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

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

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

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

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

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

"Of necessity. What would you suppose?"

"Your information is fairly accurate."

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

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

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

"_And_ a free hand with my editorials?"

"Surely that will arrange itself."

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

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

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

"When did I write these?"

"You didn't."

"Who did?"

"I"

"They're dam' good."

"Aren't they!"

"Also, they're dam' thievery."

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

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

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

"The Patriot's! Mine!"

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

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

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

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

"I'm not going to quarrel with you over a definition, Mr. Banneker,"

said Marrineal. He leaned a little forward with a smile so frank and friendly that it quite astonished the other. "And I'm not going to let you go, either," he pursued. "You need me and I need you. I'm not fool enough to suppose that the imitation can ever continue to be as good as the real thing. We'll make it a fifty thousand guarantee, if you say so.

And, as for your editorial policy--well, I'll take a chance on your seeing reason. After all, there's plenty of earth to prance on without always treading on people's toes.... Well, don't decide now. Take your time to it." He rose and went to the door. There he turned, flapping the loose imitations in his hands.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI

Put to the direct question, as, for example, on the witness stand, Mr.

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

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

"He's got to have the cash," was the expert's opinion upon Banneker.

"There's your hold on him.... Quit? No danger. New York's in his blood.

He's in love with life, puppy-love; his clubs, his theater first-nights, his invitations to big houses which he seldom accepts, big people coming to his House with Three Eyes. And, of course, his sense of power in the paper. No; he won't quit. How could he? He'll compromise."

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

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

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

Ives put on a look of confidential assurance. "Be sure it's there. Only it isn't of the ordinary kind. Banneker is pretty big in his way. No,"

he pursued thoughtfully; "it isn't women, and it isn't Wall Street, and it isn't drink; it isn't even money, in the usual sense. But it's something. By the way, did I tell you that I'd found an acquaintance from the desert where Banneker hails from?"