly his own, the support of the lesser East-Side foreign language press, which may or may not have believed in his protestations of fealty to the Common People, but certainly did appreciate the liberality of his political advertising appropriation, advertising, in this sense, to be accorded its freest interpretation. Worst of all, he had Banneker.

Banneker's editorials, not upon Marrineal himself (for he was too shrewd for that), but upon the cause of which Marrineal was standard-bearer, were persuasive, ingenious, forceful, and, to the average mind, convincing. Was Banneker himself convinced? It was a question which he resolutely refused to follow to its logical conclusion. Of the justice of the creed which The Patriot upheld, he was perfectly confident. But did Marrineal represent that creed? Did he represent anything but Marrineal? Stifling his misgivings, Banneker flung himself the more determinedly into the fight. It became apparent that he was going to swing an important fraction of the labor vote, despite the opposition of such clear-eyed leaders as McClintick. To this extent he menaced the old ring rather than the forces of reform, led by Laird and managed by Enderby. On the other hand, he was drawing from Laird, in so far as he still influenced the voters who had followed The Patriot in its original support of the reform movement. That Marrineal could not be elected, both of his opponents firmly believed; and in this belief, notwithstanding his claims of forthcoming victory, the independent candidate privately concurred. It would be enough, for the time, to defeat decisively whichever rival he turned his heaviest guns upon in the final onset; that would insure his future political prestige. Thus far, in his speeches, he had hit out impartially at both sides, denouncing the old ring for its corruption, girding at Laird as a fake reformer secretly committed to Wall Street through Judge Enderby, corporation lawyer, as intermediary.

Herein Banneker had refrained from following him. Ever the cat at the hole's mouth, the patient lurker, the hopeful waiter upon the event, the proprietor of The Patriot forbore to press his editorial chief. He still mistrusted the strength of his hold upon Banneker; feared a defiance when he could ill afford to meet it. What he most hoped was some development which would turn Banneker's heavy guns upon Laird so that, with the defeat of the fusion ticket candidate, the public would say, "The Patriot made him and The Patriot broke him."

Laird played into Marrineal's hands. Indignant at what he regarded as a desertion of principles by The Patriot, the fusion nominee, in one of his most important addresses, devoted a stinging ten minutes to a consideration of that paper, its proprietor, and its editorial writer, in its chosen role of "friend of labor." His text was the Veridian strike, his information the version which McClintick furnished him; he cited Banneker by name, and challenged him as a prostituted mind and a corrupted pen. Though Laird had spoken as he honestly believed, he did not have the whole story; McClintick, in his account, had ignored the important fact that Marrineal, upon being informed of conditions, had actually (no matter what his motive) remedied them. Banneker, believing that Laird was fully apprised, as he knew Enderby to be, was outraged. This alleged reformer, this purist in politics, this apostle of honor and truth, was holding him up to contumely, through half-truths, for a course which any decent man must, in conscience, have followed. He composed a seething editorial, tore it up, substituted another wherein he made reply to the charges, in a spirit of ingenuity rather than ingenuousness, for The Patriot case, while sound, was one which could not well be thrown open to The Patriot's public; and planned vengeance when the time should come.

Io, on a brief trip from Philadelphia, lunched with him that week, and found him distrait.

"It's only politics," he said. "You're not interested in politics," and, as usual, "Let's talk about you."

She gave him that look which was like a smile deep in the shadows of her eyes. "Ban, do you know the famous saying of Terence?"

He quoted the "Homo sum." "That one?" he asked.

She nodded. "Now, hear my version: 'I am a woman; nothing that touches my man is alien to my interests.'"

He laughed. But there was a note of gratitude in his voice, almost humble, as he said: "You're the only woman in the world, Io, who can quote the classics and not seem a prig."

"That's because I'm beautiful," she retorted impudently. "Tell me I'm beautiful, Ban!"

"You're the loveliest witch in the world," he cried.

"So much for flattery. Now—politics."

He recounted the Laird charges.

"No; that wasn't fair," she agreed. "It was most unfair. But I don't believe Bob Laird knew the whole story. Did you ask him?"

"Ask him? I certainly did not. You don't understand much about politics, dearest."

"I was thinking of it from the point of view of the newspaper. If you're going to answer him in The Patriot, I should think you'd want to know just what his basis was. Besides, if he's wrong, I believe he'd take it back."

"After all the damage has been done. He won't get the chance." Banneker's jaw set firm.

"What shall you do now?"

"Wait my chance, load my pen, and shoot to kill."

"Let me see the editorial before you print it."

"All right, Miss Meddlesome. But you won't let your ideas of fair play run away with you and betray me to the enemy? You're a Laird man, aren't you?"

Her voice fell to a caressing half-note. "I'm a Banneker woman—in everything. Won't you ever remember that?"

"No. You'll never be that. You'll always be Io; yourself; remote and unattainable in the deeper sense."

"Do you say that?" she answered.

"Oh, don't think that I complain. You've made life a living glory for me. Yet"—his face grew wistful—"I suppose—I don't know how to say it—I'm like the shepherd in the poem,

'Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade.'

Io, why do I always think in poetry, when I'm with you?"

"I want you always to," she said, which was a more than sufficient answer.

Io had been back in Philadelphia several days, and had 'phoned Banneker that she was coming over on the following Tuesday, when, having worked at the office until early evening, he ran around the corner to Katie's for dinner. At the big table "Bunny" Fitch of The Record was holding forth.

Fitch was that invaluable type of the political hack-writer, a lackey of the mind, instinctively subservient to his paper's slightest opinion, hating what it hates, loving what it loves, with the servile adherence of a medieval churchman. As The Record was bitter upon reform, its proprietor having been sadly disillusioned in youth by a lofty but abortive experiment in perfecting human nature from which he never recovered, Bunny lost no opportunity to damn all reformers.

"Can't you imagine the dirty little snob," he was saying, as Banneker entered, "creeping and fawning and cringing for their favors? Up for membership at The Retreat. Dines with Poultney Masters, Jr., at his club. Can't you hear him running home to wifie all het up and puffed like a toad, and telling her about it?"

"Who's all this, Bunny?" inquired Banneker, who had taken in only the last few words.

"Our best little society climber, the Honorable Robert Laird," returned the speaker, and reverted to his inspirational pen-picture: "Runs home to wifie and crows, 'What do you think, my dear! Junior Masters called me 'Bob' to-day!"

In a flash, the murderous quality of the thing bit into Banneker's sensitive brain. "Junior Masters called me 'Bob' to-day." The apotheosis of snobbery! Swift and sure poison for the enemy if properly compounded with printer's ink. How pat it fitted in with the carefully fostered conception, insisted upon in every speech by Marrineal, of the mayor as a Wall Street and Fifth Avenue tool and toady!

But what exactly had Bunny Fitch said? Was he actually quoting Laird? If so, direct or from hearsay? Or was he merely paraphrasing or perhaps only characterizing? There was a dim ring in Banneker's cerebral ear of previous words, half taken in, which would indicate the latter—and ruin the deadly plan, strike the poison-dose from his hand. Should he ask Fitch? Pin him down to the details?

The character-sketcher was now upon the subject of Judge Enderby. "Sly old wolf! Wants to be senator one of these days. Or maybe governor. A 'receptive' candidate! Wah! Pulls every wire he can lay hand on, and then waits for the honor to be forced upon him.... Good Lord! It's eight o'clock. I'm late."

Dropping a bill on the table he hurried out. Half-minded to stop him, Banneker took a second thought. Why should he? His statement had been definite. Anyway, he could be called up on the morrow. Dining hastily and in deep, period-building thought, Banneker returned to the office, locked himself in, and with his own hand drafted the editorial built on that phrase of petty and terrific import: "Junior Masters called me 'Bob' to-day."

After it was written he would not for the world have called up Fitch to verify the central fact. He couldn't risk it. He scheduled the broadside for the second morning following.... But there was Io! He had promised. Well, he was to meet her at a dinner party at the Forbes's. She could see it then, if she hadn't forgotten.... No; that, too, was a subterfuge hope. Io never forgot.

As if to assure the resumption of their debate, the talk of the Forbes dinner table turned to the mayoralty fight. Shrewd judges of events and tendencies were there; Thatcher Forbes, himself, not the least of them; it was the express opinion that Laird stood a very good chance of victory.

"Unless they can definitely pin the Wall Street label on him," suggested some one.

"That might beat him; it's the only thing that could," another opined.

Hugging his withering phrase to his heart, Banneker felt a growing exultation.

"Nobody but The Patriot—" began Mrs. Forbes contemptuously, when she abruptly recalled who was at her table. "The newspapers are doing their worst, but I think they won't make people believe much of it," she amended.

"Is Laird really the Wall Street candidate?" inquired Esther Forbes.

Parley Welland, Io's cousin, himself an amateur politician, answered her: "He is or he isn't, according as you look at it. Masters and his crowd are mildly for him, because they haven't any objection to a decent, straight city government, at present. Sometimes they have."

"On that principle, Horace Vanney must have," remarked Jim Maitland. "He's fighting Laird, tooth and nail, and certainly he represents one phase of Wall Street activity."

"My revered uncle," drawled Herbert Cressey, "considers that the present administration is too tender of the working-man—or, rather, working-woman—when she strikes. Don't let 'em strike; or, if they do strike, have the police bat 'em on the head."

"What's this administration got to do with Vanney's mills? I thought they were in Jersey," another diner asked.

"So they are, the main ones. But he's backing some of the local clothing manufacturers, the sweat-shop lot. They've been having strikes. That interferes with profits. Uncle wants the good old days of the night-stick and the hurry-up wagon back. He's even willing to spend a little money on the good cause."

Io, seated on Banneker's left, turned to him. "Is that true, Ban?"

"I've heard rumors to that effect," he replied evasively.

"Won't it put The Patriot in a queer position, to be making common cause with an enemy of labor?"

"It isn't a question of Horace Vanney, at all," he declared. "He's just an incident."

"When are you going to write your Laird editorial?"

"All written. I've got a proof in my pocket."

She made as if to hold out her hand; but withdrew it. "After dinner," she said. "The little enclosed porch off the conservatory."

Amused and confirmatory glances followed them as they withdrew together. But there was no ill-natured commentary. So habituated was their own special set to the status between them that it was accepted with tolerance, even with the good-humored approval with which human nature regards a logical inter-attraction.

"Are you sure that you want to plunge into politics, Io?" Banneker asked, looking down at her as she seated herself in the cushioned chaise longue.

Her mouth smiled assent, but her eyes were intent and serious. He dropped the proof into her lap, bending over and kissing her lips as he did so. For a moment her fingers interlaced over his neck.

"I'll understand it," she breathed, interpreting into his caress a quality of pleading.

Before she had read halfway down the column, she raised to him a startled face. "Are you sure, Ban?" she interrogated.

"Read the rest," he suggested.

She complied. "What a terrible power little things have," she sighed. "That would make me despise Laird."

"A million other people will feel the same way to-morrow."

"To-morrow? Is it to be published so soon?"

"In the morning's issue."

"Ban; is it true? Did he say that?"

"I have it from a man I've known ever since I came to New York. He's reliable."

"But it's so unlike Bob Laird."

"Why is it unlike him?" he challenged with a tinge of impatience. "Hasn't he been playing about lately with the Junior Masters?"

"Do you happen to know," she replied quietly, "that Junior and Bob Laird were classmates and clubmates at college, and that they probably always have called each other by their first names?"

"No. Have you ever heard them?" Angry regret beset him the instant the question had passed his lips. If she replied in the affirmative—

"No; I've never happened to hear them," she admitted; and he breathed more freely.

"Then my evidence is certainly more direct than yours," he pointed out.

"Ban; that charge once made public is going to be unanswerable, isn't it? Just because the thing itself is so cheap and petty?"

"Yes. You've got the true journalistic sense, Io."

"Then there's the more reason why you shouldn't print it unless you know it to be true."

"But it is true." Almost he had persuaded himself that it was; that it must be.

"The Olneys are having the Junior Masters to dine this evening. I know because I was asked; but of course I wanted to be here, where you are. Let me call Junior on the 'phone and ask him."

Banneker flushed. "You can't do that, Io."

"Why not?"

"Why, it isn't the sort of thing that one can very well do," he said lamely.

"Not ask Junior if he and Bob Laird are old chums and call each other by their first names?"

"How silly it would sound!" He tried to laugh the proposal away. "In any case, it wouldn't be conclusive. Besides, it's too late by this time."

"Too late?"

"Yes. The forms are closed."

"You couldn't change it?"

"Why, I suppose I could, in an extreme emergency. But, dearest, it's all right. Why be so difficult?"

"It isn't playing the game, Ban."

"Indeed, it is. It's playing the game as Laird has elected to play it. Did he make inquiries before he attacked us on the Veridian strike?"

"That's true," she conceded.

"And my evidence for this is direct. You'll have to trust me and my professional judgment, Io."

She sighed, but accepted this, saying, "If he is that kind of a snob it ought to be published. Suppose he sues for libel?"

"He'd be laughed out of court. Why, what is there libelous in saying that a man claims to have been called by his first name by another man?" Banneker chuckled.

"Well, it ought to be libelous if it isn't true," asserted Io warmly. "It isn't fair or decent that a newspaper can hold a man up as a boot-licker and toady, if he isn't one, and yet not be held responsible for it."

"Well, dearest, I didn't make the libel laws. They're hard enough as it is." His thought turned momentarily to Ely Ives, the journalistic sandbag, and he felt a momentary qualm. "I don't pretend to like everything about my job. One of these days I'll have a newspaper of my own, and you shall censor every word that goes in it."

"Help! Help!" she laughed. "I shouldn't have the time for anything else; not even for being in love with the proprietor. Ban," she added wistfully, "does it cost a very great deal to start a new paper?"

"Yes. Or to buy an old one."

"I have money of my own, you know," she ventured.

He fondled her hand. "That isn't even a temptation," he replied.

But it was. For a paper of his own was farther away from him than it had ever been. That morning he had received his statement from his broker. To date his losses on Union Thread were close to ninety thousand dollars.

Who shall measure the spreading and seeding potentialities of a thistle-down or a catchy phrase? Within twenty-four hours after the appearance of Banneker's editorial, the apocryphal boast of Mayor Laird to his wife had become current political history. Current? Rampant, rather. Messenger boys greeted each other with "Dearie, Mr. Masters calls me Bob." Brokers on 'Change shouted across a slow day's bidding, "What's your cute little pet name? Mine's Bobbie." Huge buttons appeared with miraculous celerity in the hands of the street venders inscribed,

"Call me Bob but Vote for Marrineal"

Vainly did Judge Enderby come out with a statement to the press, declaring the whole matter a cheap and nasty fabrication, and challenging The Patriot to cite its authority. The damage already done was irreparable. Sighting Banneker at luncheon a few days later, Horace Vanney went so far as to cross the room to greet and congratulate him.

"A master-stroke," he said, pressing Banneker's hand with his soft palm. "We're glad to have you with us. Won't you call me up and lunch with me soon?"

At The Retreat, after polo, that Saturday, the senior Masters met Banneker face to face in a hallway, and held him up.

"Politics is politics. Eh?" he grunted.

"It's a great game," returned the journalist.

"Think up that 'call-me-Bob' business yourself?"

"I got it from a reliable source."

"Damn lie," remarked Poultney Masters equably. "Did the work, though. Banneker, why didn't you let me know you were in the market?"

"In the stock-market? What has that—"

"You know what market I mean," retorted the great man with unconcealed contempt. "What you don't know is your own game. Always seek the highest bidder before you sell, my boy."

"I'll take that from no man—" began Banneker hotly.

Immediately he was sensible of a phenomenon. His angry eyes, lifted to Poultney Masters's glistening little beads, were unable to endure the vicious amusement which he read therein. For the first time in his life he was stared down. He passed on, followed by a low and scornful hoot.

Meeting Willis Enderby while charge and counter-charge still rilled the air, Io put the direct query to him:

"Cousin Billy, what is the truth about the Laird-Masters story?"

"Made up out of whole cloth," responded Enderby.

"Who made it up?"

Comprehension and pity were in his intonation as he replied: "Not Banneker, I understand. It was passed on to him."

"Then you don't think him to blame?" she cried eagerly.

"I can't exculpate him as readily as that. Such a story, considering its inevitable—I may say its intended—consequences, should never have been published without the fullest investigation."

"Suppose"—she hesitated—"he had it on what he considered good authority?"

"He has never even cited his authority."

"Couldn't it have been confidential?" she pleaded.

"Io, do you know his authority? Has he told you?"

"No."

Enderby's voice was very gentle as he put his next question. "Do you trust Banneker, my dear?"

She met his regard, unflinchingly, but there was a piteous quiver about the lips which formed the answer. "I have trusted him. Absolutely."

"Ah; well! I've seen too much good and bad too inextricably mingled in human nature, to judge on part information."

Election day came and passed. On the evening of it the streets were ribald with crowds gleefully shrieking! "Call me Dennis, wifie. I'm stung!" Laird had been badly beaten, running far behind Marrineal. Halloran, the ring candidate, was elected. Banneker did it.

As he looked back on the incidents of the campaign and its culminating event with a sense of self-doubt poisoning his triumph, that which most sickened him of his own course was not the overt insult from the financial emperor, but the soft-palmed gratulation of Horace Vanney.



CHAPTER XIV

Ambition is the most conservative of influences upon a radical mind. No sooner had Tertius Marrineal formulated his political hopes than there were manifested in the conduct of The Patriot strange symptoms of a hankering after respectability. Essentially Marrineal was not respectable, any more than he was radical. He was simply and singly selfish. But, having mapped out for himself a career which did not stop short of a stately and deep-porticoed edifice in Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue (for his conception of the potential leverage of a great newspaper increased with The Patriot's circulation), he deemed it advisable to moderate some of the more blatant features, on the same principle which had induced him to reform the Veridian lumber mill abuses, lest they be brought up to his political detriment later. A long-distance thinker, Tertius Marrineal.

Operating through invisible channels and by a method which neither Banneker nor Edmonds ever succeeded in fathoming, his influence now began to be felt for the better tone of the news columns. They became less glaringly sensational. Yet the quality of the news upon which the paper specialized was the same; it was the handling which was insensibly altered. That this was achieved without adversely affecting circulation was another proof, added to those already accumulated, of Marrineal's really eminent journalistic capacities. The change was the less obvious, because The Patriot's competitors in the Great Three-Ringed Circus of Sensation had found themselves being conducted, under that leadership, farther along the primrose path of stimulation and salaciousness than they had realized, and had already modified their policies.

Even under the new policy, however, The Patriot would hardly have proven, upon careful analysis, more decent or self-respecting. But it was less obvious; cleverer in avoiding the openly offensive. Capron had been curbed in his pictorial orgies. The copy-readers had been supplied with a list of words and terms tabooed from the captions. But the influence of Severance was still potent in the make-up of the news. While Banneker was relieved at the change, he suspected its impermanency should it prove unsuccessful. To neither his chief editorial writer nor Russell Edmonds had the proprietor so much as hinted at the modification of scheme. His silence to these two was part of his developing policy of separating more widely the different departments of the paper in order that he might be the more quietly and directly authoritative over all.

The three men were lunching late at Delmonico's, and talking politics, when Edmonds leaned forward in his seat to look toward the entrance.

"There's Severance," said he. "What's the matter with him?"

The professional infuser of excitements approached walking carefully among the tables. His eyes burned in a white face.

"On one of his sprees," diagnosed Banneker. "Oh, Severance! Sit down here."

"I beg your p-p-pardon." Severance spoke with marked deliberation and delicacy, but with a faint stammer. "These not b-being office hours, I have not the p-pleasure of your acquaintance."

Marrineal smiled.

"The p-pale rictus of the damned," observed Severance. "As one damned soul to another, I c-confess a longing for companionship of m-my own sort. Therefore I accept your invitation. Waiter, a Scotch h-highball."

"We were talking of—" began Banneker, when the newcomer broke in:

"Talk of m-me. Of me and m-my work. I exult in my w-work. L-like Mr. Whitman, I celebrate myself. I p-point with pride. What think you, gentlemen, of to-day's paper in honor of which I have t-taken my few drinks?"

"If you mean the Territon story," growled Edmonds, "it's rotten."

"Precisely. I thank you for your g-golden opinion. Rotten. Exactly as intended."

"Put a woman's good name on trial and sentence it on hearsay without appeal or recourse."

"There is always the danger of going too far along those lines," pointed out Marrineal judicially.

"Pardon me, all-wise Proprietor. The d-danger lies in not going far enough. The frightful p-peril of being found dull."

"The Territon story assays too thin in facts, as we've put it out. If Mrs. Territon doesn't leave her husband now for McLaurin," opined Marrineal, "we are in a difficult position. I happen to know her and I very much doubt—"

"Doubt not at all, d-doubting Tertius. The very fact of our publishing the story will force her hand. It's an achievement, that story. No other p-paper has a line of it."

"Not more than one other would touch it, in its present form," said Banneker. "It's too raw."

"The more virtue to us. I r-regard that story as an inspiration. Nobody could have brought it off b-but me. 'A god, a god their Severance ruled,'" punned the owner of the name.

"Beelzebub, god of filth and maggots," snarled Edmonds.

"Bacchus, god of all true inspiration!" cried Severance. "Waiter, slave of B-Bacchus, where is my Scotch?"

"Severance, you're going too far along your chosen line," declared Banneker bluntly.

"Yes; we must tone down a little," agreed Marrineal.

The sensationalist lifted calmly luminous eyes to his chief. "Why?" he queried softly. "Are you meditating a change? Does the journalistic l-lady of easy virtue begin to yearn f-for the paths of respectability?"

"Steady, Severance," warned Edmonds.

At the touch of the curb the other flamed into still, white wrath. "If you're going to be a whore," he said deliberately, "play the whore's game. I'm one and I know it. Banneker's one, but hasn't the courage to face it. You're one, Edmonds—no, you're not; not even that. You're the hallboy that f-fetches the drinks—"

Marrineal had risen. Severance turned upon him.

"I salute you, Madam of our high-class establishment. When you take your p-price, you at least look the business in the face. No illusions for M-Madam Marrineal.... By the w-way, I resign from the house."

"Are you coming, Mr. Edmonds?" said Marrineal. "You'll sign the check for me, will you, Mr. Banneker?"

Left alone with the disciple of Bacchus and Beelzebub, the editor said:

"Better get home, Severance. Come in to-morrow, will you?"

"No. I'm q-quite in earnest about resigning. No further use for the damned j-job now."

"I never could see why you had any use for it in the first place. Was it money?"

"Of course."

"Oh, I see."

"You d-don't see at all. I wanted the m-money for a purpose. The purpose was a woman. I w-wanted to keep pace with her and her s-set. It was the set to which I rightly belonged, but I'd dropped out. I thought I p-preferred drink. I didn't after she got hold of me. I d-don't know why the d-devil I'm telling you all this."

"I'm sorry, Severance," said Banneker honestly.

The other raised his glass. "Here's to her," he said. He drank. "I wish her nothing w-worse than she's got. Her name is—"

"Wait a moment, Severance," cut in Banneker sharply. "Don't say anything that you'll regret. Naming of names—"

"Oh, there's no harm in this, n-now," said Severance wearily. "Hers is smeared in filth all over our third page. It is Maud Territon. What do you think of P-Patriotic journalism, anyway, Banneker?"



CHAPTER XV

With the accession to political control of Halloran and the old ring, the influence of Horace Vanney and those whom he represented, became as potent as it was secret. "Salutary measures" had been adopted toward the garment-workers; a "firm hand" on the part of the police had succeeded in holding down the strike through the fall and winter; but in the early spring it was revived and spread throughout the city, even to the doors of the shopping district. In another sense than the geographical it was nearing the great department stores, for quiet efforts were being made by some of the strike leaders to organize and unionize the underpaid salesmen and saleswomen of the shops. Inevitably this drew into active hostility to the strikers the whole power of the stores with their immense advertising influence.

Very little news of the strike got into the papers except where some clash with the police was of too great magnitude to be ignored; then the trend of the articles was generally hostile to the strikers. The Sphere published the facts briefly, as a matter of journalistic principle; The Ledger published them with violent bias, as a matter of journalistic habit; the other papers, including The Patriot, suppressed or minimized to as great an extent as they deemed feasible.

That the troubles of some thousands of sweated wage-earners, employed upon classes of machine-made clothing which would never come within the ken of the delicately clad women of her world, could in any manner affect Io Eyre, was most improbable. But the minor fate who manipulates improbabilities elected that she should be in a downtown store at the moment when a squad of mounted police charged a crowd of girl-strikers. Hearing the scream of panic, she ran out, saw ignorant, wild-eyed girls, hardly more than children, beaten down, trampled, hurried hither and thither, seized upon and thrown into patrol wagons, and when she reached her car, sick and furious, found an eighteen-year-old Lithuanian blonde flopping against the rear fender in a dead faint. Strong as a young panther, Io picked up the derelict in her arms, hoisted her into the tonneau, and bade the disgusted chauffeur, "Home." What she heard from the revived girl, in the talk which followed, sent her, hot-hearted, to the police court where the arrests would be brought up for primary judgment.

The first person that she met there was Willis Enderby.

"If you're on this strike case, Cousin Billy," she said, "I'm against you, and I'm ashamed of you."

"You probably aren't the former, and you needn't be the latter," he replied.

"Aren't you Mr. Vanney's lawyer? And isn't he interested in the strike?"

"Not openly. It happens that I'm here for the strikers."

Io stared, incredulous. "For the strikers? You mean that they've retained you?"

"Oh, no. I'm really here in my capacity as President of the Law Enforcement Society; to see that these women get the full protection of the law, to which they are entitled. There is reason to believe that they haven't had it. And you?"

Io told him.

"Are you willing to go on the stand?"

"Certainly; if it will do any good."

"Not much, so far as the case goes. But it will force it into the newspapers. 'Society Leader Takes Part of Working-Girls,' and so-on. The publicity will be useful."

The magistrate on the bench was lenient; dismissed most of the prisoners with a warning against picketing; fined a few; sent two to jail. He seemed surprised and not a little impressed by the distinguished Mrs. Delavan Eyre's appearance in the proceedings, and sent word out to the reporters' room, thereby breaking up a game of pinochle at its point of highest interest. There was a man there from The Patriot.

With eager expectation Io, back in her Philadelphia apartment, sent out for a copy of the New York Patriot. Greatly to her disgust she found herself headlined, half-toned, described; but with very little about the occasion of her testimony, a mere mention of the strike and nothing whatsoever regarding the police brutalities which had so stirred her wrath. Io discovered that she had lost her taste for publicity, in a greater interest. Her first thought was to write Banneker indignantly; her second to ask explanations when he called her on the 'phone as he now did every noon; her third to let the matter stand until she went to New York and saw him. On her arrival, several days later, she went direct to his office. Banneker's chief interest, next to his ever-thrilling delight in seeing her, was in the part played by Willis Enderby.

"What is he doing in that galley?" he wondered.

To her explanation he shook his head. Something more than that, he was sure. Asking Io's permission he sent for Russell Edmonds.

"Isn't this a new role for Enderby?" he asked.

"Not at all. He's been doing this sort of thing always. Usually on the quiet."

"The fact that this is far from being on the quiet suggests politics, doesn't it? Making up to the labor vote?"

"What on earth should Cousin Billy care for the labor vote?" demanded Io. "Mr. Laird is dead politically, isn't he?"

"But Judge Enderby isn't. Mr. Edmonds will tell you that much."

"True enough. Enderby is a man to be reckoned with. Particularly if—" Edmonds paused, hesitant.

"If—" prompted Banneker. "Fire ahead, Pop."

"If Marrineal should declare in on the race for the governorship, next fall."

"Without any state organization? Is that probable?" asked Banneker.

"Only in case he should make a combination with the old ring crowd, who are, naturally, grateful for his aid in putting over Halloran for them. It's quite within the possibilities."

"After the way The Patriot and Mr. Marrineal himself have flayed the ring?" exclaimed Io. "It isn't possible. How could he so go back on himself?"

Edmonds turned his fine and serious smile upon her. "Mr. Marrineal's guiding principle of politics and journalism is that the public never remembers. If he persuades the ring to nominate him, Enderby is the logical candidate against him. In my belief he's the only man who could beat him."

"Do you really think, Mr. Edmonds, that Judge Enderby's help to the arrested women is a political move?"

"That's the way it would be interpreted by all the politicians. Personally, I don't believe it."

"His sympathies, professional and personal, are naturally on the other side," pointed out Banneker.

"But not yours, surely Ban!" cried Io. "Yours ought to be with them. If you could have seen them as I did, helpless and panic-stricken, with the horses pressing in on them—"

"Of course I'm with them," warmly retorted Banneker. "If I controlled the news columns of the paper, I'd make another Sippiac Mills story of this." No sooner had he said it than he foresaw to what reply he had inevitably laid himself open. It came from Io's lips.

"You control the editorial column, Ban."

"It's a subject to be handled in the news, not the editorials," he said hastily.

The silence that fell was presently relieved by Edmonds. "It's also being handled in the advertising columns. Have you seen the series of announcements by the Garment Manufacturers' Association? There are four of 'em now in proof."

"No. I haven't seen them," answered Banneker.

"They're able. But on the whole they aren't as able as the strikers' declaration in rebuttal, offered us to-day, one-third of a page at regular advertising rates, same as the manufacturers'."

"Enderby?" queried Banneker quickly.

"I seem to detect his fine legal hand in it."

Banneker's face became moody. "I suppose Haring refused to publish it."

"No. Haring's for taking it."

"How is that?" said the editor, astonished. "I thought Haring—"

"You think of Haring as if Haring thought as you and I think. That isn't fair," declared Edmonds. "Haring's got a business mind, straight within its limitations. He accepts this strike stuff just as he accepts blue-sky mine fakes and cancer cures in which he has no belief, because he considers that a newspaper is justified in taking any ad. that is offered—and let the reader beware. Besides, it goes against his grain to turn down real money."

"Will it appear in to-morrow's paper?" questioned Io.

"Probably, if it appears at all."

"Why the 'if'?" said Banneker. "Since Haring has passed it—"

"There is also Marrineal."

"Haring sent it to him?"

"Not at all. The useful and ubiquitous Ives, snooping as usual, came upon it. Hence it is now in Marrineal's hands. Likely to remain there, I should think."

"Mr. Marrineal won't let it be published?" asked Io.

"That's my guess," returned the veteran.

"And mine," added Banneker.

He felt her eyes of mute appeal fixed on him and read her meaning.

"All right, Io," he promised quietly. "If Mr. Marrineal won't print it in advertising, I'll print it as editorial."

"When?" Io and Edmonds spoke in one breath.

"Day after to-morrow."

"That's war," said Edmonds.

"In a good cause," declared Io proudly.

"The cause of the independence of Errol Banneker," said the veteran. "It was bound to come. Go in and win, son. I'll get you a proof of the ad."

"Ban!" said Io with brightened regard.

"Well?"

"Will you put something at the head of your column for me, if that editorial appears?"

"What? Wait! I know. The quotation from the Areopagitica. Is that it?"

"Yes."

"Fine! I'll do it."

On the following morning The Patriot appeared as usual. The first of the Manufacturers' Association arguments to the public was conspicuously displayed. Of the strikers' reply—not a syllable. Banneker went to Haring's office; found the business manager gloomy, but resigned.

"Mr. Marrineal turned it down. He's got the right. That's all there is to it," was his version.

"Not quite," remarked Banneker, and went home to prove it.

Into the editorial which was to constitute the declaration of Errol Banneker's independence went much thinking, and little writing. The pronunciamento of the strikers, prefaced by a few words of explanation, and followed by some ringing sentences as to the universal right to a fair field, was enough. At the top of the column the words of Milton, in small, bold print. Across the completed copy he wrote "Thursday. Must."