"It's true, isn't it?"

"There's a measure of truth in it. But, Ban, you can't use Mr.

Marrineal's own paper to expose conditions in Mr. Marrineal's mother's mills. If he'd even directed you to hold off--"

"That's his infernal cleverness. I'd have told him to go to the devil."

"And resigned?"

"Of course."

"You can resign now," she pointed out. "But I think you'd be foolish.

You can do such big things. You _are_ doing such big things with The Patriot. Cousin Billy Enderby says that if Laird is elected it will be your doing. Where else could you find such opportunity?"

"Tell me this, Io," he said, after a moment of heavy-browed brooding very unlike his usual blithe certainty of bearing. "Suppose that lumber property were my own, and this thing had broken out."

"Oh, I'd say to print it, every word," she answered promptly. "Or"--she spoke very slowly and with a tremor of color flickering in her cheeks--"if it were mine, I'd tell you to print it."

He looked up with a transfigured face. His hand fell on hers, in the covert of the little shelter of plants behind which they sat. "Do you realize what that implies?" he questioned.

"Perfectly," she answered in her clear undertone.

He bent over to her hand, which turned, soft palm up, to meet his lips.

She whispered a warning and he raised his head quickly. Ely Ives had passed near by.

"Marrineal's familiar," said Banneker. "I wonder how he got here.

Certainly I didn't ask him.... Very well, Io. I'll compromise. But ... I don't think I'll put that quotation from the Areopagitica at the head of my column. That will have to wait. Perhaps it will have to wait until I--we get a paper of our own."

"Poor Ban!" whispered Io.

CHAPTER VIII

Once a month Marrineal gave a bachelor dinner of Lucullan repute. The company, though much smaller than the gatherings at The House With Three Eyes, covered a broader and looser social range. Having declined several of his employer's invitations in succession on the well-justified plea of work, Banneker felt it incumbent upon him to attend one of these events, and accordingly found himself in a private dining-room of the choicest of restaurants, tabled with a curiously assorted group of financiers, editors, actors, a small selection of the more raffish members of The Retreat including Delavan Eyre; Ely Ives; an elderly Jewish lawyer of unsavory reputation, enormous income, and real and delicate scholarship; Herbert Cressey, a pair of the season's racing-kings, an eminent art connoisseur, and a smattering of men-about-town. Seated between the lawyer and one of the racing-men, Banneker, as the dinner progressed, found himself watching Delavan Eyre, opposite, who was drinking with sustained intensity, but without apparent effect upon his debonair bearing. Banneker thought to read a haunting fear in his eyes, and was cogitating upon what it might portend, when his attention was distracted by Ely Ives, who had been requested (as he announced) to exhibit his small skill at some minor sleight-of-hand tricks. The skill, far from justifying its possessor's modest estimate, was so unusual as to provoke expressions of admiration from Mr. Stecklin, the lawyer on Banneker's right.

"Oh, yes; hypnotism too," said Ely Ives briskly, after twenty minutes of legerdemain. "Child's play."

"Now, who suggested hypnotism?" murmured Stecklin in his limpid and confidential undertone, close to Banneker's ear. "You? I? No! No one, _I_ think."

So Banneker thought, and was the more interested in Ives's procedure.

Though the drinking had been heavy at his end of the table, he seemed quite unaffected, was now tripping from man to man, peering into the eyes of each, "to find an appropriate subject," as he said. Delavan Eyre roused himself out of a semi-torpor as the wiry little prowler stared down at him.

"What's the special idea?" he demanded.

"Just a bit of mesmerism," explained the other. "I'll try you for a subject. If you'll stand up, feet apart, eyes closed, I'll hypnotize you so that you'll fall over at a movement."

"You can't do it," retorted Eyre.

"For a bet," Ives came back.

"A hundred?"

"Double it if you like."

"You're on." Eyre, slowly swallowing the last of a brandy-and-soda, rose, reaching into his pocket.

"Not necessary, between gentlemen," said Ely Ives with a gesture just a little too suave.

"Ah, yes," muttered the lawyer at Banneker's side. "Between gentlemen.

Eck-xactly."

Pursuant to instructions, Eyre stood with his feet a few inches apart and his eyes closed. "At the word, you bring your heels together. Click!

And you keep your balance. If you can. For the two hundred. Any one else want in?... No?... Ready, Mr. Eyre. Now! _Hep_!"

The heels clicked, but with a stuttering, weak impact. Eyre, bulky and powerful, staggered, toppled to the left.

"Hold up there!" His neighbor propped him, and was clutched in his grasp.

"Hands off!" said Eyre thickly. "Sorry, Banks! Let me try that again.

Oh, the bet's yours, Mr. Ives," he added, as that keen gambler began to enter a protest. "Send you a check in the morning--if that'll be all right."

Herbert Cressey, hand in pocket, was at his side instantly. "Pay him now, Del," he said in a tone which did not conceal his contemptuous estimate of Ives. "Here's money, if you haven't it."

"No; no! A check will be _quite_ all right," protested Ives. "At your convenience."

Others gathered about, curious and interested. Banneker, puzzled by a vague suspicion which he sought to formulate, was aware of a low runnel of commentary at his ear.

"Very curious. Shrewd; yes. A clever fellow.... Sad, too."

"Sad?" He turned sharply on the lawyer of unsavory suits. "What is sad about it? A fool and his money! Is that tragedy?"

"Comedy, my friend. Always comedy. This also, perhaps. But grim.... Our friend there who is so clever of hand and eye; he is not perhaps a medical man?"

"Yes; he is. What connection--Good God!" he cried, as a flood of memory suddenly poured light upon a dark spot in some of his forgotten reading.

"Ah? You know? Yes; I have had such a case in my legal practice. Died of an--an error. He made a mistake--in a bottle, which he purchased for that purpose. But this one--he elects to live and face it--"

"Does he know it?"

"Obviously. One can see the dread in his eyes. Some of his friends know it--and his family, I am told. But he does not know this interesting little experiment of our friend. Profitable, too, eh? One wonders how he came to suspect. A medical man, though; a keen eye. Of course."

"Damn him," said Banneker quietly. "General paralysis?"

"Eck-xactly. Twelve, maybe fifteen years ago, a little recklessness. A little overheating of the blood. Perhaps after a dinner like this. The poison lies dormant; a snake asleep. Harms no one. Not himself; not another. Until--something here"--he tapped the thick black curls over the base of his brain. "All that ruddy strength, that lusty good-humor passing on courageously--for he is a brave man, Eyre--to slow torture and--and the end. Grim, eh?"

Banneker reached for a drink. "How long?" he asked.