"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."