CHAPTER XIII
In the regular course of political events, Laird was renominated on a fusion ticket. Thereupon the old ring, which had so long battened on the corruption or local government, put up a sleek and presentable figurehead. Marrineal nominated himself amidst the Homeric laughter of the professional politicians. How’s he goin’ to get anywhere, they demanded with great relish of the joke, when he ain’t got any organization at-tall! Presently the savor oozed out of that joke. Marrineal, it appeared, did have an organization, of sorts; worse, he had gathered to him, by methods not peculiarly his own, the support of the lesser East-Side foreign language press, which may or may not have believed in his protestations of fealty to the Common People, but certainly did appreciate the liberality of his political advertising appropriation, advertising, in this sense, to be accorded its freest interpretation. Worst of all, he had Banneker.
Banneker’s editorials, not upon Marrineal himself (for he was too shrewd for that), but upon the cause of which Marrineal was standard-bearer, were persuasive, ingenious, forceful, and, to the average mind, convincing. Was Banneker himself convinced? It was a question which he resolutely refused to follow to its logical conclusion. Of the justice of the creed which The Patriot upheld, he was perfectly confident. But did Marrineal represent that creed? Did he represent anything but Marrineal? Stifling his misgivings, Banneker flung himself the more determinedly into the fight. It became apparent that he was going to swing an important fraction of the labor vote, despite the opposition of such clear-eyed leaders as McClintick. To this extent he menaced the old ring rather than the forces of reform, led by Laird and managed by Enderby. On the other hand, he was drawing from Laird, in so far as he still influenced the voters who had followed The Patriot in its original support of the reform movement. That Marrineal could not be elected, both of his opponents firmly believed; and in this belief, notwithstanding his claims of forthcoming victory, the independent candidate privately concurred. It would be enough, for the time, to defeat decisively whichever rival he turned his heaviest guns upon in the final onset; that would insure his future political prestige. Thus far, in his speeches, he had hit out impartially at both sides, denouncing the old ring for its corruption, girding at Laird as a fake reformer secretly committed to Wall Street through Judge Enderby, corporation lawyer, as intermediary.
Herein Banneker had refrained from following him. Ever the cat at the hole’s mouth, the patient lurker, the hopeful waiter upon the event, the proprietor of The Patriot forbore to press his editorial chief. He still mistrusted the strength of his hold upon Banneker; feared a defiance when he could ill afford to meet it. What he most hoped was some development which would turn Banneker’s heavy guns upon Laird so that, with the defeat of the fusion ticket candidate, the public would say, “The Patriot made him and The Patriot broke him.”
Laird played into Marrineal’s hands. Indignant at what he regarded as a desertion of principles by The Patriot, the fusion nominee, in one of his most important addresses, devoted a stinging ten minutes to a consideration of that paper, its proprietor, and its editorial writer, in its chosen role of “friend of labor.” His text was the Veridian strike, his information the version which McClintick furnished him; he cited Banneker by name, and challenged him as a prostituted mind and a corrupted pen. Though Laird had spoken as he honestly believed, he did not have the whole story; McClintick, in his account, had ignored the important fact that Marrineal, upon being informed of conditions, had actually (no matter what his motive) remedied them. Banneker, believing that Laird was fully apprised, as he knew Enderby to be, was outraged. This alleged reformer, this purist in politics, this apostle of honor and truth, was holding him up to contumely, through half-truths, for a course which any decent man must, in conscience, have followed. He composed a seething editorial, tore it up, substituted another wherein he made reply to the charges, in a spirit of ingenuity rather than ingenuousness, for The Patriot case, while sound, was one which could not well be thrown open to The Patriot’s public; and planned vengeance when the time should come.
Io, on a brief trip from Philadelphia, lunched with him that week, and found him distrait.
“It’s only politics,” he said. “You’re not interested in politics,” and, as usual, “Let’s talk about you.”
She gave him that look which was like a smile deep in the shadows of her eyes. “Ban, do you know the famous saying of Terence?”
He quoted the “Homo sum.” “That one?” he asked.
She nodded. “Now, hear my version: ‘I am a woman; nothing that touches my man is alien to my interests.’”
He laughed. But there was a note of gratitude in his voice, almost humble, as he said: “You’re the only woman in the world, Io, who can quote the classics and not seem a prig.”
“That’s because I’m beautiful,” she retorted impudently. “Tell me I’m beautiful, Ban!”
“You’re the loveliest witch in the world,” he cried.
“So much for flattery. Now—politics.”
He recounted the Laird charges.
“No; that wasn’t fair,” she agreed. “It was most unfair. But I don’t believe Bob Laird knew the whole story. Did you ask him?”
“Ask him? I certainly did not. You don’t understand much about politics, dearest.”
“I was thinking of it from the point of view of the newspaper. If you’re going to answer him in The Patriot, I should think you’d want to know just what his basis was. Besides, if he’s wrong, I believe he’d take it back.”
“After all the damage has been done. He won’t get the chance.” Banneker’s jaw set firm.
“What shall you do now?”
“Wait my chance, load my pen, and shoot to kill.”
“Let me see the editorial before you print it.”
“All right, Miss Meddlesome. But you won’t let your ideas of fair play run away with you and betray me to the enemy? You’re a Laird man, aren’t you?”
Her voice fell to a caressing half-note. “I’m a Banneker woman—in everything. Won’t you ever remember that?”
“No. You’ll never be that. You’ll always be Io; yourself; remote and unattainable in the deeper sense.”
“Do you say that?” she answered.
“Oh, don’t think that I complain. You’ve made life a living glory for me. Yet”—his face grew wistful—“I suppose—I don’t know how to say it—I’m like the shepherd in the poem,
Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade.’
Io, why do I always think in poetry, when I’m with you?”
“I want you always to,” she said, which was a more than sufficient answer.
Io had been back in Philadelphia several days, and had ‘phoned Banneker that she was coming over on the following Tuesday, when, having worked at the office until early evening, he ran around the corner to Katie’s for dinner. At the big table “Bunny” Fitch of The Record was holding forth.
Fitch was that invaluable type of the political hack-writer, a lackey of the mind, instinctively subservient to his paper’s slightest opinion, hating what it hates, loving what it loves, with the servile adherence of a medieval churchman. As The Record was bitter upon reform, its proprietor having been sadly disillusioned in youth by a lofty but abortive experiment in perfecting human nature from which he never recovered, Bunny lost no opportunity to damn all reformers.
“Can’t you imagine the dirty little snob,” he was saying, as Banneker entered, “creeping and fawning and cringing for their favors? Up for membership at The Retreat. Dines with Poultney Masters, Jr., at his club. Can’t you hear him running home to wifie all het up and puffed like a toad, and telling her about it?”
“Who’s all this, Bunny?” inquired Banneker, who had taken in only the last few words.
“Our best little society climber, the Honorable Robert Laird,” returned the speaker, and reverted to his inspirational pen-picture: “Runs home to wifie and crows, ‘What do you think, my dear! Junior Masters called me ‘Bob’ to-day!”
In a flash, the murderous quality of the thing bit into Banneker’s sensitive brain. “Junior Masters called me ‘Bob’ to-day.” The apotheosis of snobbery! Swift and sure poison for the enemy if properly compounded with printer’s ink. How pat it fitted in with the carefully fostered conception, insisted upon in every speech by Marrineal, of the mayor as a Wall Street and Fifth Avenue tool and toady!
But what exactly had Bunny Fitch said? Was he actually quoting Laird? If so, direct or from hearsay? Or was he merely paraphrasing or perhaps only characterizing? There was a dim ring in Banneker’s cerebral ear of previous words, half taken in, which would indicate the latter—and ruin the deadly plan, strike the poison-dose from his hand. Should he ask Fitch? Pin him down to the details?
The character-sketcher was now upon the subject of Judge Enderby. “Sly old wolf! Wants to be senator one of these days. Or maybe governor. A receptive’ candidate! Wah! Pulls every wire he can lay hand on, and then waits for the honor to be forced upon him.... Good Lord! It’s eight o’clock. I’m late.”
Dropping a bill on the table he hurried out. Half-minded to stop him, Banneker took a second thought. Why should he? His statement had been definite. Anyway, he could be called up on the morrow. Dining hastily and in deep, period-building thought, Banneker returned to the office, locked himself in, and with his own hand drafted the editorial built on that phrase of petty and terrific import: “Junior Masters called me Bob’ to-day.”
After it was written he would not for the world have called up Fitch to verify the central fact. He couldn’t risk it. He scheduled the broadside for the second morning following.... But there was Io! He had promised. Well, he was to meet her at a dinner party at the Forbes’s. She could see it then, if she hadn’t forgotten.... No; that, too, was a subterfuge hope. Io never forgot.
As if to assure the resumption of their debate, the talk of the Forbes dinner table turned to the mayoralty fight. Shrewd judges of events and tendencies were there; Thatcher Forbes, himself, not the least of them; it was the express opinion that Laird stood a very good chance of victory.
“Unless they can definitely pin the Wall Street label on him,” suggested some one.
“That might beat him; it’s the only thing that could,” another opined.
Hugging his withering phrase to his heart, Banneker felt a growing exultation.
“Nobody but The Patriot—” began Mrs. Forbes contemptuously, when she abruptly recalled who was at her table. “The newspapers are doing their worst, but I think they won’t make people believe much of it,” she amended.
“Is Laird really the Wall Street candidate?” inquired Esther Forbes.
Parley Welland, Io’s cousin, himself an amateur politician, answered her: “He is or he isn’t, according as you look at it. Masters and his crowd are mildly for him, because they haven’t any objection to a decent, straight city government, at present. Sometimes they have.”
“On that principle, Horace Vanney must have,” remarked Jim Maitland. “He’s fighting Laird, tooth and nail, and certainly he represents one phase of Wall Street activity.”
“My revered uncle,” drawled Herbert Cressey, “considers that the present administration is too tender of the working-man—or, rather, working-woman—when she strikes. Don’t let ’em strike; or, if they do strike, have the police bat ’em on the head.”
“What’s this administration got to do with Vanney’s mills? I thought they were in Jersey,” another diner asked.
“So they are, the main ones. But he’s backing some of the local clothing manufacturers, the sweat-shop lot. They’ve been having strikes. That interferes with profits. Uncle wants the good old days of the night-stick and the hurry-up wagon back. He’s even willing to spend a little money on the good cause.”
Io, seated on Banneker’s left, turned to him. “Is that true, Ban?”
“I’ve heard rumors to that effect,” he replied evasively.
“Won’t it put The Patriot in a queer position, to be making common cause with an enemy of labor?”
“It isn’t a question of Horace Vanney, at all,” he declared. “He’s just an incident.”
“When are you going to write your Laird editorial?”
“All written. I’ve got a proof in my pocket.”
She made as if to hold out her hand; but withdrew it. “After dinner,” she said. “The little enclosed porch off the conservatory.”
Amused and confirmatory glances followed them as they withdrew together. But there was no ill-natured commentary. So habituated was their own special set to the status between them that it was accepted with tolerance, even with the good-humored approval with which human nature regards a logical inter-attraction.
“Are you sure that you want to plunge into politics, Io?” Banneker asked, looking down at her as she seated herself in the cushioned chaise longue.
Her mouth smiled assent, but her eyes were intent and serious. He dropped the proof into her lap, bending over and kissing her lips as he did so. For a moment her fingers interlaced over his neck.
“I’ll understand it,” she breathed, interpreting into his caress a quality of pleading.
Before she had read halfway down the column, she raised to him a startled face. “Are you sure, Ban?” she interrogated.
“Read the rest,” he suggested.
She complied. “What a terrible power little things have,” she sighed. “That would make me despise Laird.”
“A million other people will feel the same way to-morrow.”
“To-morrow? Is it to be published so soon?”
“In the morning’s issue.”
“Ban; is it true? Did he say that?”
“I have it from a man I’ve known ever since I came to New York. He’s reliable.”
“But it’s so unlike Bob Laird.”
“Why is it unlike him?” he challenged with a tinge of impatience. “Hasn’t he been playing about lately with the Junior Masters?”
“Do you happen to know,” she replied quietly, “that Junior and Bob Laird were classmates and clubmates at college, and that they probably always have called each other by their first names?”
“No. Have you ever heard them?” Angry regret beset him the instant the question had passed his lips. If she replied in the affirmative—
“No; I’ve never happened to hear them,” she admitted; and he breathed more freely.
“Then my evidence is certainly more direct than yours,” he pointed out.
“Ban; that charge once made public is going to be unanswerable, isn’t it? Just because the thing itself is so cheap and petty?”
“Yes. You’ve got the true journalistic sense, Io.”
“Then there’s the more reason why you shouldn’t print it unless you know it to be true.”
“But it is true.” Almost he had persuaded himself that it was; that it must be.
“The Olneys are having the Junior Masters to dine this evening. I know because I was asked; but of course I wanted to be here, where you are. Let me call Junior on the ‘phone and ask him.”
Banneker flushed. “You can’t do that, Io.”
“Why not?”
“Why, it isn’t the sort of thing that one can very well do,” he said lamely.
“Not ask Junior if he and Bob Laird are old chums and call each other by their first names?”
“How silly it would sound!” He tried to laugh the proposal away. “In any case, it wouldn’t be conclusive. Besides, it’s too late by this time.”
“Too late?”
“Yes. The forms are closed.”
“You couldn’t change it?”
“Why, I suppose I could, in an extreme emergency. But, dearest, it’s all right. Why be so difficult?”
“It isn’t playing the game, Ban.”
“Indeed, it is. It’s playing the game as Laird has elected to play it. Did he make inquiries before he attacked us on the Veridian strike?”
“That’s true,” she conceded.
“And my evidence for this is direct. You’ll have to trust me and my professional judgment, Io.”
She sighed, but accepted this, saying, “If he is that kind of a snob it ought to be published. Suppose he sues for libel?”
“He’d be laughed out of court. Why, what is there libelous in saying that a man claims to have been called by his first name by another man?” Banneker chuckled.
“Well, it ought to be libelous if it isn’t true,” asserted Io warmly. “It isn’t fair or decent that a newspaper can hold a man up as a boot-licker and toady, if he isn’t one, and yet not be held responsible for it.”
“Well, dearest, I didn’t make the libel laws. They’re hard enough as it is.” His thought turned momentarily to Ely Ives, the journalistic sandbag, and he felt a momentary qualm. “I don’t pretend to like everything about my job. One of these days I’ll have a newspaper of my own, and you shall censor every word that goes in it.”
“Help! Help!” she laughed. “I shouldn’t have the time for anything else; not even for being in love with the proprietor. Ban,” she added wistfully, “does it cost a very great deal to start a new paper?”
“Yes. Or to buy an old one.”
“I have money of my own, you know,” she ventured.
He fondled her hand. “That isn’t even a temptation,” he replied.
But it was. For a paper of his own was farther away from him than it had ever been. That morning he had received his statement from his broker. To date his losses on Union Thread were close to ninety thousand dollars.
Who shall measure the spreading and seeding potentialities of a thistle-down or a catchy phrase? Within twenty-four hours after the appearance of Banneker’s editorial, the apocryphal boast of Mayor Laird to his wife had become current political history. Current? Rampant, rather. Messenger boys greeted each other with “Dearie, Mr. Masters calls me Bob.” Brokers on ‘Change shouted across a slow day’s bidding, “What’s your cute little pet name? Mine’s Bobbie.” Huge buttons appeared with miraculous celerity in the hands of the street venders inscribed,
“Call me Bob but Vote for Marrineal”
Vainly did Judge Enderby come out with a statement to the press, declaring the whole matter a cheap and nasty fabrication, and challenging The Patriot to cite its authority. The damage already done was irreparable. Sighting Banneker at luncheon a few days later, Horace Vanney went so far as to cross the room to greet and congratulate him.
“A master-stroke,” he said, pressing Banneker’s hand with his soft palm. “We’re glad to have you with us. Won’t you call me up and lunch with me soon?”
At The Retreat, after polo, that Saturday, the senior Masters met Banneker face to face in a hallway, and held him up.
“Politics is politics. Eh?” he grunted.
“It’s a great game,” returned the journalist.
“Think up that ‘call-me-Bob’ business yourself?”
“I got it from a reliable source.”
“Damn lie,” remarked Poultney Masters equably. “Did the work, though. Banneker, why didn’t you let me know you were in the market?”
“In the stock-market? What has that—”
“You know what market I mean,” retorted the great man with unconcealed contempt. “What you don’t know is your own game. Always seek the highest bidder before you sell, my boy.”
“I’ll take that from no man—” began Banneker hotly.
Immediately he was sensible of a phenomenon. His angry eyes, lifted to Poultney Masters’s glistening little beads, were unable to endure the vicious amusement which he read therein. For the first time in his life he was stared down. He passed on, followed by a low and scornful hoot.
Meeting Willis Enderby while charge and counter-charge still rilled the air, Io put the direct query to him:
“Cousin Billy, what is the truth about the Laird-Masters story?”
“Made up out of whole cloth,” responded Enderby.
“Who made it up?”
Comprehension and pity were in his intonation as he replied: “Not Banneker, I understand. It was passed on to him.”
“Then you don’t think him to blame?” she cried eagerly.
“I can’t exculpate him as readily as that. Such a story, considering its inevitable—I may say its intended—consequences, should never have been published without the fullest investigation.”
“Suppose”—she hesitated—“he had it on what he considered good authority?”
“He has never even cited his authority.”
“Couldn’t it have been confidential?” she pleaded.
“Io, do you know his authority? Has he told you?”
“No.”
Enderby’s voice was very gentle as he put his next question. “Do you trust Banneker, my dear?”
She met his regard, unflinchingly, but there was a piteous quiver about the lips which formed the answer. “I have trusted him. Absolutely.”
“Ah; well! I’ve seen too much good and bad too inextricably mingled in human nature, to judge on part information.”
Election day came and passed. On the evening of it the streets were ribald with crowds gleefully shrieking! “Call me Dennis, wifie. I’m stung!” Laird had been badly beaten, running far behind Marrineal. Halloran, the ring candidate, was elected. Banneker did it.
As he looked back on the incidents of the campaign and its culminating event with a sense of self-doubt poisoning his triumph, that which most sickened him of his own course was not the overt insult from the financial emperor, but the soft-palmed gratulation of Horace Vanney.
CHAPTER XIV
Ambition is the most conservative of influences upon a radical mind. No sooner had Tertius Marrineal formulated his political hopes than there were manifested in the conduct of The Patriot strange symptoms of a hankering after respectability. Essentially Marrineal was not respectable, any more than he was radical. He was simply and singly selfish. But, having mapped out for himself a career which did not stop short of a stately and deep-porticoed edifice in Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue (for his conception of the potential leverage of a great newspaper increased with The Patriot’s circulation), he deemed it advisable to moderate some of the more blatant features, on the same principle which had induced him to reform the Veridian lumber mill abuses, lest they be brought up to his political detriment later. A long-distance thinker, Tertius Marrineal.
Operating through invisible channels and by a method which neither Banneker nor Edmonds ever succeeded in fathoming, his influence now began to be felt for the better tone of the news columns. They became less glaringly sensational. Yet the quality of the news upon which the paper specialized was the same; it was the handling which was insensibly altered. That this was achieved without adversely affecting circulation was another proof, added to those already accumulated, of Marrineal’s really eminent journalistic capacities. The change was the less obvious, because The Patriot’s competitors in the Great Three-Ringed Circus of Sensation had found themselves being conducted, under that leadership, farther along the primrose path of stimulation and salaciousness than they had realized, and had already modified their policies.
Even under the new policy, however, The Patriot would hardly have proven, upon careful analysis, more decent or self-respecting. But it was less obvious; cleverer in avoiding the openly offensive. Capron had been curbed in his pictorial orgies. The copy-readers had been supplied with a list of words and terms tabooed from the captions. But the influence of Severance was still potent in the make-up of the news. While Banneker was relieved at the change, he suspected its impermanency should it prove unsuccessful. To neither his chief editorial writer nor Russell Edmonds had the proprietor so much as hinted at the modification of scheme. His silence to these two was part of his developing policy of separating more widely the different departments of the paper in order that he might be the more quietly and directly authoritative over all.
The three men were lunching late at Delmonico’s, and talking politics, when Edmonds leaned forward in his seat to look toward the entrance.
“There’s Severance,” said he. “What’s the matter with him?”
The professional infuser of excitements approached walking carefully among the tables. His eyes burned in a white face.
“On one of his sprees,” diagnosed Banneker. “Oh, Severance! Sit down here.”
“I beg your p-p-pardon.” Severance spoke with marked deliberation and delicacy, but with a faint stammer. “These not b-being office hours, I have not the p-pleasure of your acquaintance.”
Marrineal smiled.
“The p-pale rictus of the damned,” observed Severance. “As one damned soul to another, I c-confess a longing for companionship of m-my own sort. Therefore I accept your invitation. Waiter, a Scotch h-highball.”
“We were talking of—” began Banneker, when the newcomer broke in:
“Talk of m-me. Of me and m-my work. I exult in my w-work. L-like Mr. Whitman, I celebrate myself. I p-point with pride. What think you, gentlemen, of to-day’s paper in honor of which I have t-taken my few drinks?”
“If you mean the Territon story,” growled Edmonds, “it’s rotten.”
“Precisely. I thank you for your g-golden opinion. Rotten. Exactly as intended.”
“Put a woman’s good name on trial and sentence it on hearsay without appeal or recourse.”
“There is always the danger of going too far along those lines,” pointed out Marrineal judicially.
“Pardon me, all-wise Proprietor. The d-danger lies in not going far enough. The frightful p-peril of being found dull.”
“The Territon story assays too thin in facts, as we’ve put it out. If Mrs. Territon doesn’t leave her husband now for McLaurin,” opined Marrineal, “we are in a difficult position. I happen to know her and I very much doubt—”
“Doubt not at all, d-doubting Tertius. The very fact of our publishing the story will force her hand. It’s an achievement, that story. No other p-paper has a line of it.”
“Not more than one other would touch it, in its present form,” said Banneker. “It’s too raw.”
“The more virtue to us. I r-regard that story as an inspiration. Nobody could have brought it off b-but me. ‘A god, a god their Severance ruled,’” punned the owner of the name.
“Beelzebub, god of filth and maggots,” snarled Edmonds.
“Bacchus, god of all true inspiration!” cried Severance. “Waiter, slave of B-Bacchus, where is my Scotch?”
“Severance, you’re going too far along your chosen line,” declared Banneker bluntly.
“Yes; we must tone down a little,” agreed Marrineal.
The sensationalist lifted calmly luminous eyes to his chief. “Why?” he queried softly. “Are you meditating a change? Does the journalistic l-lady of easy virtue begin to yearn f-for the paths of respectability?”
“Steady, Severance,” warned Edmonds.
At the touch of the curb the other flamed into still, white wrath. “If you’re going to be a whore,” he said deliberately, “play the whore’s game. I’m one and I know it. Banneker’s one, but hasn’t the courage to face it. You’re one, Edmonds—no, you’re not; not even that. You’re the hallboy that f-fetches the drinks—”
Marrineal had risen. Severance turned upon him.
“I salute you, Madam of our high-class establishment. When you take your p-price, you at least look the business in the face. No illusions for M-Madam Marrineal.... By the w-way, I resign from the house.”
“Are you coming, Mr. Edmonds?” said Marrineal. “You’ll sign the check for me, will you, Mr. Banneker?”
Left alone with the disciple of Bacchus and Beelzebub, the editor said:
“Better get home, Severance. Come in to-morrow, will you?”
“No. I’m q-quite in earnest about resigning. No further use for the damned j-job now.”
“I never could see why you had any use for it in the first place. Was it money?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, I see.”
“You d-don’t see at all. I wanted the m-money for a purpose. The purpose was a woman. I w-wanted to keep pace with her and her s-set. It was the set to which I rightly belonged, but I’d dropped out. I thought I p-preferred drink. I didn’t after she got hold of me. I d-don’t know why the d-devil I’m telling you all this.”
“I’m sorry, Severance,” said Banneker honestly.
The other raised his glass. “Here’s to her,” he said. He drank. “I wish her nothing w-worse than she’s got. Her name is—”
“Wait a moment, Severance,” cut in Banneker sharply. “Don’t say anything that you’ll regret. Naming of names—”
“Oh, there’s no harm in this, n-now,” said Severance wearily. “Hers is smeared in filth all over our third page. It is Maud Territon. What do you think of P-Patriotic journalism, anyway, Banneker?”
CHAPTER XV
With the accession to political control of Halloran and the old ring, the influence of Horace Vanney and those whom he represented, became as potent as it was secret. “Salutary measures” had been adopted toward the garment-workers; a “firm hand” on the part of the police had succeeded in holding down the strike through the fall and winter; but in the early spring it was revived and spread throughout the city, even to the doors of the shopping district. In another sense than the geographical it was nearing the great department stores, for quiet efforts were being made by some of the strike leaders to organize and unionize the underpaid salesmen and saleswomen of the shops. Inevitably this drew into active hostility to the strikers the whole power of the stores with their immense advertising influence.
Very little news of the strike got into the papers except where some clash with the police was of too great magnitude to be ignored; then the trend of the articles was generally hostile to the strikers. The Sphere published the facts briefly, as a matter of journalistic principle; The Ledger published them with violent bias, as a matter of journalistic habit; the other papers, including The Patriot, suppressed or minimized to as great an extent as they deemed feasible.
That the troubles of some thousands of sweated wage-earners, employed upon classes of machine-made clothing which would never come within the ken of the delicately clad women of her world, could in any manner affect Io Eyre, was most improbable. But the minor fate who manipulates improbabilities elected that she should be in a downtown store at the moment when a squad of mounted police charged a crowd of girl-strikers. Hearing the scream of panic, she ran out, saw ignorant, wild-eyed girls, hardly more than children, beaten down, trampled, hurried hither and thither, seized upon and thrown into patrol wagons, and when she reached her car, sick and furious, found an eighteen-year-old Lithuanian blonde flopping against the rear fender in a dead faint. Strong as a young panther, Io picked up the derelict in her arms, hoisted her into the tonneau, and bade the disgusted chauffeur, “Home.” What she heard from the revived girl, in the talk which followed, sent her, hot-hearted, to the police court where the arrests would be brought up for primary judgment.
The first person that she met there was Willis Enderby.
“If you’re on this strike case, Cousin Billy,” she said, “I’m against you, and I’m ashamed of you.”
“You probably aren’t the former, and you needn’t be the latter,” he replied.
“Aren’t you Mr. Vanney’s lawyer? And isn’t he interested in the strike?”
“Not openly. It happens that I’m here for the strikers.”
Io stared, incredulous. “For the strikers? You mean that they’ve retained you?”
“Oh, no. I’m really here in my capacity as President of the Law Enforcement Society; to see that these women get the full protection of the law, to which they are entitled. There is reason to believe that they haven’t had it. And you?”
Io told him.
“Are you willing to go on the stand?”
“Certainly; if it will do any good.”
“Not much, so far as the case goes. But it will force it into the newspapers. ‘Society Leader Takes Part of Working-Girls,’ and so-on. The publicity will be useful.”
The magistrate on the bench was lenient; dismissed most of the prisoners with a warning against picketing; fined a few; sent two to jail. He seemed surprised and not a little impressed by the distinguished Mrs. Delavan Eyre’s appearance in the proceedings, and sent word out to the reporters’ room, thereby breaking up a game of pinochle at its point of highest interest. There was a man there from The Patriot.
With eager expectation Io, back in her Philadelphia apartment, sent out for a copy of the New York Patriot. Greatly to her disgust she found herself headlined, half-toned, described; but with very little about the occasion of her testimony, a mere mention of the strike and nothing whatsoever regarding the police brutalities which had so stirred her wrath. Io discovered that she had lost her taste for publicity, in a greater interest. Her first thought was to write Banneker indignantly; her second to ask explanations when he called her on the ‘phone as he now did every noon; her third to let the matter stand until she went to New York and saw him. On her arrival, several days later, she went direct to his office. Banneker’s chief interest, next to his ever-thrilling delight in seeing her, was in the part played by Willis Enderby.
“What is he doing in that galley?” he wondered.
To her explanation he shook his head. Something more than that, he was sure. Asking Io’s permission he sent for Russell Edmonds.
“Isn’t this a new role for Enderby?” he asked.
“Not at all. He’s been doing this sort of thing always. Usually on the quiet.”
“The fact that this is far from being on the quiet suggests politics, doesn’t it? Making up to the labor vote?”
“What on earth should Cousin Billy care for the labor vote?” demanded Io. “Mr. Laird is dead politically, isn’t he?”
“But Judge Enderby isn’t. Mr. Edmonds will tell you that much.”
“True enough. Enderby is a man to be reckoned with. Particularly if—” Edmonds paused, hesitant.
“If—” prompted Banneker. “Fire ahead, Pop.”
“If Marrineal should declare in on the race for the governorship, next fall.”
“Without any state organization? Is that probable?” asked Banneker.
“Only in case he should make a combination with the old ring crowd, who are, naturally, grateful for his aid in putting over Halloran for them. It’s quite within the possibilities.”
“After the way The Patriot and Mr. Marrineal himself have flayed the ring?” exclaimed Io. “It isn’t possible. How could he so go back on himself?”
Edmonds turned his fine and serious smile upon her. “Mr. Marrineal’s guiding principle of politics and journalism is that the public never remembers. If he persuades the ring to nominate him, Enderby is the logical candidate against him. In my belief he’s the only man who could beat him.”
“Do you really think, Mr. Edmonds, that Judge Enderby’s help to the arrested women is a political move?”
“That’s the way it would be interpreted by all the politicians. Personally, I don’t believe it.”
“His sympathies, professional and personal, are naturally on the other side,” pointed out Banneker.
“But not yours, surely Ban!” cried Io. “Yours ought to be with them. If you could have seen them as I did, helpless and panic-stricken, with the horses pressing in on them—”
“Of course I’m with them,” warmly retorted Banneker. “If I controlled the news columns of the paper, I’d make another Sippiac Mills story of this.” No sooner had he said it than he foresaw to what reply he had inevitably laid himself open. It came from Io’s lips.
“You control the editorial column, Ban.”
“It’s a subject to be handled in the news, not the editorials,” he said hastily.
The silence that fell was presently relieved by Edmonds. “It’s also being handled in the advertising columns. Have you seen the series of announcements by the Garment Manufacturers’ Association? There are four of ’em now in proof.”
“No. I haven’t seen them,” answered Banneker.
“They’re able. But on the whole they aren’t as able as the strikers’ declaration in rebuttal, offered us to-day, one-third of a page at regular advertising rates, same as the manufacturers’.”
“Enderby?” queried Banneker quickly.
“I seem to detect his fine legal hand in it.”
Banneker’s face became moody. “I suppose Haring refused to publish it.”
“No. Haring’s for taking it.”
“How is that?” said the editor, astonished. “I thought Haring—”
“You think of Haring as if Haring thought as you and I think. That isn’t fair,” declared Edmonds. “Haring’s got a business mind, straight within its limitations. He accepts this strike stuff just as he accepts blue-sky mine fakes and cancer cures in which he has no belief, because he considers that a newspaper is justified in taking any ad. that is offered—and let the reader beware. Besides, it goes against his grain to turn down real money.”
“Will it appear in to-morrow’s paper?” questioned Io.
“Probably, if it appears at all.”
“Why the ‘if’?” said Banneker. “Since Haring has passed it—”
“There is also Marrineal.”
“Haring sent it to him?”
“Not at all. The useful and ubiquitous Ives, snooping as usual, came upon it. Hence it is now in Marrineal’s hands. Likely to remain there, I should think.”
“Mr. Marrineal won’t let it be published?” asked Io.
“That’s my guess,” returned the veteran.
“And mine,” added Banneker.
He felt her eyes of mute appeal fixed on him and read her meaning.
“All right, Io,” he promised quietly. “If Mr. Marrineal won’t print it in advertising, I’ll print it as editorial.”
“When?” Io and Edmonds spoke in one breath.
“Day after to-morrow.”
“That’s war,” said Edmonds.
“In a good cause,” declared Io proudly.
“The cause of the independence of Errol Banneker,” said the veteran. “It was bound to come. Go in and win, son. I’ll get you a proof of the ad.”
“Ban!” said Io with brightened regard.
“Well?”
“Will you put something at the head of your column for me, if that editorial appears?”
“What? Wait! I know. The quotation from the Areopagitica. Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Fine! I’ll do it.”
On the following morning The Patriot appeared as usual. The first of the Manufacturers’ Association arguments to the public was conspicuously displayed. Of the strikers’ reply—not a syllable. Banneker went to Haring’s office; found the business manager gloomy, but resigned.
“Mr. Marrineal turned it down. He’s got the right. That’s all there is to it,” was his version.
“Not quite,” remarked Banneker, and went home to prove it.
Into the editorial which was to constitute the declaration of Errol Banneker’s independence went much thinking, and little writing. The pronunciamento of the strikers, prefaced by a few words of explanation, and followed by some ringing sentences as to the universal right to a fair field, was enough. At the top of the column the words of Milton, in small, bold print. Across the completed copy he wrote “Thursday. Must.”
Never had Banneker felt in finer fettle for war than when he awoke that Thursday morning. Contrary to his usual custom, he did not even look at the copy of The Patriot brought to his breakfast table; he wanted to have that editorial fresh to eye and mind when Marrineal called him to account for it. For this was a challenge which Marrineal could not ignore. He breakfasted with a copy of “The Undying Voices” propped behind his coffee cup, refreshing himself before battle with the delights of allusive memory, bringing back the days when he and lo had read and discovered together. It was noon when he reached the office.
From the boy at the entrance he learned that Mr. Marrineal had come in. Doubtless he would find a summons on his desk. None was there. Perhaps Marrineal would come to him. He waited. Nothing. Taking up the routine of the day, he turned to his proofs, with a view to laying out his schedule.
The top one was his editorial on the strikers’ cause.
Across it was blue-penciled the word “Killed.”
Banneker snatched up the morning’s issue. The editorial was not there. In its place he read, from the top of the column: “And though all the winds of doctrine blow”—and so on, to the close of Milton’s proud challenge, followed by:
“Would You Let Your Baby Drink Carbolic?”
For the strike editorial had been substituted one of Banneker’s typical “mother-fetchers,” as he termed them, very useful in their way, and highly approved by the local health authorities. This one was on the subject of pure milk. Its association with the excerpt from the Areopagitica (which, having been set for a standing head, was not cut out by the “Killed”) set the final touch of irony upon the matter. Even in his fury Banneker laughed.
He next considered the handwriting of the blue-penciled monosyllable. It was not Marrineal’s blunt, backhand script. Whose was it? Haring’s? Trailing the proof in his hand he went to the business manager’s room.
“Did you kill this?”
“Yes.” Haring got to his feet, white and shaking. “For God’s sake, Mr. Banneker—”
“I’m not going to hurt you—yet. By what right did you do it?”
“Orders.”
“Marrineal’s?”
“Yes.”
With no further word, Banneker strode to the owner’s office, pushed open the door, and entered. Marrineal looked up, slightly frowning.
“Did you kill this editorial?”
Marrineal’s frown changed to a smile. “Sit down, Mr. Banneker.”
“Marrineal, did you kill my editorial?”
“Isn’t your tone a trifle peremptory, for an employee?”
“It won’t take more than five seconds for me to cease to be an employee,” said Banneker grimly.
“Ah? I trust you’re not thinking of resigning. By the way, some reporter called on me last week to confirm a rumor that you were about to resign. Let me see; what paper? Ah; yes; it wasn’t a newspaper, at least, not exactly. The Searchlight. I told her—it happened to be a woman—that the story was quite absurd.”
Something in the nature of a cold trickle seemed to be flowing between Banneker’s brain and his tongue. He said with effort, “Will you be good enough to answer my question?”
“Certainly. Mr. Banneker, that was an ill-advised editorial. Or, rather, an ill-timed one. I didn’t wish it published until we had time to talk it over.”
“We could have talked it over yesterday.”
“But I understood that you were busy with callers yesterday. That charming Mrs. Eyre, who, by the way, is interested in the strikers, isn’t she? Or was it the day before yesterday that she was here?”
The Searchlight! And now Io Eyre! No doubt of what Marrineal meant. The cold trickle had passed down Banneker’s spine, and settled at his knees making them quite unreliable. Inexplicably it still remained to paralyze his tongue.
“We’re reasonable men, you and I, Mr. Banneker,” pursued Marrineal in his quiet, detached tones. “This is the first time I have ever interfered. You must do me the justice to admit that. Probably it will be the last. But in this case it was really necessary. Shall we talk it over later?”
“Yes,” said Banneker listlessly.
In the hallway he ran into somebody, who cursed him, and then said, oh, he hadn’t noticed who it was; Pop Edmonds. Edmonds disappeared into Marrineal’s office. Banneker regained his desk and sat staring at the killed proof. He thought vaguely that he could appreciate the sensation of a man caught by an octopus. Yet Marrineal didn’t look like an octopus.... What did he look like? What was that subtle resemblance which had eluded him in the first days of their acquaintanceship? That emanation of chill quietude; those stagnant eyes?
He had it now! It dated back to his boyhood days. A crawling terror which, having escaped from a menagerie, had taken refuge in a pool, and there fixed its grip upon an unfortunate calf, and dragged—dragged—dragged the shrieking creature, until it went under. A crocodile.
His reverie was broken by the irruption of Russell Edmonds. An inch of the stem of the veteran’s dainty little pipe was clenched firmly between his teeth; but there was no bowl.
“Where’s the rest of your pipe?” asked Banneker, stupefied by this phenomenon.
“I’ve resigned,” said Edmonds.
“God! I wish I could,” muttered Banneker.