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

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

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

"Possibly it has improved. Or--well, at any rate, there was something there. My railroad man thinks the affair drove Banneker out of his job.

The fact of his being woman-proof here points to its having been serious."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Dangerous, my young friend! Dangerous!"

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

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

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

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

"Yes. This is only a truce."

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

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

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

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

It was a first Saturday in October, New York's homing month for its indigenous social birds and butterflies, when The House triply blinked itself into darkness at the untimely hour of eleven-forty-five. There was the usual heterogeneous crowd there, alike in one particular alone, that every guest represented, if not necessarily distinction, at least achievement in his own line. Judge Willis Enderby, many times invited, had for the first time come. At five minutes after midnight, the incorruptible doorkeeper sent an urgent message requesting Mr.

Banneker's personal attention to a party who declined politely but firmly to be turned away. The host, answering the summons, found Io. She held out both hands to him.

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

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

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

"Welcome," he assented.

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

"They lose," answered Banneker with finality.

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

"Your welcome includes full amnesty."

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

Which, accordingly, she did. Banneker greeted Esther Forbes and Cressey, and waited for the trio until they came down. There was a stir as they entered. There was usually a stir in any room which Io entered. She had that quality of sending waves across the most placid of social pools.

Willis Enderby was one of the first to greet her, a quick irradiation of pleasure relieving the austere beauty of his face.

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

"I had the magic password," smiled Io.

"Youth? Beauty? Or just audacity?"

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

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

"It's quite wonderful, isn't it! He never makes an effort, I'm told.

People just come to him. Where did you meet him?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Why is it another matter?"

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

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

"I trust nobody," disclosed the lawyer, a little sternly, "who is represented by what The Patriot is and does, whether it be Marrineal, Banneker, or another." His glance, wandering about the room, fell on Russell Edmonds, seated in a corner talking with the Great Gaines.

"Unless it be Edmonds over there," he qualified. "All his life he has fought me as a corporation lawyer; yet I have the queer feeling that I could trust the inmost secret of my life to his honor. Probably I'm an old fool, eh?"

Io devoted a moment's study to the lined and worn face of the veteran.

"No. I think you're right," she pronounced.