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, faërie 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.