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.”
“Or not to get paid for suppressing it,” grinned Ives.
“But does Banneker understand that it’s fear of his pen, and not of being killed, that binds Bussey?”
Ives nodded. “I’ve taken care to rub that in. Told him of other cases where the old Major was threatened with all sorts of manhandling; scared out of his wits at first, but always got over it and came back in The Searchlight, taking his chance of being killed. The old vulture really isn’t a coward, though he’s a wary bird.”
“Would Banneker really kill him, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t insure his life for five cents,” returned the other with conviction. “Your editor is crazy-mad over this Mrs. Eyre. So there you have him delivered, shorn and helpless, and Delilah doesn’t even suspect that she’s acting as our agent.”
Marrineal’s eyes fixed themselves in a lifeless sort of stare upon a far corner of the ceiling. Recognizing this as a sign of inward cogitation, the vizier of his more private interests sat waiting. Without changing the direction of his gaze, the proprietor indicated a check in his ratiocination by saying incompletely:
“Now, if she divorced Eyre and married Banneker—”
Ives completed it for him. “That would spike The Searchlight’s guns, you think? Perhaps. But if she were going to divorce Eyre, she’d have done it long ago, wouldn’t she? I think she’ll wait. He won’t last long.”
“Then our hold on Banneker, through his ability to intimidate The Searchlight, depends on the life of a paretic.”
“Paretic is too strong a word—yet. But it comes to about that. Except—he’ll want a lot of money to marry Io Eyre.”
“He wants a lot, anyway,” smiled Marrineal.
“He’ll want more. She’s an expensive luxury.”
“He can get more. Any time when he chooses to handle The Patriot so that it attracts instead of offends the big advertisers.”
“Why don’t you put the screws on him now, Mr. Marrineal?” smirked Ives with thin-lipped malignancy.
Marrineal frowned. His cold blood inclined him to be deliberate; the ophidian habit, slow-moving until ready to strike. He saw no reason for risking a venture which became safer the further it progressed. Furthermore, he disliked direct, unsolicited advice. Ignoring Ives’s remark he asked:
“How are his investments going?”
Ives grinned again. “Down. Who put him into United Thread? Do you know, sir?”
“Horace Vanney. He has been tipping it off quietly to the club lot. Wants to get out from under, himself.”
“There’s one thing about it, though, that puzzles me. If he took old Vanney’s tip to buy for a rise, why did he go after the Sippiac Mills with those savage editorials? They’re mainly responsible for the legislative investigation that knocked eight points off of United Thread.”
“Probably to prove his editorial independence.”
“To whom? You?”
“To himself,” said Marrineal with an acumen quite above the shrewdness of an Ives to grasp.
But the latter nodded intelligently, and remarked: “If he’s money-crazy you’ve got him, anyway, sooner or later. And now that he’s woman-crazy, too—”
“You’ll never understand just how sane Mr. Banneker is,” broke in Marrineal coldly. He was a very sane man, himself.
“Well, a lot of the sane ones get stung on the Street,” moralized Ives. “I guess the only way to beat that game is to get crazy and take all the chances. Mr. Banneker stands to drop half a year’s salary in U.T. alone unless there’s a turn.”
Marrineal delivered another well-thought-out bit of wisdom. “If I’m any judge, he wants a paper of his own. Well ... give me three years more of him and he can have it. But I don’t think it’ll make much headway against The Patriot, then.”
“Three years? Bussey and The Searchlight ought to hold him that long. Unless, of course, he gets over his infatuation in the meantime.”
“In that case,” surmised Marrineal, eyeing him with distaste, “I suppose you think that he would equally lose interest in protecting her from The Searchlight.”
“Well, what’s a woman to expect!” said Ives blandly, and took his dismissal for the day.
It was only recently that Ives had taken to coming to The Patriot office. No small interest and conjecture were aroused among the editorial staff as to his exact status, stimulus to gossip being afforded by the rumor that he had been, from Marrineal’s privy purse, shifted to the office payroll. Russell Edmonds solved and imparted the secret to Banneker.
“Ives? Oh, he’s the office sandbag.”
“Translate, Pop. I don’t understand.”
“It’s an invention of Marrineal’s. Very ingenious. It was devised as a weapon against libel suits. Suppose some local correspondent from Hohokus or Painted Post sends in a story on the Honorable Aminadab Quince that looks to be O.K., but is actually full of bad breaks. The Honorable Aminadab smells money in it and likes the smell. Starts a libel suit. On the facts, he’s got us: the fellow that got pickled and broke up the Methodist revival wasn’t Aminadab at all, but his tough brother. If it gets into court we’re stung. Well, up goes little Weaselfoot Ives to Hohokus. Sniffs around and spooks around and is a good fellow at the hotel, and possibly spends a little money where it’s most needed, and one day turns up at the Quince mansion. ‘Senator, I represent The Patriot.’ ‘Don’t want to see you at all. Talk to my lawyer.’ ‘But he might not understand my errand. It relates to an indictment handed down in 1884 for malversasion of school funds.’ ‘Young man, do you dare to intimate—’ and so forth and so on; bluster and bluff and threat. Says Ives, very cool: ‘Let me have your denial in writing and we’ll print it opposite the certified copy of the indictment.’ The old boy begins to whimper; ‘That’s outlawed. It was all wrong, anyway.’ Ives is sympathetic, but stands pat. Drop the suit and The Patriot will be considerate and settle the legal fees. Aminadab drops, ten times out of ten. The sandbag has put him away.”
“But there must be an eleventh case where there’s nothing on the man that’s suing.”
“Say a ninety-ninth. One libel suit in a hundred may be brought in good faith. But we never settle until after Ives has done his little prowl.”
“It sounds bad, Pop. But is it so bad, after all? We’ve got to protect ourselves against a hold-up.”
“Dirty work, but somebody’s got to do it: ay—yes? I agree with you. As a means of self-defense it is excusable. But the operations of the sandbag have gone far beyond libel in Ives’s hands.”
“Have they? To what extent?”
“Any. His little private detective agency—he’s got a couple of our porch-climbing, keyhole reporters secretly assigned to him at call for special work’—looks after any man we’ve got or are likely to have trouble with; advertisers who don’t come across properly, city officials who play in with the other papers too much, politicians—”
“But that’s rank blackmail!” exclaimed Banneker.
“Carried far enough it is. So far it’s only private information for the private archives.”
“Marrineal’s?”
“Yes. He and his private counsel, old Mark Stecklin, are the keepers of them. Now, suppose Judge Enderby runs afoul of our interests, as he is bound to do sooner or later. Little Weaselfoot gets on his trail—probably is on it already—and he’ll spend a year if necessary watching, waiting, sniffing out something that he can use as a threat or a bludgeon or a bargain.”
“What quarrel have we got with Enderby?” inquired Banneker with lively interest.
“None, now. But we’ll be after him hot and heavy within a year.”
“Not the editorial page,” declared Banneker.
“Well, I hope not. It would be rather a right-about, wouldn’t it? But Marrineal isn’t afraid of a right-about. You know his creed as to his readers: ‘The public never remembers.’ Of course, you realize what Marrineal is after, politically.”
“No. He’s never said a word to me.”
“Nor to me. But others have. The mayoralty.”
“For himself?”
“Of course. He’s quietly building up his machine.”
“But Laird will run for reelection.”
“He’ll knife Laird.”
“It’s true Laird hasn’t treated us very well, in the matter of backing our policies,” admitted Banneker thoughtfully. “The Combined Street Railway franchise, for instance.”
“He was right in that and you were wrong, Ban. He had to follow the comptroller there.”
“Is that where our split with Enderby is going to come? Over the election?”
“Yes. Enderby is the brains and character back of the Laird administration. He represents the clean government crowd, with its financial power.”
Banneker stirred fretfully in his chair. “Damn it!” he growled. “I wish we could run this paper as a newspaper and not as a chestnut rake.”
“How sweet and simple life would be!” mocked the veteran. “Still, you know, if you’re going to use The Patriot as a blunderbuss to point at the heads of your own enemies, you can’t blame the owner if he—”
“You think Marrineal knows?” interposed Banneker sharply.
“About The Searchlight matter? You can bet on one thing, Ban. Everything that Ely Ives knows, Tertius Marrineal knows. So far as Ives thinks it advisable for him to know, that is. Over and above which Tertius is no fool, himself. You may have noticed that.”
“It’s bothered me from time to time,” admitted the other dryly.
“It’ll bother both of us more, presently,” prophesied Edmonds.
“Then I’ve been playing direct into Marrineal’s hands in attacking Laird on the franchise matter.”
“Yes. Keep on.”
“Strange advice from you, Pop. You think my position on that is wrong.”
“What of that? You think it’s right. Therefore, go ahead. Why quit a line of policy just because it obliges your employes? Don’t be over-conscientious, son.”
“I’ve suspected for some time that the political news was being adroitly manipulated against the administration. Has Marrineal tried to ring you in on that?”
“No; and he won’t.”
“Why not?”
“He knows that, in the main, I’m a Laird man. Laird is giving us what we asked for, an honest administration.”
“Suppose, when Marrineal develops his plans, he comes to you, which would be his natural course, to handle the news end of the anti-Laird campaign. What would you do?”
“Quit.”
Banneker sighed. “It’s so easy for you.”
“Not so easy as you think, son. Even though there’s a lot of stuff being put over in the news columns that makes me sore and sick. Marrineal’s little theory of using news as a lever is being put into practice pretty widely. Also we’re selling it.”
“Selling our news columns?”
“Some of ’em. For advertising. You’re well out of any responsibility for that department. I’d resign to-morrow if it weren’t for the fact that Marrineal still wants to cocker up the labor crowd for his political purposes, and so gives me a free hand in my own special line. By the way, he’s got the Veridian matter all nicely smoothed out. Oh, my, yes! Fired the general manager, put in all sorts of reforms, recognized the union, the whole programme! That’s to spike McClintick’s guns if he tries to trot out Veridian again as proof that Marrineal is, at heart, anti-labor.”
“Is he?”
“He’s anti-anything that’s anti-Marrineal, and pro-anything that’s pro-Marrineal. Haven’t you measured him yet? All policy, no principle; there’s Mr. Tertius Marrineal for you.... Ban, it’s really you that holds me to this shop.” Through convolutions of smoke from his tiny pipe, the old stager regarded the young star of journalism with a quaint and placid affection. “Whatever rotten stuff is going on in the business and news department, your page goes straight and speaks clear.... I wonder how long Marrineal will stand for it ... I wonder what he intends for the next campaign.”
“If my proprietor runs for office, I can’t very well not support him,” said Banneker, troubled.
“Not very well. The pinch will come as to what you’re going to do about Laird. According to my private information, he’s coming back at The Patriot.”
“For my editorials on the Combined franchise?”
“Hardly. He’s too straight to resent honest criticism. No; for some of the crooked stuff that we’re running in our political news. Besides, some suspicious and informed soul in the administration has read between our political lines, and got a peep of the aspiring Tertius girding himself for contest. Result, the city advertising is to be taken from The Patriot.”
It needed no more than a mechanical reckoning of percentages to tell Banneker that this implied a serious diminution of his own income. Further, such a procedure would be in effect a repudiation of The Patriot and its editorial support.
“That’s a rotten deal!” he exclaimed.
“No. Just politics. Justifiable, too, I should say, as politics go. I doubt whether Laird would do it of his own motion; he plays a higher game than that. But it isn’t strictly within his province either to effect or prevent. Anyhow, it’s going to be done.”
“If he wants to fight us—” began Banneker with gloom in his eyes.
“He doesn’t want to fight anybody,” cut in the expert. “He wants to be mayor and run the city for what seems to him the city’s best good. If he thought Marrineal would carry on his work as mayor, I doubt if he’d oppose him. But our shrewd old friend, Enderby, isn’t of that mind. Enderby understands Marrineal. He’ll fight to the finish.”
Edmonds left his friend in a glum perturbation of mind. Enderby understood Marrineal, did he? Banneker wished that he himself did. If he could have come to grips with his employer, he would at least have known now where to take his stand. But Marrineal was elusive. No, not even elusive; quiescent. He waited.
As time passed, Banneker’s editorial and personal involvements grew more complex. At what moment might a pressure from above close down on his pen, and with what demand? How should he act in the crisis thus forced, at Marrineal’s slow pleasure? Take Edmonds’s Gordian recourse; resign? But he was on the verge of debt. His investments had gone badly; he prided himself on the thought that it was partly through his own immovable uprightness. Now, this threat to his badly needed percentages! Surely The Patriot ought to be making a greater profit than it showed, on its steadily waxing circulation. Why had he ever let himself be wrenched from his first and impregnable system of a straight payment on increase of circulation? Would it be possible to force Marrineal back into that agreement? No income was too great, surely, to recompense for such trouble of soul as The Patriot inflicted upon its editorial mouthpiece.... Through the murk of thoughts shot, golden-rayed, the vision of Io.
No world could be other than glorious in which she lived and loved him and was his.
CHAPTER XI
Sheltered beneath the powerful pen of Banneker, his idyll, fulfilled, lengthened out over radiant months. Io was to him all that dreams had ever promised or portrayed. Their association, flowering to the full amidst the rush and turmoil of the city, was the antithesis to its budding in the desert peace. To see the more of his mistress, Banneker became an active participant in that class of social functions which get themselves chronicled in the papers. Wise in her day and her protective instinct of love, Io pointed out that the more he was identified with her set, the less occasion would there be for comment upon their being seen together. And they were seen together much.
She lunched with him at his downtown club, dined with him at Sherry’s, met him at The Retreat and was driven back home in his car, sometimes with Archie Densmore for a third, not infrequently alone. Considerate hostesses seated them next each other at dinners: it was deemed an evidence of being “in the know” thus to accommodate them. The openness of their intimacy went far to rob calumny of its sting. And Banneker’s ingrained circumspection of the man trained in the open, applied to les convenances, was a protection in itself. Moreover, there was in his devotion, conspicuous though it was, an air of chivalry, a breath of fragrance from a world of higher romance, which rendered women in particular charitable of judgment toward the pair.
Sometimes in the late afternoon Banneker’s private numbered telephone rang, and an impersonal voice delivered a formal message. And that evening Banneker (called out of town, no matter how pressing an engagement he might have had) sat in The House With Three Eyes, now darkened of vision, thrilling and longing for her step in the dim side passage. There was risk of disaster. But Io willed to take it; was proud to take it for her lover.
Immersed in a happiness and a hope which vivified every motion of his life, Banneker was nevertheless under a continuous strain of watchfulness; the qui vive of the knight who guards his lady with leveled lance from a never-ceasing threat. At the point of his weapon cowered and crouched the dragon of The Searchlight, with envenomed fangs of scandal.
As the months rounded out to a year, he grew, not less careful, indeed, but more confident. Eyre had quietly dropped out of the world. Hunting big game in some wild corner of Nowhere, said rumor.
Io had revealed to Banneker the truth; her husband was in a sanitarium not far from Philadelphia. As she told him, her eyes were dim. Swift, with the apprehension of the lover to read the loved one’s face, she saw a smothered jealousy in his.
“Ah, but you must pity him, too! He has been so game.”
“Has been?”
“Yes. This is nearly the end. I shall go down there to be near him.”
“It’s a long way, Philadelphia,” he said moodily.
“What a child! Two hours in your car from The Retreat.”
“Then I may come down?”
“May? You must!”
He was still unappeased. “But you’ll be very far away from me most of the time.”
She gleamed on him, her face all joyous for his incessant want of her. “Stupid! We shall see almost as much of each other as before. I’ll be coming over to New York two or three times a week.”
Wherewith, and a promised daily telephone call, he must be content.
Not at that meeting did he broach the subject nearest his heart. He felt that he must give Io time to adjust herself to the new-developed status of her husband, as of one already passed out of the world. A fortnight later he spoke out. He had gone down to The Retreat for the week-end and she had come up from Philadelphia to meet him, for dinner. He found her in a secluded alcove off the main dining-porch, alone. She rose and came to him, after that one swift, sweet, precautionary glance about her with which a woman in love assures herself of safety before she gives her lips; tender and passionate to the yearning need of her that sprang in his face.
“Ban, I’ve been undergoing a solemn preachment.”
“From whom?”
“Archie.”
“Is Densmore here?”
“No; he came over to Philadelphia to deliver it.”
“About us?”
She nodded. “Don’t take it so gloomily. It was to be expected.”
He frowned. “It’s on my mind all the time; the danger to you.”
“Would you end it?” she said softly.
“Yes.”
Too confident to misconstrue his reply, she let her hand fall on his, waiting.
“Io, how long will it be, with Eyre? Before—”
“Oh; that!” The brilliance faded from her eager loveliness. “I don’t know. Perhaps a year. He suffers abominably, poor fellow.”
“And after—after that, how long before you can marry me?”
She twinkled at him mischievously. “So, after all these years, my lover makes me an offer of marriage. Why didn’t you ask me at Manzanita?”
“Good God! Would it possibly—”
“No; no! I shouldn’t have said it. I was teasing.”
“You know that there’s never been a moment when the one thing worth living and fighting and striving for wasn’t you.”
“And success?” she taunted, but with tenderness.
“Another name for you. I wanted it only as the reflex of your wish for me.”
“Even when I’d left you?”
“Even when you’d left me.”
“Poor Ban!” she breathed, and for a moment her fingers fluttered at his cheek. “Have I made it up to you?”
He bent over the long, low chair in which she half reclined. “A thousand times! Every day that I see you; every day that I think of you; with the lightest touch of your hand; the sound of your voice; the turn of your face toward me. I’m jealous of it and fearful of it. Can you wonder that I live in a torment of dread lest something happen to bring it all to ruin?”
She shook her head. “Nothing could. Unless—No. I won’t say it. I want you to want to marry me, Ban. But—I wonder.”
As they talked, the little light of late afternoon had dwindled, until in their nook they could see each other only as vague forms.
“Isn’t there a table-lamp there?” she asked. “Turn it on.”
He found and pulled the chain. The glow, softly shaded, irradiated Io’s lineaments, showing her thoughtful, somber, even a little apprehensive. She lifted the shade and turned it to throw the direct rays upon Banneker. He blinked.
“Do you mind?” she asked softly. Even more softly, she added, “Do you remember?”
His mind veered back across the years, full of struggle, of triumph, of emptiness, of fulfillment, to a night in another world; a world of dreams, magic associations, high and peaceful ambitions, into which had broken a voice and an appeal from the darkness. He had turned the light upon himself then that she might see him for what he was and have no fear. So he held it now, lifting it above his forehead. Hypnotized by the compulsion of memory, she said, as she had said to the unknown helper in the desert shack:
“I don’t know you. Do I?”
“Io!”
“Ah! I didn’t mean to say that. It came back to me, Ban. Perhaps it’s true. Do I know you?”
As in the long ago he answered her: “Are you afraid of me?”
“Of everything. Of the future. Of what I don’t know in you.”
“There’s nothing of me that you don’t know,” he averred.
“Isn’t there?” She was infinitely wistful; avid of reassurance. Before he could answer she continued: “That night in the rain when I first saw you, under the flash, as I see you now—Ban, dear, how little you’ve changed, how wonderfully little, to the eye!—the instant I saw you, I trusted you.”
“Do you trust me now?” he asked for the delight of hearing her declare it.
Instead he heard, incredulously, the doubt in her tone. “Do I? I want to—so much! I did then. At first sight.”
He set down the lamp. She could hear him breathing quick and stressfully. He did not speak.
“At first sight,” she repeated. “And—I think—I loved you from that minute. Though of course I didn’t know. Not for days. Then, when I’d gone, I found what I’d never dreamed of; how much I could love.”
“And now?” he whispered.
“Ah, more than then!” The low cry leapt from her lips. “A thousand times more.”
“But you don’t trust me?”
“Why don’t I, Ban?” she pleaded. “What have you done? How have you changed?”
He shook his head. “Yet you’ve given me your love. Do you trust yourself?”
“Yes,” she answered with a startling quietude of certainty. “In that I do. Absolutely.”
“Then I’ll chance the rest. You’re upset to-night, aren’t you, Io? You’ve let your imagination run away with you.”
“This isn’t a new thing to me. It began—I don’t know when it began. Yes; I do. Before I ever knew or thought of you. Oh, long before! When I was no more than a baby.”
“Rede me your riddle, love,” he said lightly.
“It’s so silly. You mustn’t laugh; no, you wouldn’t laugh. But you mustn’t be angry with me for being a fool. Childhood impressions are terribly lasting things, Ban.... Yes, I’m going to tell you. It was a nurse I had when I was only four, I think; such a pretty, dainty Irish creature, the pink-and-black type. She used to cry over me and say—I don’t suppose she thought I would ever understand or remember—‘Beware the brown-eyed boys, darlin’. False an’ foul they are, the brown ones. They take a girl’s poor heart an’ witch it away an’ twitch it away, an’ toss it back all crushed an’ spoilt.’ Then she would hug me and sob. She left soon after; but the warning has haunted me like a superstition.... Could you kiss it away, Ban? Tell me I’m a little fool!”
Approaching footsteps broke in upon them. The square bulk of Jim Maitland appeared in the doorway.
“What ho! you two. Ban, you’re scampin’ your polo practice shamefully. You’ll be crabbin’ the team if you don’t look out. Dinin’ here?”
“Yes,” said Io. “Is Marie down?”
“Comin’ presently. How about a couple of rubbers after dinner?”
To assent seemed the part of tact. Io and Ban went to their corner table, reserved for three, the third, Archie Densmore, being a prudent fiction. People drifted over to them, chatted awhile, were carried on and away by uncharted but normal social currents. It was a tribute to the accepted status between them that no one settled into the third chair. The Retreat is the dwelling-place of tact. All the conversationalists having come and gone, Io reverted over the coffee to the talk of their hearts.
“I can’t expect you to understand me, can I? Especially as I don’t understand myself. Don’t sulk, Ban, dearest. You’re so un-pretty when you pout.”
He refused to accept the change to a lighter tone. “I understand this, Io; that you have begun unaccountably to mistrust me. That hurts.”
“I don’t want to hurt you. I’d rather hurt myself; a thousand times rather. Oh, I will marry you, of course, when the time comes! And yet—”
“Yet?”
“Isn’t it strange, that deep-seated misgiving! I suppose it’s my woman’s dread of any change. It’s been so perfect between us, Ban.” Her speech dropped to its lowest breath of pure music:
“‘This test for love:—in every kiss, sealed fast To feel the first kiss and forebode the last’—
So it has been with us; hasn’t it, my lover?”
“So it shall always be,” he answered, low and deep.
Her eyes dreamed. “How could any man feel what he put in those lines?” she murmured.
“Some woman taught him,” said Banneker.
She threw him a fairy kiss. “Why haven’t we ‘The Voices’ here! You should read to me.... Do you ever wish we were back in the desert?”
“We shall be, some day.”
She shuddered a little, involuntarily. “There’s a sense of recall, isn’t there! Do you still love it?”
“It’s the beginning of the Road to Happiness,” he said. “The place where I first saw you.”
“You don’t care for many things, though, Ban.”
“Not many. Only two, vitally. You and the paper.”
She made a curious reply pregnant of meanings which were to come back upon him afterward. “I shan’t be jealous of that. Not as long as you’re true to it. But I don’t think you care for The Patriot, for itself.”
“Oh, don’t I!”
“If you do, it’s only because it’s part of you; your voice; your power. Because it belongs to you. I wonder if you love me mostly for the same reason.”
“Say, the reverse reason. Because I belong so entirely to you that nothing outside really matters except as it contributes to you. Can’t you realize and believe?”
“No; I shouldn’t be jealous of the paper,” she mused, ignoring his appeal. Then, with a sudden transition: “I like your Russell Edmonds. Am I wrong or is there a kind of nobility of mind in him?”
“Of mind and soul. You would be the one to see it.
.............the nobleness that lies Sleeping but never dead in other men, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own’”—
he quoted, smiling into her eyes.
“Do you ever talk over your editorials with him?”
“Often. He’s my main and only reliance, politically.”
“Only politically? Does he ever comment on other editorials? The one on Harvey Wheelwright, for instance?”
Banneker was faintly surprised. “No. Why should he? Did you discuss that with him?”
“Indeed not! I wouldn’t discuss that particular editorial with any one but you.”
He moved uneasily. “Aren’t you attaching undue importance to a very trivial subject? You know that was half a joke, anyway.”
“Was it?” she murmured. “Probably I take it too seriously. But—but Harvey Wheelwright came into one of our early talks, almost our first about real things. When I began to discover you; when ‘The Voices’ first sang to us. And he wasn’t one of the Voices, exactly, was he?”
“He? He’s a bray! But neither was Sears-Roebuck one of the Voices. Yet you liked my editorial on that.”
“I adored it! You believed what you were writing. So you made it beautiful.”
“Nothing could make Harvey Wheelwright beautiful. But, at least, you’ll admit I made him—well, appetizing.” His face took on a shade. “Love’s labor lost, too,” he added. “We never did run the Wheelwright serial, you know.”
“Why?”
“Because the infernal idiot had to go and divorce a perfectly respectable, if plain and middle-aged wife, in order to marry a quite scandalous Chicago society flapper.”
“What connection has that with the serial?”
“Don’t you see? Wheelwright is the arch-deacon of the eternal proprieties and pieties. Purity of morals. Hearth and home. Faithful unto death, and so on. Under that sign he conquers—a million pious and snuffy readers, per book. Well, when he gets himself spread in the Amalgamated Wire dispatches, by a quick divorce and a hair-trigger marriage, puff goes his piety—and his hold on his readers. We just quietly dropped him.”
“But his serial was just as good or as bad as before, wasn’t it?”
“Certainly not! Not for our purposes. He was a dead wolf with his sheep’s wool all smeared and spotted. You’ll never quite understand the newspaper game, I’m afraid, lady of my heart.”
“How brown your eyes are, Ban!” said Io.
CHAPTER XII
Politics began to bubble in The Patriot office with promise of hotter upheavals to come. The Laird administration had shown its intention of diverting city advertising, and Marrineal had countered in the news columns by several minor but not ineffective exposures of weak spots in the city government. Banneker, who had on the whole continued to support the administration in its reform plans, decided that a talk with Willis Enderby might clarify the position and accordingly made an evening appointment with him at his house. Judge Enderby opened proceedings with typical directness of attack.
“When are you going to turn on us, Banneker?”
“That’s a cheerful question,” retorted the young man good-humoredly, “considering that it is you people who have gone back on The Patriot.”
“Were any pledges made on our part?” queried Enderby.
Banneker replied with some spirit: “Am I talking with counsel under retainer or with a personal friend?”
“Quite right. I apologize,” said the imperturbable Enderby. “Go on.”
“It isn’t the money loss that counts, so much as the slap in the face to the paper. It’s a direct repudiation. You must realize that.”
“I’m not wholly a novice in politics.”
“But I am, practically.”
“Not so much that you can’t see what Marrineal would be at.”
“Mr. Marrineal has not confided in me.”
“Nor in me,” stated the lawyer grimly. “I don’t need his confidence to perceive his plans.”
“What do you believe them to be?”
No glimmer of a smile appeared on the visage of Judge Enderby as he countered, “Am I talking with a representative of The Patriot or—”
“All right,” laughed Banneker. “Touché! Assume that Marrineal has political ambitions. Surely that lies within the bounds of propriety.”
“Depends on how he pushes them. Do you read The Patriot, Banneker?”
The editor of The Patriot smiled.
“Do you approve its methods in, let us say, the political articles?”
“I have no control over the news columns.”
“Don’t answer my question,” said the lawyer with a fine effect of patience, long-suffering and milky-mild, “if it in any way discommodes you.”
“It all comes to this,” disclosed Banneker. “If the mayor turns on us, we can’t lie down under the whip and we won’t. We’ll hit back.”
“Of course.”
“Editorially, I mean.”
“I understand. At least the editorials will be a direct method of attack, and an honest one. I may assume that much?”
“Have you ever seen anything in the editorial columns of The Patriot that would lead you to assume otherwise?”
“Answering categorically I would have to say ‘No.’
“Answer as you please.”
“Then I will say,” observed the other, speaking with marked deliberation, “that on one occasion I have failed to see matter which I thought might logically appear there and the absence of which afforded me food for thought. Do you know Peter McClintick?”
“Yes. Has he been talking to you about the Veridian killings?”
Enderby nodded. “One could not but contrast your silence on that subject with your eloquence against the Steel Trust persecutions, consisting, if I recall, in putting agitators in jail for six months. Quite wrongly, I concede. But hardly as bad as shooting them down as they sleep, and their families with them.”
“Tell me what you would have done in my place, then.” Banneker stated the case of the Veridian Mills strike simply and fairly. “Could I turn the columns of his own paper on Marrineal for what was not even his fault?”
“Impossible. Absurd, as well,” acknowledged the other
“Can you even criticize Marrineal?”
The jurist reared his gaunt, straight form up from his chair and walked across to the window, peering out into the darkness before he answered with a sort of restrained passion.
“God o’ mercies, Banneker! Do you ask me to judge other men’s acts, outside the rules of law? Haven’t I enough problems in reconciling my own conscience to conserving the interests of my clients, as I must, in honor, do? No; no! Don’t expect me to judge, in any matter of greater responsibilities. I’m answerable to a small handful of people. You—your Patriot is answerable to a million. Everything you print, everything you withhold, may have incalculable influence on the minds of men. You can corrupt or enlighten them with a word. Think of it! Under such a weight Atlas would be crushed. There was a time long ago—about the time when you were born—when I thought that I might be a journalist; thought it lightly. To-day, knowing what I know, I should be terrified to attempt it for a week, a day! I tell you, Banneker, one who moulds the people’s beliefs ought to have the wisdom of a sage and the inspiration of a prophet and the selflessness of a martyr.”
A somber depression veiled Banneker. “One must have the sense of authority, too,” he said at length with an effort. “If that is undermined, you lose everything. I’ll fight for that.”
With an abrupt motion his host reached up and drew the window shade, as it might be to shut out a darkness too deep for human penetration.
“What does your public care about whether The Patriot loses the city advertising; or even know about it?”
“Not the public. But the other newspapers. They’ll know, and they’ll use it against us.... Enderby, we can beat Bob Laird for reelection.”
“If that’s a threat,” returned the lawyer equably, “it is made to the wrong person. I couldn’t control Laird in this matter if I wanted to. He’s an obstinate young mule—for which Heaven be praised!”
“No; it isn’t a threat. It’s a declaration of war, if you like.”
“You think you can beat us? With Marrineal?”
“Mr. Marrineal isn’t an avowed candidate, is he?” evaded Banneker.
“I fancy that you’ll see some rapidly evolving activity in that quarter.”
“Is it true that Laird has developed social tendencies, and is using the mayoralty to climb?”
“A silly story of his enemies,” answered Enderby contemptuously. “Just the sort of thing that Marrineal would naturally get hold of and use. In so far as Laird has any social relations, they are and always have been with that element which your society reporters call ‘the most exclusive circles,’ because that is where he belongs by birth and association.”
“Russell Edmonds says that social ambition is the only road on which one climbs painfully downhill.”
The other paid the tribute of a controlled smile to this. “Edmonds? A Socialist. He has a gnarled mind. Good, hard-grained wood, though. I suppose no man more thoroughly hates and despises what I represent—or what he thinks I represent, the conservative force of moneyed power—than he does. Yet in any question of professional principles, I would trust him far; yes, and of professional perceptions, too, I think; which is more difficult. A crack-brained sage; but wise. Have you talked over the Laird matter with him?”
“Yes. He’s for Laird.”
“Stick to Edmonds, Banneker. You can’t find a better guide.”
There was desultory talk until the caller got up to go. As they shook hands, Enderby said:
“Has any one been tracking you lately?”
“No. Not that I’ve noticed.”
“There was a fellow lurking suspiciously outside; heavy-set, dark clothes, soft hat. I thought that he might be watching you.”
For a man of Banneker’s experience of the open, to detect the cleverest of trailing was easy. Although this watcher was sly and careful in his pursuit, which took him all the way to Chelsea Village, his every move was clear to the quarry, until the door of The House With Three Eyes closed upon its owner. Banneker went to bed very uneasy. On whose behoof was he being shadowed? Should he warn Io?... In the morning there was no trace of the man, nor, though Banneker trained every sharpened faculty to watchfulness, did he see him again.... While he was mentally engrossed in wholly alien considerations, the solution materialized out of nothing to his inner vision. It was Willis Enderby who was being watched, and, as a side issue, any caller upon him. That evening a taxi, occupied by a leisurely young man in evening clothes, drove through East 68th Street, where stood the Enderby house, dim, proud, and stiff. The taxi stopped before a mansion not far away, and the young man addressed a heavy-bodied individual who stood, with vacant face uplifted to the high moon, as if about to bay it. Said the young man:
“Mr. Ives wishes you to report to him at once.”
“Huh?” ejaculated the other, lowering his gaze.
“At the usual place,” pursued the young man.
“Oh! Aw-right.”
His suspicions fully confirmed, Banneker drove away. It was now Ives’s move, he remarked to himself, smiling. Or perhaps Marrineal’s. He would wait. Within a few days he had his opportunity. Returning to his office after luncheon, he found a penciled note from Ives on his desk, notifying him that Miss Raleigh had called him on the ‘phone.
Inquiring for the useful Ives, Banneker learned that he was closeted with Marrineal. Such conferences were regarded in the office as inviolable; but Banneker was in uncompromising mood. He entered with no more of preliminary than a knock. After giving his employer good-day he addressed Ives.
“I found a note from you on my desk.”
“Yes. The message came half an hour ago.”
“Through the office?”
“No. On your ‘phone.”
“How did you get into my room?”
“The door was open.”
Banneker reflected. This was possible, though usually he left his door locked. He decided to accept the explanation. Later he had occasion to revise it.
“Much obliged. By the way, on whose authority did you put a shadow on Judge Enderby?”
“On mine,” interposed Marrineal. “Mr. Ives has full discretion in these matters.”
“But what is the idea?”
Ives delivered himself of his pet theory. “They’ll all bear watching. It may come in handy some day.”
“What may?”
“Anything we can get.”
“What on earth could any but an insane man expect to get on Enderby?” contemptuously asked Banneker.
Shooting a covert look at his principal, Ives either received or assumed a permission. “Well, there was some kind of an old scandal, you know.”
“Was there?” Banneker’s voice was negligent. “That would be hard to believe.”
“Hard to get hold of in any detail. I’ve dug some of it out through my Searchlight connection. Very useful line, that.”
Ives ventured a direct look at Banneker, but diverted it from the cold stare it encountered.
“Some woman scrape,” he explicated with an effort at airiness.
Banneker turned a humiliating back on him. “The Patriot is beginning to get a bad name on Park Row for this sort of thing,” he informed Marrineal.
“This isn’t a Patriot matter. It is private.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Banneker in disgust. “After all, it doesn’t matter. You’ll have your trouble for your pains,” he prophesied, and returned to phone Betty Raleigh.
What had become of Banneker, Betty’s gay and pure-toned voice demanded over the wire. Had he eschewed the theater and all its works for good? Too busy? Was that a reason also for eschewing his friends? He’d never meant to do that? Let him prove it then by coming up to see her.... Yes; at once. Something special to be talked over.
It was a genuine surprise to Banneker to find that he had not seen the actress for nearly two months. Certainly he had not specially missed her, yet it was keenly pleasurable to be brought into contact again with that restless, vital, outgiving personality. She looked tired and a little dispirited and—for she was of that rare type in which weariness does not dim, but rather qualifies and differentiates its beauty—quite as lovely as he had ever seen her. The query which gave him his clue to her special and immediate interest was:
“Why is Haslett leaving The Patriot?” Haslett was the Chicago critic transplanted to take Gurney’s place.
“Is he? I didn’t know. You ought not to mourn his loss, Betty.”
“But I do. At least, I’m afraid I’m going to. Do you know who the new critic is?”
“No. Do you? And how do you? Oh, I suppose I ought to understand that, though,” he added, annoyed that so important a change should have been kept secret from him.
With characteristic directness she replied, “You mean Tertius Marrineal?”
“Naturally.”
“That’s all off.”
“Betty! Your engagement to him?”
“So far as there ever was any.”
“Is it really off? Or have you only quarreled?”
“Oh, no. I can’t imagine myself quarreling with Tertius. He’s too impersonal. For the same reason, and others, I can’t see myself marrying him.”
“But you must have considered it, for a time.”
“Not very profoundly. I don’t want to marry a newspaper. Particularly such a newspaper as The Patriot. For that matter, I don’t want to marry anybody, and I won’t!”
“That being disposed of, what’s the matter with The Patriot? It’s been treating you with distinguished courtesy ever since Marrineal took over charge.”
“It has. That’s part of his newspaperishness.”
“From our review of your new play I judge that it was written by the shade of Shakespeare in collaboration with the ghost of Molière, and that your acting in it combines all the genius of Rachel, Kean, Booth, Mrs. Siddons, and the Divine Sarah.”
“This is no laughing matter,” she protested. “Have you seen the play?”
“No. I’ll go to-night.”
“Don’t. It’s rotten.”
“Heavens!” he cried in mock dismay. “What does this mean? Our most brilliant young—”
“And I’m as bad as the play—almost. The part doesn’t fit me. It’s a fool part.”
“Are you quarreling with The Patriot because it has tempered justice with mercy in your case?”
“Mercy? With slush. Slathering slush.”
“Come to my aid, Memory! Was it not a certain Miss Raleigh who aforetime denounced the ruffian Gurney for that he vented his wit upon a play in which she appeared. And now, because—”
“Yes; it was. I’ve no use for the smart-aleck school of criticism. But, at least, what Gurney wrote was his own. And Haslett, even if he is an old grouch, was honest. You couldn’t buy their opinions over the counter.”
Banneker frowned. “I think you’d better explain, Betty.”
“Do you know Gene Zucker?”
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s a worm. A fat, wiggly, soft worm from Boston. But he’s got an idea.”
“And that is?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment.” She leaned forward fixing him with the honest clarity of her eyes. “Ban, if I tell you that I’m really devoted to my art, that I believe in it as—as a mission, that the theater is as big a thing to me as The Patriot is to you, you won’t think me an affected little prig, will you?”
“Of course not, Betty. I know you.”
“Yes. I think you do. But you don’t know your own paper. Zucker’s big idea, which he sold to Tertius Marrineal together with his precious self, is that the dramatic critic should be the same identical person as the assistant advertising manager in charge of theater advertising, and that Zucker should be both.”
“Hell!” snapped Banneker. “I beg your pardon, Betty.”
“Don’t. I quite agree with you. Isn’t it complete and perfect? Zucker gets his percentage of the advertising revenue which he brings in from the theaters. Therefore, will he be kind to those attractions which advertise liberally? And less kind to those which fail to appreciate The Patriot as a medium? I know that he will! Pay your dollar and get your puff. Dramatic criticism strictly up to date.”
Banneker looked at her searchingly. “Is that why you broke with Marrineal, Betty?”
“Not exactly. No. This Zucker deal came afterward. But I think I had begun to see what sort of principles Tertius represented. You and I aren’t children, Ban: I can talk straight talk to you. Well, there’s prostitution on the stage, of course. Not so much of it as outsiders think, but more than enough. I’ve kept myself free of any contact with it. That being so, I’m certainly not going to associate myself with that sort of thing in another field. Ban, I’ve made the management refuse Zucker admittance to the theater. And he gave the play a wonderful send-off, as you know. Of course, Tertius would have him do that.”
Rising, Banneker walked over and soberly shook the girl’s hand. “Betty, you’re a fine and straight and big little person. I’m proud to know you. And I’m ashamed of myself that I can do nothing. Not now, anyway. Later, perhaps....”
“No, I suppose you can’t,” she said listlessly. “But you’ll be interested in seeing how the Zucker system works out; a half-page ad. in the Sunday edition gets a special signed and illustrated feature article, a quarter-page only a column of ordinary press stuff. A full page—I don’t know what he’ll offer for that. An editorial by E.B. perhaps.”
“Betty!”
“Forgive me, Ban. I’m sick at heart over it all. Of course, I know you wouldn’t.”
Going back in his car, Banneker reflected with profound distaste that the plan upon which he was hired was not essentially different from the Zucker scheme, in Marrineal’s intent. He, too, was—if Marrineal’s idea worked out—to draw down a percentage varying in direct ratio to his suppleness in accommodating his writings to “the best interests of the paper.” He swore that he would see The Patriot and its proprietor eternally damned before he would again alter jot or tittle of his editorial expression with reference to any future benefit.
It did not take long for Mr. Zucker to manifest his presence to Banneker through a line asking for an interview, written in a neat, small hand upon a card reading:
The Patriot—Special Theatrical Features E. Zucker, Representative.
Mr. Zucker, being sent for, materialized as a buoyant little person, richly ornamented with his own initials in such carefully chosen locations as his belt-buckle, his cane, and his cigarettes. He was, he explained, injecting some new and profitable novelties into the department of dramatic criticism.
“Just a moment,” quoth Banneker. “I thought that Allan Haslett had come on from Chicago to be our dramatic critic.”
“Oh, he and the business office didn’t hit it off very well,” said little Zucker carelessly.
“Oh! And do you hit it off pretty well with the business office?”
“Naturally. It was Mr. Haring brought me on here; I’m a special departmental manager in the advertising department.”
“Your card would hardly give the impression. It suggests the news rather than the advertising side.”
“I’m both,” stated Mr. Zucker, brightly beaming. “I handle the criticism and the feature stuff on salary, and solicit the advertising, on a percentage. It works out fine.”
“So one might suppose.” Banneker looked at him hard. “The idea being, if I get it correctly, that a manager who gives you a good, big line of advertising can rely on considerate treatment in the dramatic column of The Patriot.”
“Well, there’s no bargain to that effect. That wouldn’t be classy for a big paper like ours,” replied the high-if somewhat naïve-minded Mr. Zucker. “Of course, the managers understand that one good turn deserves another, and I ain’t the man to roast a friend that helps me out. I started the scheme in Boston and doubled the theater revenue of my paper there in a year.”
“I’m immensely interested,” confessed Banneker. “But what is your idea in coming to me about this?”
“Big stuff, Mr. Banneker,” answered the earnest Zucker. He laid a jeweled hand upon the other’s knee, and removed it because some vestige of self-protective instinct warned him that that was not the proper place for it. “You may have noticed that we’ve been running a lot of special theater stuff in the Sunday.” Banneker nodded. “That’s all per schedule, as worked out by me. An eighth of a page ad. gets an article. A quarter page ad. gets a signed special by me. Haffa page wins a grand little send-off by Bess Breezely with her own illustrations. Now, I’m figuring on full pages. If I could go to a manager and say: ‘Gimme a full-page ad. for next Sunday and I’ll see if I can’t get Mr. Banneker to do an editorial on the show’—if I could say that, why, nothin’ to it! Nothin’ at-tall! Of course,” he added ruminatively, “I’d have to pick the shows pretty careful.”
“Perhaps you’d like to write the editorials, too,” suggested Banneker with baleful mildness.
“I thought of that,” admitted the other. “But I don’t know as I could get the swing of your style. You certainly got a style, Mr. Banneker.”
“Thank you.”
“Well, what do you say?”
“Why, this. I’ll look over next Sunday’s advertising, particularly the large ads., and if there is a good subject in any of the shows, I’ll try to do something about it.”
“Fine!” enthused the unsuspecting pioneer of business-dramatic criticism. “It’s a pleasure to work with a gentleman like you, Mr. Banneker.”
Withdrawing, even more pleased with himself than was his wont, Mr. Zucker confided to Haring that the latter was totally mistaken in attributing a stand-offish attitude to Banneker. Why, you couldn’t ask for a more reasonable man. Saw the point at once.
“Don’t you go making any fool promises on the strength of what Banneker said to you,” commented Haring.
With malign relish, Banneker looked up in the Sunday advertising the leading theater display, went to the musical comedy there exploited, and presently devoted a column to giving it a terrific and only half-merited slashing for vapid and gratuitous indecency. The play, which had been going none too well, straightway sold out a fortnight in advance, thereby attesting the power of the press as well as the appeal of pruriency to an eager and jaded public. Zucker left a note on the editorial desk warmly thanking his confrère for this evidence of coöperation.
Life was practicing its lesser ironies upon Banneker whilst maturing its greater ones.