Banneker was disturbed. But the flood of letters which came in promptly reassured him. The Reverend editorializer was hailed broadcast as the Messiah of the holy creed of Salesmanship, of the high cult of getting rid of something for more than it is worth. He was organized into a lecture tour; his department in the paper waxed ever greater. Banneker, with his swift appreciation of a hit, followed the lead with editorials; hired authors to write short stories glorifying the ennobled figure of the Salesman, his smartness, his strategy, his ruthless trickery, his success. And the salesmanhood of the nation, in trains, in hotel lobbies, at the breakfast table with its Patriot propped up flanking the egg and coffee, rose up to call him blessed and to add to his income.

Personal experiences in achieving success were a logical sequence to this; success in any field, from running a city as set forth by His Honor the Mayor, to becoming a movie star, by all the movie stars or aspirants whom their press-agents could crowd into the paper. A distinguished novelist of notably high blood-pressure contributed a series of thoughtful essays on "How to be Irresistible in Love," and a sentimental pugilist indulged in reminiscences (per a hired pen from the cheap magazine field) upon "The Influence of my Mother on my Career." An imitator of Banneker developed a daily half-column of self-improvement and inspiration upon moral topics, achieving his effects by capitalizing all the words which otherwise would have been too feeble or banal to attract notice, thereby giving an air of sublimated importance to the mildly incomprehensible. Nine tenths of The Patriot's editorial readers believed that they were following a great philosopher along the path of the eternal profundities. To give a touch of science, an amateur astronomer wrote stirring imaginative articles on interstellar space, and there were occasional "authoritative" pronouncements by men of importance in the political, financial, or intellectual worlds, lifted from public speeches or old publications. The page, if it did not actually itch, buzzed and clanged. But above the composite clamor rose ever the voice of Banneker, clear, serene, compelling.

And Banneker took his pay for it, deeming it well earned.



CHAPTER V

Life was broadening out before Banneker into new and golden persuasions. He had become a person of consequence, a force to be reckoned with, in the great, unheeding city. By sheer resolute thinking and planning, expressed and fulfilled in unsparing labor, he had made opportunity lead to opportunity until his position was won. He was courted, sought after, accepted by representative people of every sort, their interest and liking answering to his broad but fine catholicity of taste in human relationships. If he had no intimates other than Russell Edmonds, it was because he felt no need of them.

He had found Io again.

Prophecies had all failed in the matter of his rise. He thought, with pardonable exultation, of how he had confuted them, one after another. Cressey had doubted that one could be at the same time a successful journalist and a gentleman; Horace Vanney had deemed individuality inconsistent with newspaper writing; Tommy Burt and other jejune pessimists of the craft had declared genuine honesty incompatible with the higher and more authoritative phases of the profession. Almost without set plan and by an inevitable progress, as it now seemed to him, he had risen to the most conspicuous, if not yet the most important, position on Park Row, and had suffered no conscious compromise of standards, whether of self-respect, self-assertion, or honor.

Had he ever allowed monetary considerations seriously to concern him, he might have been troubled by an untoward and not easily explicable phenomenon. His bank account consistently failed to increase in ratio to his earnings. In fact, what with tempting investments, the importunities of a highly luxurious taste in life hitherto unsuspected, and an occasional gambling flyer, his balance was precarious, so to speak. With the happy optimism of one to whom the rosy present casts an intensified glow upon the future, he confidently anticipated a greatly and steadily augmented income, since the circulation of The Patriot was now the terror of its rivals. That any radical alteration could be made in his method of recompense did not occur to him. So completely had he identified himself with The Patriot that he subconsciously regarded himself as essential to its prosperity if not to its actual existence. Therein he was supported by all the expert opinion of Park Row. Already he had accepted one modification of his contract, and his takings for new circulation were now twenty-five cents per unit per year instead of fifty cents as formerly.

But Tertius Marrineal and his business manager, a shrewd and practical gentleman named Haring, had done a vast deal of expert figuring, as a result of which the owner strolled into his editor's office one noon with his casual air of having nothing else to do, and pleasantly inquired:

"Busy?"

"If I weren't, I wouldn't be worth much," returned Banneker, in a cheerful tone.

"Well, if you can spare me fifteen minutes—"

"Sit down." Banneker swiveled his chair to face the other.

"I needn't tell you that the paper is a success; a big success," began Marrineal.

"You needn't. But it's always pleasant to hear."

"Possibly too big a success. What would you say to letting circulation drop for a while?"

"What!" Banneker felt a momentary queer sensation near the pit of his stomach. If the circulation dropped, his income followed it. But could Marrineal be serious?

"The fact is we've reached the point where more circulation is a luxury. We're printing an enormous paper, and wood-pulp prices are going up. If we could raise our advertising rates;—but Mr. Haring thinks that three raises a year is all the traffic will bear. The fact is, Mr. Banneker, that the paper isn't making money. We've run ahead of ourselves. You're swallowing all the profits."

Banneker's inner voice said warningly to Banneker, "So that's it." Banneker's outer voice said nothing.

"Then there's the matter of advertising. Your policy is not helping us much there."

"The advertising is increasing."

"Not in proportion to circulation. Nothing like."

"If the proper ratio isn't maintained, that is the concern of the advertising department, isn't it?"

"Very much the concern. Will you talk with Mr. Haring about it?"

"No."

Early in Banneker's editorship it had been agreed that he should keep free of any business or advertising complications. Experience and the warnings of Russell Edmonds had told him that the only course of editorial independence lay in totally ignoring the effect of what he might write upon the profits and prejudices of the advertisers, who were, of course, the principal support of the paper. Furthermore, Banneker heartily despised about half of the advertising which the paper carried; dubious financial proffers, flamboyant mercantile copy of diamond dealers, cheap tailors, installment furniture profiteers, the lure of loan sharks and race-track tipsters, and the specious and deadly fallacies of the medical quacks. Appealing as it did to an ignorant and "easy" class of the public ("Banneker's First-Readers," Russell Edmonds was wont to call them), The Patriot offered a profitable field for all the pitfall-setters of print. The less that Banneker knew about them the more comfortable would he be. So he turned his face away from those columns.

The negative which he returned to Marrineal's question was no more or less than that astute gentleman expected.

"We carried an editorial last week on cigarettes, 'There's a Yellow Stain on Your Boy's Fingers—Is There Another on his Character?'"

"Yes. It is still bringing in letters."

"It is. Letters of protest."

"From the tobacco people?"

"Exactly. Mr. Banneker, don't you regard tobacco as a legitimate article of use?"

"Oh, entirely. Couldn't do without it, myself."

"Why attack it, then, in your column?"

"Because my column," answered Banneker with perceptible emphasis on the possessive, "doesn't believe that cigarettes are good for boys."

"Nobody does. But the effect of your editorial is to play into the hands of the anti-tobacco people. It's an indiscriminate onslaught on all tobacco. That's the effect of it."

"Possibly."

"And the result is that the tobacco people are threatening to cut us off from their new advertising appropriation."

"Out of my department," said Banneker calmly.

Marrineal was a patient man. He pursued. "You have offended the medical advertisers by your support of the so-called Honest Label Bill."

"It's a good bill."

"Nearly a quarter of our advertising revenue is from the patent-medicine people."

"Mostly swindlers."

"They pay your salary," Marrineal pointed out.

"Not mine," said Banneker vigorously. "The paper pays my salary."

"Without the support of the very advertisers that you are attacking, it couldn't continue to pay it. Yet you decline to admit any responsibility to them."

"Absolutely. To them or for them."

"I confess I can't see your basis," said the reasonable Marrineal. "Considering what you have received in income from the paper—"

"I have worked for it."

"Admitted. But that you should absorb practically all the profits—isn't that a little lopsided, Mr. Banneker?"

"What is your proposition, Mr. Marrineal?"

Marrineal put his long, delicate fingers together, tip to tip before his face, and appeared to be carefully reckoning them up. About the time when he might reasonably have been expected to have audited the total and found it to be the correct eight with two supplementary thumbs, he ejaculated:

"Cooeperation."

"Between the editorial page and the advertising department?"

"Perhaps I should have said profit-sharing. I propose that in lieu of our present arrangement, based upon a percentage on a circulation which is actually becoming a liability instead of an asset, we should reckon your salary on a basis of the paper's net earnings." As Banneker, sitting with thoughtful eyes fixed upon him, made no comment, he added: "To show that I do not underestimate your value to the paper, I propose to pay you fifteen per cent of the net earnings for the next three years. By the way, it won't be necessary hereafter, for you to give any time to the news or Sunday features."

"No. You've got out of me about all you could on that side," observed Banneker.

"The policy is established and successful, thanks largely to you. I would be the last to deny it."

"What do you reckon as my probable income under the proposed arrangement?"

"Of course," answered the proprietor apologetically, "it would be somewhat reduced this year. If our advertising revenue increases, as it naturally should, your percentage might easily rise above your earnings under the old arrangement."

"I see," commented Banneker thoughtfully. "You propose to make it worth my while to walk warily. As the pussy foots it, so to speak."

"I ask you to recognize the fairness of the proposition that you conduct your column in the best interests of the concern—which, under the new arrangement, would also be your own best interests."

"Clear. Limpidly clear," murmured Banneker. "And if I decline the new basis, what is the alternative?"

"Cut down circulation, and with it, loss."

"And the other, the real alternative?" queried the imperturbable Banneker.

Marrineal smiled, with a touch of appeal in his expression.

"Frankness is best, isn't it?" propounded the editor. "I don't believe, Mr. Marrineal, that this paper can get along without me. It has become too completely identified with my editorial idea. On the other hand, I can get along without it."

"By accepting the offer of the Mid-West Evening Syndicate, beginning at forty thousand a year?"

"You're well posted," said Banneker, startled.

"Of necessity. What would you suppose?"

"Your information is fairly accurate."

"I'm prepared to make you a guarantee of forty thousand, as a minimum."

"I shall make nearer sixty than fifty this year."

"At the expense of a possible loss to the paper. Come, Mr. Banneker; the fairness of my offer is evident. A generous guarantee, and a brilliant chance of future profits."

"And a free hand with my editorials?"

"Surely that will arrange itself."

"Precisely what I fear." Banneker had been making some swift calculations on his desk-blotter. Now he took up a blue pencil and with a gesture, significant and not without dramatic effect, struck it down through the reckoning. "No, Mr. Marrineal. It isn't good enough. I hold to the old status. When our contract is out—"

"Just a moment, Mr. Banneker. Isn't there a French proverb, something about no man being as indispensable as he thinks?" Marrineal's voice was never more suave and friendly. "Before you make any final decision, look these over." He produced from his pocket half a dozen of what appeared to be Patriot editorial clippings.

The editor of The Patriot glanced rapidly through them. A puzzled frown appeared on his face.

"When did I write these?"

"You didn't."

"Who did?"

"I"

"They're dam' good."

"Aren't they!"

"Also, they're dam' thievery."

"Doubtless you mean flattery. In its sincerest form. Imitation."

"Perfect. I could believe I'd written them myself."

"Yes; I've been a very careful student of The Patriot's editorial style."

"The Patriot's! Mine!"

"Surely not. You would hardly contend seriously that, having paid the longest price on record for the editorials, The Patriot has not a vested right in them and their style."

"I see," said Banneker thoughtfully. Inwardly he cursed himself for the worst kind of a fool; the fool who underestimates the caliber of his opponent.

"Would you say," continued the smooth voice of the other, "that these might be mistaken for your work?"

"Nobody would know the difference. It's robbery of the rankest kind. But it's infernally clever."

"I'm not going to quarrel with you over a definition, Mr. Banneker," said Marrineal. He leaned a little forward with a smile so frank and friendly that it quite astonished the other. "And I'm not going to let you go, either," he pursued. "You need me and I need you. I'm not fool enough to suppose that the imitation can ever continue to be as good as the real thing. We'll make it a fifty thousand guarantee, if you say so. And, as for your editorial policy—well, I'll take a chance on your seeing reason. After all, there's plenty of earth to prance on without always treading on people's toes.... Well, don't decide now. Take your time to it." He rose and went to the door. There he turned, flapping the loose imitations in his hands.

"Banneker," he said chuckling, "aren't they really dam' good!" and vanished.

In that moment Banneker felt a surge of the first real liking he had ever known for his employer. Marrineal had been purely human for a flash.

Nevertheless, in the first revulsion after the proprietor had left, Banneker's unconquered independence rose within him, jealous and clamant. He felt repressions, claims, interferences potentially closing in upon his pen, also an undefined dread of the sharply revealed overseer. That a force other than his own mind and convictions should exert pressure, even if unsuccessful, upon his writings, was intolerable. Better anything than that. The Mid-West Syndicate, he knew, would leave him absolutely untrammeled. He would write the general director at once.

In the act of beginning the letter, the thought struck and stunned him that this would mean leaving New York. Going to live in a Middle-Western city, a thousand miles outside of the orbit in which moved Io Eyre!

He left the letter unfinished, and the issue to the fates.



CHAPTER VI

Put to the direct question, as, for example, on the witness stand, Mr. Ely Ives would, before his connection with Tertius Marrineal, have probably identified himself as a press-agent. In that capacity he had acted, from time to time, for a railroad with many axes to grind, a widespread stock-gambling enterprise, a minor political ring, a liquor combination, and a millionaire widow from the West who innocently believed that publicity, as manipulated by Mr. Ives, could gain social prestige for her in the East.

In every phase of his employment, the ex-medical student had gathered curious and valuable lore. In fact he was one of those acquisitive persons who collect and hoard scandals, a miser of private and furtive information. His was the zeal of the born collector; something of the genius, too: he boasted a keen instinct. In his earlier and more precarious days he had formed the habit of watching for and collating all possible advices concerning those whom he worked for or worked against and branching from them to others along radiating lines of business, social, or family relationships. To him New York was a huge web, of sinister and promising design, dim, involved, too often impenetrable in the corners where the big spiders spin. He had two guiding maxims: "It may come in handy some day," and "They'll all bear watching." Before the prosperous time, he had been, in his devotion to his guiding principles, a practitioner of the detective arts in some of their least savory phases; had haunted doorsteps, lurked upon corners, been rained upon, snowed upon, possibly spat upon, even arrested; all of which he accepted, mournful but uncomplaining. One cannot whole-heartedly serve an ideal and come off scatheless. He was adroit, well-spoken, smooth of surface, easy of purse, untiring, supple, and of an inexhaustible good-humor. It was from the ex-medical student that Marrineal had learned of Banneker's offer from the Syndicate, also of his over-prodigal hand in money matters.

"He's got to have the cash," was the expert's opinion upon Banneker. "There's your hold on him.... Quit? No danger. New York's in his blood. He's in love with life, puppy-love; his clubs, his theater first-nights, his invitations to big houses which he seldom accepts, big people coming to his House with Three Eyes. And, of course, his sense of power in the paper. No; he won't quit. How could he? He'll compromise."

"Do you figure him to be the compromising sort?" asked Marrineal doubtfully.

"He isn't the journalistic Puritan that he lets on to be. Look at that Harvey Wheelwright editorial," pointed out the acute Ives. "He don't believe what he wrote about Wheelwright; just did it for his own purposes. Well, if the oracle can work himself for his own purposes, others can work him when the time comes, if it's properly managed."

Marrineal shook his head. "If there's a weakness in him I haven't found it."

Ives put on a look of confidential assurance. "Be sure it's there. Only it isn't of the ordinary kind. Banneker is pretty big in his way. No," he pursued thoughtfully; "it isn't women, and it isn't Wall Street, and it isn't drink; it isn't even money, in the usual sense. But it's something. By the way, did I tell you that I'd found an acquaintance from the desert where Banneker hails from?"

"No." Marrineal's tone subtly indicated that he should have been told at once. That sort of thing was, indeed, the basis on which Ives drew a considerable stipend from his patron's private purse, as "personal representative of Mr. Marrineal" for purposes unspecified.

"A railroad man. From what he tells me there was some sort of love-affair there. A girl who materialized from nowhere and spent two weeks, mostly with the romantic station-agent. Might have been a princess in exile, by my informant, who saw her twice. More likely some cheap little skate of a movie actress on a bust."

"A station-agent's taste in women friends—" began Marrineal, and forbore unnecessarily to finish.

"Possibly it has improved. Or—well, at any rate, there was something there. My railroad man thinks the affair drove Banneker out of his job. The fact of his being woman-proof here points to its having been serious."

"There was a girl out there about that time visiting Camilla Van Arsdale," remarked Marrineal carelessly; "a New York girl. One of the same general set. Miss Van Arsdale used to be a New Yorker and rather a distinguished one."

Too much master of his devious craft to betray discomfiture over another's superior knowledge of a subject which he had tried to make his own, Ely Ives remarked:

"Then she was probably the real thing. The princess on vacation. You don't know who she was, I suppose," he added tentatively.

Marrineal did not answer, thereby giving his factotum uncomfortably to reflect that he really must not expect payment for information and the information also.

"I guess he'll bear watching." Ives wound up with his favorite philosophy.

It was a few days after this that, by a special interposition of kindly chance, Ives, having returned from a trip out of town, saw Banneker and Io breakfasting in the station restaurant. To Marrineal he said nothing of this at the time; nor, indeed, to any one else. But later he took it to a very private market of his own, the breakfast-room of a sunny and secluded house far uptown, where lived, in an aroma of the domestic virtues, a benevolent-looking old gentleman who combined the attributes of the ferret, the leech, and the vulture in his capacity as editor of that famous weekly publication, The Searchlight. Ives did not sell in that mart; he traded for other information. This time he wanted something about Judge Willis Enderby, for he was far enough on the inside politically to see in him a looming figure which might stand in the way of certain projects, unannounced as yet, but tenderly nurtured in the ambitious breast of Tertius C. Marrineal. From the gently smiling patriarch he received as much of the unwritten records as that authority deemed it expedient to give him, together with an admonition, thrown in for good measure.

"Dangerous, my young friend! Dangerous!"

The passionate and patient collector thought it highly probable that Willis Enderby would be dangerous game. Certainly he did not intend to hunt in those fields, unless he could contrive a weapon of overwhelming caliber.

Ely Ives's analysis of Banneker's situation was in a measure responsible for Marrineal's proposition of the new deal to his editor.

"He has accepted it," the owner told his purveyor of information. "But the real fight is to come."

"Over the policy of the editorial page," opined Ives.

"Yes. This is only a truce."

As a truce Banneker also regarded it. He had no desire to break it. Nor, after it was established, did Marrineal make any overt attempt to interfere with his conduct of his column.

After awaiting gage of battle from his employer, in vain, Banneker decided to leave the issue to chance. Surely he was not surrendering any principle, since he continued to write as he chose upon whatever topics he selected. Time enough to fight when there should be urged upon him either one of the cardinal sins of journalism, the suppressio veri or the suggestio falsi, which he had more than once excoriated in other papers, to the pious horror of the hush-birds of the craft who had chattered and cheeped accusations of "fouling one's own nest."

Opportunity was not lacking to Marrineal for objections to a policy which made powerful enemies for the paper; Banneker, once assured of his following, had hit out right and left. From being a weak-kneed and rather apologetic defender of the "common people," The Patriot had become, logically, under Banneker's vigorous and outspoken policy, a proponent of the side of labor against capital. It had hotly supported two important and righteous local strikes and been the chief agent in winning one. With equal fervor it had advocated a third strike whose justice was at best dubious and had made itself anathema, though the strike was lost, to an industrial group which was honestly striving to live up to honorable standards. It had offended a powerful ring of bankers and for a time embarrassed Marrineal in his loans. It had threatened editorial reprisals upon a combination of those feared and arrogant advertisers, the department stores, for endeavoring, with signal lack of success, to procure the suppression of certain market news. It became known as independent, honest, unafraid, radical (in Wall Street circles "socialistic" or even "anarchistic"), and, to the profession, as dangerous to provoke. Advertisers were, from time to time, alienated; public men, often of The Patriot's own trend of thought, opposed. Commercial associations even passed resolutions, until Banneker took to publishing them with such comment as seemed to him good and appropriate. Marrineal uttered no protest, though the unlucky Haring beat his elegantly waistcoated breast and uttered profane if subdued threats of resigning, which were for effect only; for The Patriot's circulation continued to grow and the fact to which every advertising expert clings as to the one solid hope in a vaporous calling, is that advertising follows circulation.

Seldom did Banneker see his employer in the office, but Marrineal often came to the Saturday nights of The House With Three Eyes, which had already attained the fame of a local institution. As the numbers drawn to it increased, it closed its welcoming orbs earlier and earlier, and, once they were darkened, there was admittance only for the chosen few.

It was a first Saturday in October, New York's homing month for its indigenous social birds and butterflies, when The House triply blinked itself into darkness at the untimely hour of eleven-forty-five. There was the usual heterogeneous crowd there, alike in one particular alone, that every guest represented, if not necessarily distinction, at least achievement in his own line. Judge Willis Enderby, many times invited, had for the first time come. At five minutes after midnight, the incorruptible doorkeeper sent an urgent message requesting Mr. Banneker's personal attention to a party who declined politely but firmly to be turned away. The host, answering the summons, found Io. She held out both hands to him.

"Say you're glad to see me," she said imperatively.

"Light up the three eyes," Banneker ordered the doorman. "Are you answered?" he said to Io.

"Ah, that's very pretty," she approved. "It means 'welcome,' doesn't it?"

"Welcome," he assented.

"Then Herbert and Esther can come in, can't they? They're waiting in the car for me to be rejected in disgrace. They've even bet on it."

"They lose," answered Banneker with finality.

"And you forgive me for cajoling your big, black Cerberus, because it's my first visit this year, and if I'm not nicely treated I'll never come again."

"Your welcome includes full amnesty."

"Then if you'll let me have one of my hands back—it doesn't matter which one, really—I'll signal the others to come in."

Which, accordingly, she did. Banneker greeted Esther Forbes and Cressey, and waited for the trio until they came down. There was a stir as they entered. There was usually a stir in any room which Io entered. She had that quality of sending waves across the most placid of social pools. Willis Enderby was one of the first to greet her, a quick irradiation of pleasure relieving the austere beauty of his face.

"I thought the castle was closed," he wondered. "How did you cross the inviolable barriers?"

"I had the magic password," smiled Io.

"Youth? Beauty? Or just audacity?"

"Your Honor is pleased to flatter," she returned, drooping her eyes at him with a purposefully artificial effect. From the time when she was a child of four she had carried on a violent and highly appreciated flirtation with "Cousin Billy," being the only person in the world who employed the diminutive of his name.

"You knew Banneker before? But, of course. Everybody knows Banneker."

"It's quite wonderful, isn't it! He never makes an effort, I'm told. People just come to him. Where did you meet him?"

Enderby told her. "We're allies, in a way. Though sometimes he is against us. He's doing yeoman work in this reform mayoralty campaign. If we elect Robert Laird, as I think we shall, it will be chiefly due to The Patriot's editorials."

"Then you have confidence in Mr. Banneker?" she asked quickly.

"Well—in a way, I have," he returned hesitantly.

"But with reservations," she interpreted. "What are they?"

"One, only, but a big one. The Patriot itself. You see, Io, The Patriot is another matter."

"Why is it another matter?"

"Well, there's Marrineal, for example."

"I don't know Mr. Marrineal. Evidently you don't trust him."

"I trust nobody," disclosed the lawyer, a little sternly, "who is represented by what The Patriot is and does, whether it be Marrineal, Banneker, or another." His glance, wandering about the room, fell on Russell Edmonds, seated in a corner talking with the Great Gaines. "Unless it be Edmonds over there," he qualified. "All his life he has fought me as a corporation lawyer; yet I have the queer feeling that I could trust the inmost secret of my life to his honor. Probably I'm an old fool, eh?"

Io devoted a moment's study to the lined and worn face of the veteran. "No. I think you're right," she pronounced.

"In any case, he isn't responsible for The Patriot. He can't help it."

"Don't be so cryptic, Cousin Billy. Can't help what? What is wrong with the paper?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"But I want to understand," said imperious Io.

"As a basis to understanding, you'd have to read the paper."

"I have. Everyday. All of it."

He gave her a quick, reckoning look which she sustained with a slight deepening of color. "The advertisements, too?" She nodded. "What do you think of them?"

"Some of them are too disgusting to discuss."

"Did it occur to you to compare them with the lofty standards of our young friend's editorials?"

"What has he to do with the advertisements?" she countered.

"Assume, for the sake of the argument, that he has nothing to do with them. You may have noticed a recent editorial against race-track gambling, with the suicide of a young bank messenger who had robbed his employer to pay his losses as text."

"Well? Surely that kind of editorial makes for good."

"Being counsel for that bank, I happen to know the circumstances of the suicide. The boy had pinned his faith to one of the race-track tipsters who advertise in The Patriot to furnish a list of sure winners for so much a week."

"Do you suppose that Mr. Banneker knew that?"

"Probably not. But he knows that his paper takes money for publishing those vicious advertisements."

"Suppose he couldn't help it?"

"Probably he can't."

"Well, what would you have him do? Stop writing the editorials? I think it is evidence of his courage that he should dare to attack the evils which his own paper fosters."

"That's one view of it, certainly," replied Enderby dryly. "A convenient view. But there are other details. Banneker is an ardent advocate of abstinence, 'Down with the Demon Rum!' The columns of The Patriot reek with whiskey ads. The same with tobacco."

"But, Cousin Billy, you don't believe that a newspaper should shut out liquor and tobacco advertisements, do you?"

The lawyer smiled patiently. "Come back on the track, Io," he invited. "That isn't the point. If a newspaper preaches the harm in these habits, it shouldn't accept money for exploiting them. Look further. What of the loan-shark offers, and the blue-sky stock propositions, and the damnable promises of the consumption and cancer quacks? You can't turn a page of The Patriot without stumbling on them. There's a smell of death about that money."

"Don't all the newspapers publish the same kind of advertisements?" argued the girl.

"Certainly not. Some won't publish an advertisement without being satisfied of its good faith. Others discriminate less carefully. But there are few as bad as The Patriot."

"If Mr. Banneker were your client, would you advise him to resign?" she asked shrewdly.

Enderby winced and chuckled simultaneously. "Probably not. It is doubtful whether he could find another rostrum of equal influence. And his influence is mainly for good. But since you seem to be interested in newspapers, Io"—he gave her another of his keen glances—"from The Patriot you can make a diagnosis of the disease from which modern journalism is suffering. A deep-seated, pervasive insincerity. At its worst, it is open, shameless hypocrisy. The public feels it, but is too lacking in analytical sense to comprehend it. Hence the unformulated, instinctive, universal distrust of the press. 'I never believe anything I read in the papers.' Of course, that is both false and silly. But the feeling is there; and it has to be reckoned with one day. From this arises an injustice, that the few papers which are really upright, honest, and faithful to their own standards, are tainted in the public mind with the double-dealing of the others. Such as The Patriot."

"You use The Patriot for your purposes," Io pointed out.

"When it stands for what I believe right. I only wish I could trust it."

"Then you really feel that you can't trust Mr. Banneker?"

"Ah; we're back to that!" thought Enderby with uneasiness. Aloud he said: "It's a very pretty problem whether a writer who shares the profits of a hypocritical and dishonest policy can maintain his own professional independence and virtue. I gravely doubt it."

"I don't," said Io, and there was pride in her avowal.

"My dear," said the Judge gravely, "what does it all mean? Are you letting yourself become interested in Errol Banneker?"

Io raised clear and steady eyes to the concerned regard of her old friend. "If I ever marry again, I shall marry him."

"You're not going to divorce poor Delavan?" asked the other quickly.

"No. I shall play the game through," was the quiet reply.

For a space Willis Enderby sat thinking. "Does Banneker know your—your intentions?"

"No."

"You mustn't let him, Io."

"He won't know the intention. He may know the—the feeling back of it." A slow and glorious flush rose in her face, making her eyes starry. "I don't know that I can keep it from him, Cousin Billy. I don't even know that I want to. I'm an honest sort of idiot, you know."

"God grant that he may prove as honest!" he half whispered.

Presently Banneker, bearing a glass of champagne and some pate sandwiches for Io, supplanted the lawyer.

"Are you the devotee of toil that common report believes, Ban?" she asked him lazily. "They say that you write editorials with one hand and welcome your guests with the other."

"Not quite that," he answered. "To-night I'm not thinking of work. I'm not thinking of anything but you. It's very wonderful, your being here."

"But I want you to think of work. I want to see you in the very act. Won't you write an editorial for me?"

He shook his head. "This late? That would be cruelty to my secretary."

"I'll take it down for you. I'm fairly fast on the typewriter."

"Will you give me the subject, too?"

"No more than fair," she admitted. "What shall it be? It ought to be something with memories in it. Books? Poetry?" she groped. "I've got it! Your oldest, favorite book. Have you forgotten?"

"The Sears-Roebuck catalogue? I get a copy every season, to renew the old thrill."

"What a romanticist you are!" said she softly. "Couldn't you write an editorial about it?"

"Couldn't I? Try me. Come up to the den."

He led the way to the remote austerities of the work-room. From a shelf he took down the fat, ornate pamphlet, now much increased in bulk over its prototype of the earlier years. With random finger he parted the leaves, here, there, again and still again, seeking auguries.

"Ready?" he said. "Now, I shut my eyes—and we're in the shack again—the clean air of desert spaces—the click of the transmitter in the office that I won't answer, being more importantly engaged—the faint fragrance of you permeating everything—youth—the unknown splendor of life—Now! Go!"

Of that editorial, composed upon the unpromising theme of mail-order merchandising, the Great Gaines afterward said that it was a kaleidoscopic panorama set moving to the harmonic undertones of a song of winds and waters, of passion and the inner meanings of life, as if Shelley had rhapsodized a catalogue into poetic being and glorious significance. He said it was foolish to edit a magazine when one couldn't trust a cheap newspaper not to come flaming forth into literature which turned one's most conscientious and aspiring efforts into tinsel. He also said "Damn!"

Io Welland (for it was Io Welland and not Io Eyre whom the soothsayer saw before him as he declaimed), instrument and inspiration of the achievement, said no word of direct praise. But as she wrote, her fingers felt as if they were dripping electric sparks. When, at the close, he asked, quite humbly, "Is that what you wanted?" she caught her breath on something like a sob.

"I'll give you a title," she said, recovering herself. "Call it 'If there were Dreams to Sell.'"

"Ah, that's good!" he cried. "My readers won't get it. Pinheads! They get nothing that isn't plain as the nose on their silly faces. Never mind. It's good for 'em to be puzzled once in a while. Teaches 'em their place.... I'll tell you who will understand it, though," he continued, and laughed queerly.

"All the people who really matter will."

"Some who matter a lot to The Patriot will. The local merchants who advertise with us. They'll be wild."

"Why?"

"They hate the mail-order houses with a deadly fear, because the cataloguers undersell them in a lot of lines. Won't Rome howl the day after this appears!"

"Tell me about the relation between advertising and policy, Ban," invited Io, and summarized Willis Enderby's views.

Banneker had formulated for his own use and comfort the fallacy which has since become standard for all journalists unwilling or unable to face the issue of their own responsibility to the public. He now gave it forth confidently.

"A newspaper, Io, is like a billboard. Any one has a right to hire it for purposes of exploiting and selling whatever he has to sell. In accepting the advertisement, provided it is legal and decent, the publisher accepts no more responsibility than the owner of the land on which a billboard stands. Advertising space is a free forum."

"But when it affects the editorial attitude—"

"That's the test," he put in quickly. "That's why I'm glad to print this editorial of ours. It's a declaration of independence."

"Yes," she acquiesced eagerly.

"If ever I use the power of my editorials for any cause that I don't believe in—yes, or for my own advantage or the advantage of my employer—that will be the beginning of surrender. But as long as I keep a free pen and speak as I believe for what I hold as right and against what I hold as wrong, I can afford to leave the advertising policy to those who control it. It isn't my responsibility.... It's an omen, Io; I was waiting for it. Marrineal and I are at a deadlock on the question of my control of the editorial page. This ought to furnish a fighting issue. I'm glad it came from you."

"Oh, but if it's going to make trouble for you, I shall be sorry. And I was going to propose that we write one every Saturday."

"Io!" he cried. "Does that mean—"

"It means that I shall become a regular attendant at Mr. Errol Banneker's famous Saturday nights. Don't ask me what more it means." She rose and delivered the typed sheets into his hands. "I—I don't know, myself. Take me back to the others, Ban."

To Banneker, wakened next morning to a life of new vigor and sweetness, the outcome of the mail-order editorial was worth not one troubled thought. All his mind was centered on Io.



CHAPTER VII

Explosions of a powerful and resonant nature followed the publication of the fantastic, imaginative, and delightful mail-order catalogue editorial. In none of these senses, except the first, did it appeal to the advertising managers of the various department stores. They looked upon it as an outrage, an affront, a deliberate slap in the face for an established, vested, and prodigal support of the newspaper press. What the devil did The Patriot mean by it; The Patriot which sorely needed just their class of reputable patronage, and, after sundry contortions of rate-cutting, truckling, and offers of news items to back the advertising, was beginning to get it? They asked themselves, and, failing of any satisfactory answer, they asked The Patriot in no uncertain terms. Receiving vague and pained replies, they even went to the length of holding a meeting and sending a committee to wait upon the desperate Haring, passing over the advertising manager who was a mere figurehead in The Patriot office.

Then began one of those scenes of bullying and browbeating to which every newspaper, not at once powerful and honest enough to command the fear and respect of its advertisers, is at some time subjected. Haring, the victim personifying the offending organ, was stretched upon the rack and put to the question. What explanation had he to offer of The Patriot's breach of faith?

He had none, had the miserable business manager. No one could regret it more than he. But, really, gentlemen, to call it a breach of faith—

What else was it? Wasn't the paper turning on its own advertisers?

Well; in a sense. But not—

But nothing! Wasn't it trying to undermine their legitimate business?

Not intentionally, Mr. Haring was (piteously) sure.

Intentionally be damned! Did he expect to carry their advertising on one page and ruin their business on another? Did he think they were putting money into The Patriot—a doubtful medium for their business, at best—to cut their own throats? They'd put it to him reasonably, now; who, after all, paid for the getting out of The Patriot? Wasn't it the advertisers?

Certainly, certainly, gentlemen. Granted.

Could the paper run a month, a fortnight, a week without advertising?

No; no! It couldn't. No newspaper could.

Then if the advertisers paid the paper's way, weren't they entitled to some say about it? Didn't it have a right to give 'em at least a fair show?

Indeed, gentlemen, if he, Haring, were in control of the paper—

Then, why; why the hell was a cub of an editor allowed to cut loose and jump their game that way? They could find other places to spend their money; yes, and get a better return for it. They'd see The Patriot, and so on, and so forth.

Mr. Haring understood their feelings, sympathized, even shared them. Unfortunately the editorial page was quite out of his province.

Whose province was it, then? Mr. Banneker's, eh? And to whom was Mr. Banneker responsible? Mr. Marrineal, alone? All right! They would see Mr. Marrineal.

Mr. Haring was sorry, but Mr. Marrineal was out of town. (Fiction.)

Well, in that case, Banneker. They'd trust themselves to show him which foot he got off on. They'd teach (two of them, in their stress of emotion, said "learn"; they were performing this in chorus) Banneker—

Oh, Mr. Banneker wasn't there, either. (Haring, very terrified, and having built up an early conception of the Wild West Banneker from the clean-up of the dock gang, beheld in his imagination dejected members of the committee issuing piecemeal from the doors and windows of the editorial office, the process being followed by an even more regrettable exodus of advertising from the pages of The Patriot.)

Striving to be at once explanatory and propitiatory to all and sundry, Haring was reduced to inarticulate, choking interjections and paralytic motions of the hands, when a member of the delegation, hitherto silent, spoke up.

He was the representative of McLean & Swazey, a college graduate of a type then new, though now much commoner, in the developing profession of advertising. He had read the peccant editorial with a genuine relish of its charm and skill, and had justly estimated it for what it was, an intellectual jeu d'esprit, the expression of a passing fancy for a tempting subject, not of a policy to be further pursued.

"Enough has been said, I think, to define our position," said he. "All that we need is some assurance that Mr. Banneker's wit and skill will not be turned again to the profit of our competitors who, by the way, do not advertise in The Patriot."

Haring eagerly gave the assurance. He would have given assurance of Banneker's head on a salver to be rid of these persecuting autocrats. They withdrew, leaving behind an atmosphere of threat and disaster, dark, inglorious clouds of which Haring trailed behind him when he entered the office of the owner with his countenance of woe. His postulate was that Mr. Marrineal should go to his marplot editor and duly to him lay down the law; no more offending of the valuable department-store advertisers. No; nor of any others. Or he, Haring (greatly daring), would do it himself.

Beside the sweating and agonizing business manager, Marrineal looked very cool and tolerant and mildly amused.

"If you did that, Mr. Haring, do you appreciate what the result would be? We should have another editorial worse than the first, as soon as Mr. Banneker could think it out. No; you leave this to me. I'll manage it."

His management took the negative form of a profound silence upon the explicit point. But on the following morning Banneker found upon his desk a complete analytical table showing the advertising revenue of the paper by classes, with a star over the department-store list, indicating a dated withdrawal of twenty-two thousand dollars a year. The date was of that day. Thus was Banneker enabled to figure out, by a simple process, the loss to himself of any class of advertising, or even small group in a class, dropping out of the paper. It was clever of Marrineal, he admitted to himself, and, in a way, disappointing. His proffered gage of battle had been refused, almost ignored. The issue was not to be joined when he was ready, but when Marrineal was ready, and on Marrineal's own ground. Very well, Banneker could be a good waiter. Meantime he had at least asserted his independence.

Io called him up by 'phone, avid of news of the editorial, and he was permitted to take her to luncheon and tell her all about it. In her opinion he had won a victory; established a position. Banneker was far less sanguine; he had come to entertain a considerable respect for Marrineal's capacity. And he had another and more immediate complication on his mind, which fact his companion, by some occult exercise of divination, perceived.

"What else is worrying you, Ban?" she asked.

Banneker did not want to talk about that. He wanted to talk about Io, about themselves. He said so. She shook her head.

"Tell me about the paper."

"Oh, just the usual complications. There's nothing to interest you in them."

"Everything," she maintained ardently.

Banneker caught his breath. Had she given him her lips, it could hardly have meant more—perhaps not meant so much as this tranquil assumption of her right to share in the major concerns of his life.

"If you've been reading the paper," he began, and waited for her silent nod before going on, "you know our attitude toward organized labor."

"Yes. You are for it when it is right and not always against it when it is wrong."

"One can't split hairs in a matter of editorial policy. I've made The Patriot practically the mouthpiece of labor in this city; much more so than the official organ, which has no influence and a small following. Just now I'm specially anxious to hold them in line for the mayoralty campaign. We've got to elect Robert Laird. Otherwise we'll have such an orgy of graft and rottenness as the city has never seen."

"Isn't the labor element for Laird?"

"It isn't against him, except that he is naturally regarded as a silk-stocking. The difficulty isn't politics. There's some new influence in local labor circles that is working against me; against The Patriot. I think it's a fellow named McClintick, a new man from the West."

"Perhaps he wants to be bought off."

"You're thinking of the old style of labor leader," returned Banneker. "It isn't as simple as that. No; from what I hear, he's a fanatic. And he has great influence."

"Get hold of him and talk it out with him," advised Io.

"I intend to." He brooded for a moment. "There isn't a man in New York," he said fretfully, "that has stood for the interests of the masses and against the power of money as I have. Why, Io, before we cut loose in The Patriot, a banker or a railroad president was sacrosanct. His words were received with awe. Wall Street was the holy of holies, not to be profaned by the slightest hint of impiety. Well, we've changed all that! Not I, alone. Our cartoons have done more than the editorials. Every other paper in town has had to follow our lead. Even The Ledger."

"I like The Ledger," declared Io.

"Why?"

"I don't know. It has a sort of dignity; the dignity of self-respect."

"Hasn't The Patriot?" demanded the jealous Banneker.

"Not a bit," she answered frankly, "except for your editorials. They have the dignity of good workmanship, and honesty, and courage, even when you're wrong."

"Are we so often wrong, Io?" he said wistfully.

"Dear boy, you can't expect a girl, brought up as I have been, to believe that society is upside down, and would be better if it were tipped over the other way and run by a lot of hod-carriers and ditch-diggers and cooks. Can you, now?"

"Of course not. Nor is that what I advocate. I'm for the under dog. For fair play. So are you, aren't you? I saw your name on the Committee List of the Consumers' League, dealing with conditions in the department stores."

"That's different," she said. "Those girls haven't a chance in some of the shops. They're brutalized. The stores don't even pretend to obey the laws. We are trying to work out some sort of organization, now, for them."

"Yet you're hostile to organized labor! Who shall ever understand the feminine mind! Some day you'll be coming to us for help."

"Very likely. It must be a curious sensation, Ban, to have the consciousness of the power that you wield, and to be responsible to nobody on earth."

"To the public that reads us," he corrected.

"Not a real responsibility. There is no authority over you; no appeal from your judgments. Hasn't that something to do with people's dislike and distrust of the newspapers; the sense that so much irresponsible power is wrong?"

"Yet," he said, "any kind of censorship is worse than the evil it remedies. I've never shown you my creed, have I?"

His manner was half jocular; there was a smile on his lips, but his eyes seemed to look beyond the petty troubles and problems of his craft to a final and firm verity.

"Tell me," she bade him.

He drew his watch out and opened the back. For a moment she thought, with confused emotions, that she would see there a picture of herself of which he might have possessed himself somewhere. She closed her eyes momentarily against the fear of that anti-climax. When she opened them, it was to read, in a clear, fine print those high and sure words of Milton's noblest message:

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.

Twice she read the pregnant message.

"I have it," said she gravely. "To keep—for always."

"Some day I'll put it at the head of The Patriot."

"Why not now?"

"Not ready. I want to be surer; absolutely sure."

"I'm sure," she declared superbly; "of you."

"You make me sure of myself, Io. But there's Marrineal."

"Yes; there's Marrineal. You must have a paper of your own, mustn't you, Ban, eventually?"

"Perhaps. If I ever get enough money to own it absolutely."

"Only four years ago," she murmured, with apparent irrelevancy. "And now—"

"When shall I see you again?" he asked anxiously as she rose. "Are you coming Saturday night?"

"Of course," said Io.

Through the agency of Russell Edmonds, McClintick, the labor leader, came to see Banneker. He was a stooping giant with a deep, melancholy voice, and his attitude toward The Patriot was one of distrustful reticence. Genuine ardor has, however, a warming influence. McClintick's silence melted by degrees, not into confidence but, surprisingly, into indignation, directed upon all the "capitalistic press" in general, but in particular against The Patriot. Why single out The Patriot, specially, Banneker asked.

"Hypocrite," muttered the giant.

At length the reason came out, under pressure: The Patriot had been (in the words of the labor man) making a big row over the arrest of certain labor organizers, in one of the recurrent outbreaks against the Steel Trust, opposed by that organization's systematic and tyrannous method of oppression. So far, so good. But why hadn't the paper said a word about the murder of strikers' wives and children out at the Veridian Lumber Company's mills in Oregon; an outrage far surpassing anything ever laid to the account of the Steel Trust? Simple reason, answered Banneker; there had been no news of it over the wires. No; of course there hadn't. The Amalgamated Wire Association (another tool of capitalism) had suppressed it; wouldn't let any strike stuff get on the wires that it could keep off. Then how, asked Banneker, could it be expected—? McClintick interrupted in his voice of controlled passion; had Mr. Banneker ever heard of the Chicago Transcript (naming the leading morning paper); had he ever read it? Well, The Transcript—which, he, McClintick, hated strongly as an organ of money—nevertheless did honestly gather and publish news, as he was constrained huskily to admit. It had the Veridian story; was still running it from time to time. Therefore, if Mr. Banneker was interested, on behalf of The Patriot—

Certainly, The Patriot was interested; would obtain and publish the story in full, if it was as Mr. McClintick represented, with due editorial comment.

"Will it?" grumbled McClintick, gave his hat a look of mingled hope and skepticism, put it on, and went away.

"Now, what's wrong with that chap's mental digestion?" Banneker inquired of Edmonds, who had sat quiet throughout the interview. "What is he holding back?"

"Plenty," returned the veteran in a tone which might have served for echo of the labor man's gloom.

"Do you know the Veridian story?"

"Yes. I've just checked it up."

"What's the milk in that cocoanut?"

"Sour!" said Edmonds with such energy that Banneker turned to look at him direct. "The principal owner of Veridian is named Marrineal.... Where you going, Ban?"

"To see the principal owner of the name," said Banneker grimly.

The quest took him to the big house on upper Fifth Avenue. Marrineal heard his editorial writer with impassive face.

"So the story has got here," he remarked.

"Yes. Do you own Veridian?"

"No."

Hope rose within Banneker. "You don't?"

"My mother does. She's in Europe. A rather innocent old person. The innocence of age, perhaps. Quite old." All of this in a perfectly tranquil voice.

"Have you seen The Chicago Transcript? It's an ugly story."

"Very. I've sent a man out to the camp. There won't be any more shootings."

"It comes rather late. I've told McClintick, the labor man who comes from Wyoming, that we'll carry the story, if we verify it."

Marrineal raised his eyes slowly to Banneker's stern face. "Have you?" he said coolly. "Now, as to the mayoralty campaign; what do you think of running a page feature of Laird's reforms, as President of the Board, tracing each one down to its effect and showing what any backward step would mean? By the way, Laird is going to be pretty heavily obligated to The Patriot if he's elected."

For half an hour they talked politics, nothing else.

At the office Edmonds was making a dossier of the Veridian reports. It was ready when Banneker returned.

"Let it wait," said Banneker.

Prudence ordained that he should throw the troublous stuff into the waste-basket. He wondered if he was becoming prudent, as another man might wonder whether he was becoming old. At any rate, he would make no decision until he had talked it over with Io. Not only did he feel instinctive confidence in her sense of fair play; but also this relationship of interest in his affairs, established by her, was the opportunity of his closest approach; an intimacy of spirit assured and subtle. He hoped that she would come early on Saturday evening.

But she did not. Some dinner party had claimed her, and it was after eleven when she arrived with Archie Densmore. At once Banneker took her aside and laid before her the whole matter.

"Poor Ban!" she said softly. "It isn't so simple, having power to play with, is it?"

"But how am I to handle this?"

"The mills belong to Mr. Marrineal's mother, you said?"

"Practically they do."

"And she is—?"

"A silly and vain old fool."

"Is that his opinion of her?"

"Necessarily. But he's fond of her."

"Will he really try to remedy conditions, do you think?"

"Oh, yes. So far as that goes."

"Then I'd drop it."

"Print nothing at all?"

"Not a word."

"That isn't what I expected from you. Why do you advise it?"

"Loyalty."

"The paralytic virtue," said Banneker with such bitterness of conviction that Io answered:

"I suppose you don't mean that to be simply clever."

"It's true, isn't it?"

"There's a measure of truth in it. But, Ban, you can't use Mr. Marrineal's own paper to expose conditions in Mr. Marrineal's mother's mills. If he'd even directed you to hold off—"

"That's his infernal cleverness. I'd have told him to go to the devil."

"And resigned?"

"Of course."

"You can resign now," she pointed out. "But I think you'd be foolish. You can do such big things. You are doing such big things with The Patriot. Cousin Billy Enderby says that if Laird is elected it will be your doing. Where else could you find such opportunity?"

"Tell me this, Io," he said, after a moment of heavy-browed brooding very unlike his usual blithe certainty of bearing. "Suppose that lumber property were my own, and this thing had broken out."

"Oh, I'd say to print it, every word," she answered promptly. "Or"—she spoke very slowly and with a tremor of color flickering in her cheeks—"if it were mine, I'd tell you to print it."

He looked up with a transfigured face. His hand fell on hers, in the covert of the little shelter of plants behind which they sat. "Do you realize what that implies?" he questioned.

"Perfectly," she answered in her clear undertone.

He bent over to her hand, which turned, soft palm up, to meet his lips. She whispered a warning and he raised his head quickly. Ely Ives had passed near by.

"Marrineal's familiar," said Banneker. "I wonder how he got here. Certainly I didn't ask him.... Very well, Io. I'll compromise. But ... I don't think I'll put that quotation from the Areopagitica at the head of my column. That will have to wait. Perhaps it will have to wait until I—we get a paper of our own."

"Poor Ban!" whispered Io.



CHAPTER VIII

Once a month Marrineal gave a bachelor dinner of Lucullan repute. The company, though much smaller than the gatherings at The House With Three Eyes, covered a broader and looser social range. Having declined several of his employer's invitations in succession on the well-justified plea of work, Banneker felt it incumbent upon him to attend one of these events, and accordingly found himself in a private dining-room of the choicest of restaurants, tabled with a curiously assorted group of financiers, editors, actors, a small selection of the more raffish members of The Retreat including Delavan Eyre; Ely Ives; an elderly Jewish lawyer of unsavory reputation, enormous income, and real and delicate scholarship; Herbert Cressey, a pair of the season's racing-kings, an eminent art connoisseur, and a smattering of men-about-town. Seated between the lawyer and one of the racing-men, Banneker, as the dinner progressed, found himself watching Delavan Eyre, opposite, who was drinking with sustained intensity, but without apparent effect upon his debonair bearing. Banneker thought to read a haunting fear in his eyes, and was cogitating upon what it might portend, when his attention was distracted by Ely Ives, who had been requested (as he announced) to exhibit his small skill at some minor sleight-of-hand tricks. The skill, far from justifying its possessor's modest estimate, was so unusual as to provoke expressions of admiration from Mr. Stecklin, the lawyer on Banneker's right.

"Oh, yes; hypnotism too," said Ely Ives briskly, after twenty minutes of legerdemain. "Child's play."

"Now, who suggested hypnotism?" murmured Stecklin in his limpid and confidential undertone, close to Banneker's ear. "You? I? No! No one, I think."

So Banneker thought, and was the more interested in Ives's procedure. Though the drinking had been heavy at his end of the table, he seemed quite unaffected, was now tripping from man to man, peering into the eyes of each, "to find an appropriate subject," as he said. Delavan Eyre roused himself out of a semi-torpor as the wiry little prowler stared down at him.

"What's the special idea?" he demanded.

"Just a bit of mesmerism," explained the other. "I'll try you for a subject. If you'll stand up, feet apart, eyes closed, I'll hypnotize you so that you'll fall over at a movement."

"You can't do it," retorted Eyre.

"For a bet," Ives came back.

"A hundred?"

"Double it if you like."

"You're on." Eyre, slowly swallowing the last of a brandy-and-soda, rose, reaching into his pocket.

"Not necessary, between gentlemen," said Ely Ives with a gesture just a little too suave.

"Ah, yes," muttered the lawyer at Banneker's side. "Between gentlemen. Eck-xactly."

Pursuant to instructions, Eyre stood with his feet a few inches apart and his eyes closed. "At the word, you bring your heels together. Click! And you keep your balance. If you can. For the two hundred. Any one else want in?... No?... Ready, Mr. Eyre. Now! Hep!"

The heels clicked, but with a stuttering, weak impact. Eyre, bulky and powerful, staggered, toppled to the left.

"Hold up there!" His neighbor propped him, and was clutched in his grasp.

"Hands off!" said Eyre thickly. "Sorry, Banks! Let me try that again. Oh, the bet's yours, Mr. Ives," he added, as that keen gambler began to enter a protest. "Send you a check in the morning—if that'll be all right."

Herbert Cressey, hand in pocket, was at his side instantly. "Pay him now, Del," he said in a tone which did not conceal his contemptuous estimate of Ives. "Here's money, if you haven't it."

"No; no! A check will be quite all right," protested Ives. "At your convenience."

Others gathered about, curious and interested. Banneker, puzzled by a vague suspicion which he sought to formulate, was aware of a low runnel of commentary at his ear.

"Very curious. Shrewd; yes. A clever fellow.... Sad, too."

"Sad?" He turned sharply on the lawyer of unsavory suits. "What is sad about it? A fool and his money! Is that tragedy?"

"Comedy, my friend. Always comedy. This also, perhaps. But grim.... Our friend there who is so clever of hand and eye; he is not perhaps a medical man?"

"Yes; he is. What connection—Good God!" he cried, as a flood of memory suddenly poured light upon a dark spot in some of his forgotten reading.

"Ah? You know? Yes; I have had such a case in my legal practice. Died of an—an error. He made a mistake—in a bottle, which he purchased for that purpose. But this one—he elects to live and face it—"

"Does he know it?"

"Obviously. One can see the dread in his eyes. Some of his friends know it—and his family, I am told. But he does not know this interesting little experiment of our friend. Profitable, too, eh? One wonders how he came to suspect. A medical man, though; a keen eye. Of course."

"Damn him," said Banneker quietly. "General paralysis?"

"Eck-xactly. Twelve, maybe fifteen years ago, a little recklessness. A little overheating of the blood. Perhaps after a dinner like this. The poison lies dormant; a snake asleep. Harms no one. Not himself; not another. Until—something here"—he tapped the thick black curls over the base of his brain. "All that ruddy strength, that lusty good-humor passing on courageously—for he is a brave man, Eyre—to slow torture and—and the end. Grim, eh?"

Banneker reached for a drink. "How long?" he asked.

"As for that, he is very strong. It might be slow. One prays not."

"At any rate, that little reptile, Ives, shan't have his profit of it." Banneker rose and, disdaining even the diplomacy of an excuse, drew Ely Ives aside.

"That bet of yours was a joke, Ives," he prescribed.

Ives studied him in silence, wishing that he had watched, through the dinner, how much drink he took.

"A joke?" he asked coolly. "I don't understand you."

"Try," advised Banneker with earnestness. "I happen to have read that luetic diagnosis, myself. A joke, Ives, so far as the two hundred goes."

"What do you expect me to do?" asked the other.

"Tear up the check, when it comes. Make what explanation your ingenuity can devise. That's your affair. But don't cash that check, Ives. For if you do—I dislike to threaten—"

"You don't need to threaten me, Mr. Banneker," interrupted Ives eagerly. "If you think it wasn't a fair bet, your word is enough for me. That goes. It's off. I think just that of you. I'm a friend of yours, as I hope to prove to you some day. I don't lay this up against you; not for a minute."

Not trusting himself to make answer to this proffer, Banneker turned away to find his host and make his adieus. As he left, he saw Delavan Eyre, flushed but composed, sipping a liqueur and listening with courteous appearance of appreciation to a vapid and slobbering story of one of the racing magnates. A debauchee, a cumberer of the earth, useless, selfish, scandalous of life—and Banneker, looking at him with pitiful eyes, paid his unstinted tribute to the calm and high courage of the man.

Walking slowly home in the cool air, Banneker gave thanks for a drink-proof head. He had need of it; he wanted to think and think clearly. How did this shocking revelation about Eyre affect his own hopes of Io? That she would stand by her husband through his ordeal Banneker never doubted for an instant. Her pride of fair play would compel her to that. It came to his mind that this was her other and secret reason for not divorcing Eyre; for maintaining still the outward form of a marriage which had ceased to exist long before. For a lesser woman, he realized with a thrill, it would have been a reason for divorcing him.... Well, here was a barrier, indeed, against which he was helpless. Opposed by a loyalty such as Io's he could only be silent and wait.

In the next few weeks she was very good to him. Not only did she lunch with him several times, but she came to the Saturday nights of The House With Three Eyes, sometimes with Archie Densmore alone, more often with a group of her own set, after a dinner or a theater party. Always she made opportunity for a little talk apart with her host; talks which any one might have heard, for they were concerned almost exclusively with the affairs of The Patriot, especially in its relation to the mayoralty campaign now coming to a close. Yet, impersonal though the discussions might be, Banneker took from them a sense of ever-increasing intimacy and communion, if it were only from a sudden, betraying quiver in her voice, an involuntary, unconscious look from the shadowed eyes. Whatever of resentment he had cherished for her earlier desertion was now dissipated; he was wholly hers, content, despite all his passionate longing for her, with what she chose to give. In her own time she would be generous, as she was brave and honorable....

She was warmly interested in the election of Robert Laird to the mayoralty, partly because she knew him personally, partly because the younger element of society had rather "gone in for politics" that year, on the reform side. Banneker had to admit to her, as the day drew close, that the issue was doubtful. Though The Patriot's fervid support had been a great asset to the cause, it was now, for the moment, a liability to the extent that it was being fiercely denounced in the Socialist organ, The Summons, as treasonable to the interests of the working-classes. The Summons charged hypocrisy, citing the case of the Veridian strike.

"That is McClintick?" asked Io.

"He's back of it, naturally. But The Summons has been waiting its chance. Jealous of our influence in the field it's trying to cultivate."

"McClintick is right," remarked Io thoughtfully.

Banneker laughed. "Oh, Io! It's such a relief to get a clear view and an honest one from some one else. There's no one in the office except Russell Edmonds, and he's away now.... You think McClintick is right? So do I."

"But so are you. You had to do as you did about the story. If any one is to blame, it is Mr. Marrineal. Yet how can one blame him? He had to protect his mother. It's a fearfully complicated phenomenon, a newspaper, isn't it, Ban?"

"Io, the soul of man is simple and clear compared with the soul of a newspaper."

"If it has a soul."

"Of course it has. It's got to have. Otherwise what is it but a machine?"

"Which is The Patriot's; yours or Mr. Marrineal's? I can't," said Io quaintly, "quite see them coalescing."

"I wonder if Marrineal has a soul," mused Banneker.

"If he hasn't one of his own, let him keep his hands off yours!" said Io in a flash of feminine jealousy. "He's done enough already with his wretched mills. What shall you do about the attack in The Summons?"

"Ignore it. It would be difficult to answer. Besides, people easily forget."

"A dangerous creed, Ban. And a cynical one. I don't want you to be cynical."

"I never shall be again, unless—"

"Unless?" she prompted.

"It rests with you, Io," he said quietly.

At once she took flight. "Am I to be keeper of your spirit?" she protested. "It's bad enough to be your professional adviser. Why don't you invite a crowd of us down to get the election returns?" she suggested.

"Make up your party," assented Banneker. "Keep it small; say a dozen, and we can use my office."

On the fateful evening there duly appeared Io with a group of a dozen friends. From the first, it was a time of triumph. Laird took the lead and kept it. By midnight, the result was a certainty. In a balcony speech from his headquarters the victor had given generous recognition for his success to The Patriot, mentioning Banneker by name. When the report reached them Esther Forbes solemnly crowned the host with a wreath composed of the "flimsy" on which the rescript of the speech had come in.

"Skoal to Ban!" she cried. "Maker of kings and mayors and things. Skoal! As you're a viking or something of the sort, the Norse salutation is appropriate."

"It ought to be Danish to be accurate," he smiled.

"Well, that's a hardy, seafaring race," she chattered. "And that reminds me. Come on out to the South Seas with us."

"Charmed," he returned. "When do we start? To-morrow?"

"Oh, I'm not joking. You've certainly earned a vacation. And of course you needn't enlist for the whole six months if that is too long. Dad has let me have the yacht. There'll only be a dozen. Io's going along."

Banneker shot one startled, incredulous look at Io Eyre, and instantly commanded himself, to the point of controlling his voice to gayety as he replied:

"And who would tell the new mayor how he should run the city, if I deserted him? No, Esther, I'm afraid I'm chained to this desk. Ask me sometime when you're cruising as far as Coney Island."

Io sat silent, and with a set smile, listening to Herbert Cressey's account of an election row in the district where he was volunteer watcher. When the party broke up, she went home with Densmore without giving Banneker the chance of a word with her. It seemed to him that there was a mute plea for pardon in her face as she bade him good-night.

At noon next day she called him on the 'phone.

"Just to tell you that I'm coming as usual Saturday evening," she said.

"When do you leave on your cruise?" he asked.

"Not until next week. I'll tell you when I see you. Good-bye."

Never had Banneker seen Io in such difficult mood as she exhibited on the Saturday. She had come early to The House With Three Eyes, accompanied by Densmore who looked in just for one drink before going to a much-touted boxing-match in Jersey. Through the evening she deliberately avoided seeing Banneker alone for so much as the space of a query put and answered, dividing her attention between an enraptured master of the violin who had come after his concert, and an aged and bewildered inventor who, in a long career of secluded toil, had never beheld anything like this brilliant creature with her intelligent and quickening interest in what he had to tell her. Rivalry between the two geniuses inspired the musician to make an offer which he would hardly have granted to royalty itself.

"After a time, when zese chatterers are gon-away, I shall play for you. Is zere some one here who can accompany properly?"

Necessarily Io sent for Banneker to find out. Yes; young Mackey was coming a little later; he was a brilliant amateur and would be flattered at the opportunity. With a direct insistence difficult to deny, Banneker drew Io aside for a moment. Her eyes glinted dangerously as she faced him, alone for the moment, with the question that was the salute before the crossing of blades.

"Well?"

"Are you really going, Io?"

"Certainly. Why shouldn't I?"

"Say that, for one reason"—he smiled faintly, but resolutely—"The Patriot needs your guiding inspiration."

"All The Patriot's troubles are over. It's plain sailing now."

"What of The Patriot's editor?"

"Quite able to take care of himself."

Into his voice there suffused the first ring of anger that she had ever heard from him; cold and formidable. "That won't do, Io. Why?"

"Because I choose."

"A child's answer. Why?"

"Do you want to be flattered?" She raised to his, eyes that danced with an impish and perverse light. "Call it escape, if you wish."

"From me?"

"Or from myself. Wouldn't you like to think that I'm afraid of you?"

"I shouldn't like to think that you're afraid of anything."

"I'm not." But her tone was that of the defiance which seeks to encourage itself.

"I'd call it a desertion," he said steadily.

"Oh, no! You're secure. You need nothing but what you've got. Power, reputation, position, success. What more can heart desire?" she taunted.

"You."

She quivered under the blunt word, but rallied to say lightly: "Six months isn't long. Though I may stretch it to a year."

"It's too long for endurance."

"Oh, you'll do very well without me, Ban."

"Shall I? When am I to see you again before you go?"

Her raised eyebrows were like an affront. "Are we to see each other again? Of course, it would be polite of you to come to the train."

There was a controlled and dangerous gravity in his next question. "Io, have we quarreled?"

"How absurd! Of course not."

"Then—"

"If you knew how I dislike fruitless explanations!"

He rose at once. Io's strong and beautiful hands, which had been lying in her lap, suddenly interlocked, clenching close together. But her face disclosed nothing. The virtuoso, who had been hopefully hovering in the offing, bore down to take the vacated chair. He would have found the lovely young Mrs. Eyre distrait and irresponsive had he not been too happy babbling of his own triumphs to notice.

"Soon zey haf growed thin, zis crowd," said the violinist, who took pride in his mastery of idiom. "Zen, when zere remains but a small few, I play for you. You sit zere, in ze leetle garden of flowers." He indicated the secluded seat near the stairway, where she had sat with Ban on the occasion of her first visit to The House With Three Eyes. "Not too far; not too near. From zere you shall not see; but you shall think you hear ze stars make for you harmonies of ze high places."

Young Mackey, having arrived, commended himself to the condescending master by a meekly worshipful attitude. Barely a score of people remained in the great room. The word went about that they were in for one of those occasional treats which made The House With Three Eyes unique. The fortunate lingerers disposed themselves about the room. Io slipped into the nook designated for her. Banneker was somewhere in the background; her veiled glance could not discover where. The music began.

They played Tschaikowsky first, the tender and passionate "Melodie"; then a lilting measure from Debussy's "Faun," followed by a solemnly lovely Brahms arrangement devised by the virtuoso himself. At the dying-out of the applause, the violinist addressed himself to the nook where Io was no more than a vague, faerie figure to his eyes, misty through interlaced bloom and leafage.

"Now, Madame, I play you somezing of a American. Ver' beautiful, it is. Not for violin. For voice, contralto. I sing it to you—on ze G-string, which weep when it sing; weep for lost dreams. It is called 'Illusion,' ze song."

He raised his bow, and at the first bar Io's heart gave a quick, thick sob within her breast. It was the music which Camilla Van Arsdale had played that night when winds and forest leaves murmured the overtones; when earth and heaven were hushed to hear.

"Oh, Ban!" cried Io's spirit.

Noiseless and swift, Banneker, answering the call, bent over her. She whispered, softly, passionately, her lips hardly stirring the melody-thrilled air.

"How could I hurt you so! I'm going because I must; because I daren't stay. You can understand, Ban!"

The music died. "Yes," said Banneker. Then, "Don't go, Io!"

"I must. I'll—I'll see you before. When we're ourselves. We can't talk now. Not with this terrible music in our blood."

She rose and went forward to thank the player with such a light in her eyes and such a fervor in her words that he mentally added another to his list of conquests.

The party broke up. After that magic music, people wanted to be out of the light and the stir; to carry its pure passion forth into the dark places, to cherish and dream it over again.... Banneker sat before the broad fireplace in the laxity of a still grief. Io was going away from him. For a six-month. For a year. For an eternity. Going away from him, bearing his whole heart with her, as she had left him after the night on the river, left him to the searing memory of that mad, sweet cleavage of her lips to his, the passionate offer of her awakened womanhood in uttermost surrender of life at the roaring gates of death....

Footsteps, light, firm, unhesitant, approached across the broad floor from the hallway. Banneker sat rigid, incredulous, afraid to stir, as the sleeper fears to break the spell of a tenuous and lovely dream, until Io's voice spoke his name. He would have jumped to his feet, but the strong pressure of her hands on his shoulders restrained him.

"No. Stay as you are."

"I thought you had gone," he said thickly.

A great log toppled in the fireplace, showering its sparks in prodigal display.

"Do you remember our fire, on the river-bank?" said the voice of the girl, Io, across the years.

"While I live."

"Just you and I. Man and woman. Alone in the world. Sometimes I think it has always been so with us."

"We have no world of our own, Io," he said sadly.

"Heresy, Ban; heresy! Of course we have. An inner world. If we could forget—everything outside."

"I am not good at forgetting."

He felt her fingers, languid and tremulous, at his throat, her heart's strong throb against his shoulder as she bent, the sweet breath of her whisper stirring the hair at his temple:

"Try, Ban."

Her mouth closed down upon his, flower-sweet, petal-light, and was withdrawn. She leaned back, gazing at him from half-closed, inscrutable eyes.

"That's for good-bye, Io?" With all his self-control, he could not keep his voice steady.

"There have been too many good-byes between us," she murmured.

He lifted his head, attentive to a stir at the door, which immediately passed.

"I thought that was Archie, come after you."

"Archie isn't coming."

"Then I'll send for the car and take you home."

"Won't you understand, Ban? I'm not going home."



CHAPTER IX

Io Eyre was one of those women before whom Scandal seems to lose its teeth if not its tongue. She had always assumed the superb attitude toward the world in which she moved. "They say?—What do they say?—Let them say!" might have been her device, too genuinely expressive of her to be consciously contemptuous. Where another might have suffered in reputation by constant companionship with a man as brilliant, as conspicuous, as phenomenal of career as Errol Banneker, Io passed on her chosen way, serene and scatheless.

Tongues wagged, indeed; whispers spread; that was inevitable. But to this Io was impervious. When Banneker, troubled lest any breath should sully her reputation who was herself unsullied, in his mind, would have advocated caution, she refused to consent.

"Why should I skulk?" she said. "I'm not ashamed."

So they met and lunched or dined at the most conspicuous restaurants, defying Scandal, whereupon Scandal began to wonder whether, all things considered, there were anything more to it than one of those flirtations which, after a time of faithful adherence, become standardized into respectability and a sort of tolerant recognition. What, after all, is respectability but the brand of the formalist upon standardization?

With the distaste and effort which Ban always felt in mentioning her husband's name to Io, he asked her one day about any possible danger from Eyre.

"No," she said with assurance. "I owe Del nothing. That is understood between us."

"But if the tittle-tattle that must be going the rounds should come to his ears—"

"If the truth should come to his ears," she replied tranquilly, "it would make no difference."

Ban looked at her, hesitant to be convinced.

"Yes; it's so," she asseverated, nodding, "After his outbreak in Paris—it was on our wedding trip—I gave him a choice. I would either divorce him, or I would hold myself absolutely free of him so far as any claim, actual or moral, went. The one thing I undertook was that I would never involve his name in any open scandal."

"He hasn't been so particular," said Ban gloomily.

"Of late he has. Since I had Cousin Billy Enderby go to him about the dancer. I won't say he's run absolutely straight since. Poor Del! He can't, I suppose. But, at least, he's respected the bargain to the extent of being prudent. I shall respect mine to the same extent."

"Io," he burst out passionately, "there's only one thing in the world I really want; for you to be free of him absolutely."

She shook her head. "Oh, Ban' Can't you be content—with me? I've told you I am free of him. I'm not really his wife."

"No; you're mine," he declared with jealous intensity.

"Yes; I'm yours." Her voice trembled, thrilled. "You don't know yet how wholly I'm yours. Oh, it isn't that alone, Ban. But in spirit and thought. In the world of shadowed and lovely things that we made for ourselves long ago."

"But to have to endure this atmosphere of secrecy, of stealth, of danger to you," he fretted. "You could get your divorce."

"No; I can't. You don't understand."

"Perhaps I do understand," he said gently.

"About Del?" She drew a quick breath. "How could you?"

"Wholly through an accident. A medical man, a slimy little reptile, surprised his secret and inadvertently passed it on."

She leaned forward to him from her corner of the settee, all courage and truth. "I'm glad that you know, though I couldn't tell you, myself. You'll see now that I couldn't leave him to face it alone."

"No. You couldn't. If you did, it wouldn't be Io."

"Ah, and I love you for that, too," she whispered, her voice and eyes one caress to him. "I wonder how I ever made myself believe that I could get over loving you! Now, I've got to pay for my mistake. Ban, do you remember the 'Babbling Babson'? The imbecile who saw me from the train that day?"

"I remember every smallest thing in any way connected with you."

"I love to hear you say that. It makes up for the bad times, in between. The Babbler has turned up. He's been living abroad for a few years. I saw him at a tea last week."

"Did he say anything?"

"Yes. He tried to be coy and facetious. I snubbed him soundly. Perhaps it wasn't wise."

"Why shouldn't it be?"

"Well he used to have the reputation of writing on the sly for The Searchlight."

"That sewer-sheet! You don't think he'd dare do anything of the sort about us? Why, what would he have to go on?"

"What does The Searchlight have to go on in most of its lies, and hints, and innuendoes?"

"But, Io, even if it did publish—"

"It mustn't," she said. "Ban, if it did—it would make it impossible for us to go on as we have been. Don't you see that it would?"

He turned sallow under his ruddy skin. "Then I'll stop it, one way or another. I'll put the fear of God into that filthy old worm that runs the blackmail shop. The first thing is to find out, though, whether there's anything in it. I did hear a hint...." He lost himself in musings, trying to recall an occult remark which the obsequious Ely Ives had made to him sometime before. "And I know where I can do it," he ended.

To go to Ives for anything was heartily distasteful to him. But this was a necessity. He cautiously questioned the unofficial factotum of his employer. Had Ives heard anything of a projected attack on him in The Searchlight? Why, yes; Ives had (naturally, since it was he and not Babson who had furnished the material). In fact, he had an underground wire into the office of that weekly of spice and scurrility which might be tapped to oblige a friend.

Banneker winced at the characterization, but confessed that he would be appreciative of any information. In three days a galley proof of the paragraph was in his hands. It confirmed his angriest fears. Publication of it would smear Io's name with scandal, and, by consequence, direct the leering gaze of the world upon their love.

"What is this; blackmail?" he asked Ives.

"Might be."

"Who wrote it?"

"Reads like the old buzzard's own style."

"I'll go and see him," said Banneker, half to himself.

"You can go, but I don't think you'll see him." Ives set forth in detail the venerable editor's procedure as to troublesome callers. It was specific and curious. Foreseeing that he would probably have to fight with his opponent's weapons, Banneker sought out Russell Edmonds and asked for all the information regarding The Searchlight and its proprietor-editor in the veteran's possession. Edmonds had a fund of it.

"But it won't smoke him out," he said. "That skunk lives in a deep hole."

"If I can't smoke him out, I'll blast him out," declared Banneker, and set himself to the composition of an editorial which consumed the remainder of the working day.

With a typed copy in his pocket, he called, a little before noon, at the office of The Searchlight and sent in his card to Major Bussey. The Major was not in. When was he expected? As for that, there was no telling; he was quite irregular. Very well, Mr. Banneker would wait. Oh, that was quite useless; was it about something in the magazine; wouldn't one of the other editors do? Without awaiting an answer, the anemic and shrewd-faced office girl who put the questions disappeared, and presently returned, followed by a tailor-made woman of thirty-odd, with a delicate, secret-keeping mouth and heavy-lidded, deep-hued eyes, altogether a seductive figure. She smiled confidently up at Banneker.

"I've always wanted so much to meet you," she disclosed, giving him a quick, gentle hand pressure. "So has Major Bussey. Too bad he's out of town. Did you want to see him personally?"

"Quite personally." Banneker returned her smile with one even more friendly and confiding.

"Wouldn't I do? Come into my office, won't you? I represent him in some things."

"Not in this one, I hope," he replied, following her to an inner room. "It is about a paragraph not yet published, which might be misconstrued."

"Oh, I don't think any one could possibly misconstrue it," she retorted, with a flash of wicked mirth.

"You know the paragraph to which I refer, then."

"I wrote it."

Banneker regarded her with grave and appreciative urbanity. All was going precisely as Ely Ives had prognosticated; the denial of the presence of the editor; the appearance of this alluring brunette as whipping-girl to assume the burden of his offenses with the calm impunity of her sex and charm.

"Congratulations," he said. "It is very clever."

"It's quite true, isn't it?" she returned innocently.

"As authentic, let us say, as your authorship of the paragraph."

"You don't think I wrote it? What object should I have in trying to deceive you?"

"What, indeed! By the way, what is Major Bussey's price?"

"Oh, Mr. Banneker!" Was it sheer delight in deviltry, or amusement at his direct and unstrategic method that sparkled in her face. "You surely don't credit the silly stories of—well, blackmail, about us!"

"It might be money," he reflected. "But, on the whole, I think it's something else. Something he wants from The Patriot, perhaps. Immunity? Would that be it? Not that I mean, necessarily, to deal."

"What is your proposition?" she asked confidentially.

"How can I advance one when I don't know what your principal wants?"

"The paragraph was written in good faith," she asserted.

"And could be withdrawn in equal good faith?"

Her laugh was silvery clear. "Very possibly. Under proper representations."

"Then don't you think I'd better deal direct with the Major?"

She studied his face. "Yes," she began, and instantly refuted herself. "No. I don't trust you. There's trouble under that smooth smile of yours."

"But you're not afraid of me, surely," said Banneker. He had found out one important point; her manner when she said "Yes" indicated that the proprietor was in the building. Now he continued: "Are you?"

"I don't know. I think I am." There was a little catch in her breath. "I think you'd be dangerous to any woman."

Banneker, his eyes fixed on hers, played for time and a further lead with a banality. "You're pleased to flatter me."

"Aren't you pleased to be flattered?" she returned provocatively.

He put his hand on her wrist. She swayed to him with a slow, facile yielding. He caught her other wrist, and the grip of his two hands seemed to bite into the bone.

"So you're that kind, too, are you!" he sneered, holding her eyes as cruelly as he had clutched her wrists. "Keep quiet! Now, you're to do as I tell you."

(Ely Ives, in describing the watchwoman at the portals of scandal, had told him that she was susceptible to a properly timed bluff. "A woman she had slandered once stabbed her; since then you can get her nerve by a quick attack. Treat her rough.")

She stared at him, fearfully, half-hypnotized.

"Is that the door leading to Bussey's office? Don't speak! Nod."

Dumb and stricken, she obeyed.

"I'm going there. Don't you dare make a movement or a noise. If you do—I'll come back."

Shifting his grasp, he caught her up and with easy power tossed her upon a broad divan. From its springy surface she shot up, as it seemed to him, halfway to the ceiling, rigid and staring, a ludicrous simulacrum of a glassy-eyed doll. He heard the protesting "ping!" and "berr-rr-rr" of a broken spring as she fell back. The traverse of a narrow hallway and a turn through a half-open door took him into the presence of bearded benevolence making notes at a desk.

"How did you get here? And who the devil are you?" demanded the guiding genius of The Searchlight, looking up irritably. He raised his voice. "Con!" he called.

From a side room appeared a thick, heavy-shouldered man with a feral countenance, who slouched aggressively forward, as the intruder announced himself.

"My name is Banneker."

"Cheest!" hissed the thick bouncer in tones of dismay, and stopped short.

Turning, Banneker recognized him as one of the policemen whom his evidence had retired from the force in the wharf-gang investigation.

"Oh! Banneker," muttered the editor. His right hand moved slowly, stealthily, toward a lower drawer.

"Cut it, Major!" implored Con in acute anguish. "Canche' see he's gotche' covered through his pocket!"

The stealthy hand returned to the sight of all men and fussed among some papers on the desk-top. Major Bussey said peevishly:

"What do you want with me?"

"Kill that paragraph."

"What par—"

"Don't fence with me," struck in Banneker sharply. "You know what one."

Major Bussey swept his gaze around the room for help or inspiration. The sight of the burly ex-policeman, stricken and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, disconcerted him sadly; but he plucked up courage to say:

"The facts are well authent—"

Again Banneker cut him short. "Facts! There isn't the semblance of a fact in the whole thing. Hints, slurs, innuendoes."

"Libel does not exist when—" feebly began the editor, and stopped because Banneker was laughing at him.

"Suppose you read that," said the visitor, contemptuously tossing the typed script of his new-wrought editorial on the desk. "That's libellous, if you choose. But I don't think you would sue."

Major Bussey read the caption, a typical Banneker eye-catcher, "The Rattlesnake Dies Out; But the Pen-Viper is Still With Us." "I don't care to indulge myself with your literary efforts at present, Mr. Banneker," he said languidly. "Is this the answer to our paragraph?"

"Only the beginning. I propose to drive you out of town and suppress 'The Searchlight.'"

"A fair challenge. I'll accept it."

"I was prepared to have you take that attitude."

"Really, Mr. Banneker; you could hardly expect to come here and blackmail me by threats—"

"Now for my alternative," proceeded the visitor calmly. "You are proposing to publish a slur on the reputation of an innocent woman who—"

"Innocent!" murmured the Major with malign relish.

"Look out, Major!" implored Con, the body-guard. "He's a killer, he is."

"I don't know that I'm particularly afraid of you, after all," declared the exponent of The Searchlight, and Banneker felt a twinge of dismay lest he might have derived, somewhence, an access of courage. "A Wild West shooting is one thing, and cold-blooded, premeditated murder is another. You'd go to the chair."

"Cheerfully," assented Banneker.

Bussey, lifting the typed sheets before him, began to read. Presently his face flushed.

"Why, if you print this sort of thing, you'd have my office mobbed," he cried indignantly.

"It's possible."

"It's outrageous! And this—if this isn't an incitement to lynching—You wouldn't dare publish this!"

"Try me."

Major Bussey's wizened and philanthropic face took on the cast of careful thought. At length he spoke with the manner of an elder bestowing wisdom upon youth.

"A controversy such as this would do nobody any good. I have always been opposed to journalistic backbitings. Therefore we will let this matter lie. I will kill the paragraph. Not that I'm afraid of your threats; nor of your pen, for that matter. But in the best interests of our common profession—"

"Good-day," said Banneker, and walked out, leaving the Major stranded upon the ebb tide of his platitudes.

Banneker retailed the episode to Edmonds, for his opinion.

"He's afraid of your gun, a little," pronounced the expert; "and more of your pen. I think he'll keep faith in this."

"As long as I hold over him the threat of The Patriot."

"Yes."

"And no longer?"

"No longer. It's a vengeful kind of vermin, Ban."

"Pop, am I a common, ordinary blackmailer? Or am I not?"

The other shook his head, grayed by a quarter-century of struggles and problems. "It's a strange game, the newspaper game," he opined.



CHAPTER X

All had worked out, in the matter of The Searchlight, quite as much to Mr. Ely Ives's satisfaction as to that of Banneker. From his boasted and actual underground wire into that culture-bed of spiced sewage (at the farther end of which was the facile brunette whom the visiting editor had so harshly treated), he had learned the main details of the interview and reported them to Mr. Marrineal.

"Will Banneker now be good?" rhetorically queried Ives, pursing up his small face into an expression of judicious appreciation. "He will be good!"

Marrineal gave the subject his habitual calm and impersonal consideration. "He hasn't been lately," he observed. "Several of his editorials have had quite the air of challenge."

"That was before he turned blackmailer. Blackmail," philosophized the astute Ives, "is a gun that you've got to keep pointed all the time."

"I see. So long as he has Bussey covered by the muzzle of The Patriot, The Searchlight behaves itself."

"It does. But if ever he laid down his gun, Bussey would make hash of him and his lady-love."

"What about her?" interrogated Marrineal. "Do you really think—" His uplifted brows, sparse on his broad and candid forehead, consummated the question.

For reply the factotum gave him a succinct if distorted version of the romance in the desert.

"She dished him for Eyre," he concluded, "and now she's dishing Eyre for him."

"Bussey's got all this?" inquired Marrineal, and upon the other's careless "I suppose so," added, "It must grind his soul not to be able to use it."