"And what do you think of _that_?" inquired the cheerful Marrineal, still directing his query to Banneker.

"I think it's rather a large order. Why do you keep asking my opinion?"

"Because I suspect that you still bring a fresh mind to bear on these matters."

Banneker rose, and bade Betty Raleigh good-night. She retained his hand in hers, looking up at him with a glint of anxiety in her weary, childlike eyes. "Don't mind what we've said," she appealed to him.

"We're all a little above ourselves. It's always so after an opening."

"I don't mind at all," he returned gravely: "unless it's true."

"Ah, it's true right enough," she answered dispiritedly. "Don't forget about the investigation. And don't let them dare to put you on on a matinee day."

Betty Raleigh was a conspicuous figure, at not one but half a dozen sessions of the investigation, which wound through an accelerating and sensational course, with Banneker as the chief figure. He was an extraordinary witness, ready, self-possessed, good-humored under the heckling of the politician lawyer who had claimed and received the right to appear, on the ground that his police clients might be summoned later on a criminal charge.

Before the proceedings were over, a complete overturn in the city government was foreshadowed, and it became evident that Judge Enderby might either head the movement as its candidate, or control it as its leader. Nobody, however, knew what he wished or intended politically.

Every now and again in the progress of the hearings, Banneker would surprise on the lawyer's face an expression which sent his memory questing fruitlessly for determination of that elusive likeness, flickering dimly in the past.

Banneker's own role in the investigation kept him in the headlines; at times put him on the front page. Even The Ledger could only minimize, not suppress, his dominating and picturesque part.

But there was another and less pleasant sequel to the shooting, in its effect upon the office status. Though he was a "space-man" now, dependent for his earnings upon the number of columns weekly which he had in the paper, and ostensibly equipped to handle matter of importance, a long succession of the pettiest kind of assignments was doled out to him by the city desk: obituary notices of insignificant people, small police items, tipsters' yarns, routine jobs such as ship news, police headquarters substitution, even the minor courts usually relegated to the fifteen or twenty-dollar-a-week men. Or, worst and most grinding ordeal of a reporter's life, he was kept idle at his desk, like a misbehaving boy after school, when all the other men had been sent out.

One week his total space came to but twenty-eight dollars odd. What this meant was plain enough; he was being disciplined for his part in the investigation.

Out of the open West which, under the rigor of the game, keeps its temper and its poise, Banneker had brought the knack of setting his teeth and smiling so serenely that one never even perceived the teeth to be set behind the smile. This ability stood him in good stead now. In his time of enforced leisure he bethought himself of the sketches which Miss Westlake had typed. With his just and keen perception, he judged them not to be magazine matter. But they might do as "Sunday stuff." He turned in half a dozen of them to Mr. Homans. When next he saw them they were lying, in uncorrected proof, on the managing editor's desk while Mr. Gordon gently rapped his knuckles over them.

"Where did you get the idea for these, Mr. Banneker?" he asked.

"I don't know. It came to me."

"Would you care to sign them?"

"Sign them?" repeated the reporter in surprise, for this was a distinction afforded to only a choice few on the conservative Ledger.

"Yes. I'm going to run them on the editorial page. Do us some more and keep them within the three-quarters. What's your full name?"

"I'd like to sign them 'Eban,'" answered the other, after some thought.

"And thank you."

Assignments or no assignments, thereafter Banneker was able to fill his idle time. Made adventurous by the success of the "Vagrancies," he next tried his hand at editorials on light or picturesque topics, and with satisfying though not equal results, for here he occasionally stumbled upon the hard-rooted prejudices of the Inside Office, and beheld his efforts vanish into the irreclaimable limbo of the scrap-basket.

Nevertheless, at ten dollars per column for this kind of writing, he continued to make a decent space bill, and clear himself of the doldrums where the waning of the city desk's favor had left him. All that he could now make he needed, for his change of domicile had brought about a corresponding change of habit and expenditure into which he slipped imperceptibly. To live on fifteen dollars a week, plus his own small income, which all went for "extras," had been simple, at Mrs.

Brashear's. To live on fifty at the Regalton was much more of a problem.

Banneker discovered that he was a natural spender. The discovery caused him neither displeasure nor uneasiness. He confidently purposed to have money to spend; plenty of it, as a mere, necessary concomitant to other things that he was after. Good reporters on space, working moderately, made from sixty to seventy-five dollars a week. Banneker set himself a mark of a hundred dollars. He intended to work very hard ... if Mr.

Greenough would give him a chance.

Mr. Greenough's distribution of the day's news continued to be distinctly unfavorable to the new space-man. The better men on the staff began to comment on the city desk's discrimination. Banneker had, for a time, shone in heroic light: his feat had been honorable, not only to The Ledger office, but to the entire craft of reporting. In the investigation he had borne himself with unexceptionable modesty and equanimity. That he should be "picked on" offended that generous _esprit de corps_ which was natural to the office. Tommy Burt was all for referring the matter to Mr. Gordon.

"You mind your own business, Tommy," said Banneker placidly. "Our friend the Joss will stick his foot into a gopher hole yet."

The assignment that afforded Banneker his chance was of the most unpromising. An old builder, something of a local character over in the Corlears Hook vicinity, had died. The Ledger, Mr. Greenough informed Banneker, in his dry, polite manner, wanted "a sufficient obit" of the deceased. Banneker went to the queer, decrepit frame cottage at the address given, and there found a group of old Sam Corpenshire's congeners, in solemn conclave over the dead. They welcomed the reporter, and gave him a ceremonial drink of whiskey, highly superior whiskey.

They were glad that he had come to write of their dead friend. If ever a man deserved a good write-up, it was Sam Corpenshire. From one mouth to another they passed the word of his shrewd dealings, of his good-will to his neighbors, of his ripe judgment, of his friendliness to all sound things and sound men, of his shy, sly charities, of the thwarted romance, which, many years before, had left him lonely but unembittered; and out of it Banneker, with pen too slow for his eager will, wove not a two-stick obit, but a rounded column shot through with lights that played upon the little group of characters, the living around the dead, like sunshine upon an ancient garden.

Even Mr. Greenough congratulated Banneker, the next morning. In the afternoon mail came a note from Mr. Gaines of The New Era monthly. That perspicuous editor had instantly identified the style of the article with that of the "Eban" series, part of which he had read in typograph.

He wrote briefly but warmly of the work: and would the writer not call and see him soon?

Perhaps the reporter might have accepted the significant invitation promptly, as he at first intended. But on the following morning he found in his box an envelope under French stamp, inscribed with writing which, though he had seen but two specimens of it, drove everything else out of his tumultuous thoughts. He took it, not to his desk, but to a side room of the art department, unoccupied at that hour, and opened it with chilled and fumbling hands.

Within was a newspaper clipping, from a Paris edition of an American daily. It gave a brief outline of the battle on the pier. In pencil on the margin were these words:

"Do you remember practicing, that day, among the pines? I'm so proud!

Io."

He read it again. The last sentence affected him with a sensation of dizziness. Proud! Of his deed! It gave him the feeling that she had reclaimed, reappropriated him. No! That she had never for a moment released him. In a great surge, sweeping through his veins, he felt the pressure of her breast against his, the strong enfoldment of her arms, her breath upon his lips. He tore envelope and clipping into fragments.

By one of those strange associations of linked memory, such as "clangs and flashes for a drowning man," he sharply recalled where he had seen Willis Enderby before. His was the face in the photograph to which Camilla Van Arsdale had turned when death stretched out a hand toward her.

CHAPTER X

While the police inquiry was afoot, Banneker was, perforce, often late in reporting for duty, the regular hour being twelve-thirty. Thus the idleness which the city desk had imposed upon him was, in a measure, justified. On a Thursday, when he had been held in conference with Judge Enderby, he did not reach The Ledger office until after two. Mr.

Greenough was still out for luncheon. No sooner had Banneker entered the swinging gate than Mallory called to him. On the assistant city editor's face was a peculiar expression, half humorous, half dubious, as he said:

"Mr. Greenough has left an assignment for you."

"All right," said Banneker, stretching out his hand for the clipping or slip. None was forthcoming.

"It's a tip," explained Mallory. "It's from a pretty convincing source.

The gist of it is that the Delavan Eyres have separated and a divorce is impending. You know, of course, who the Eyres are."

"I've met Eyre."

"That so? Ever met his wife?"

"No," replied Banneker, in good faith.

"No; you wouldn't have, probably. They travel different paths. Besides, she's been practically living abroad. She's a stunner. It's big society stuff, of course. The best chance of landing the story is from Archie Densmore, her half-brother. The international polo-player, you know.

You'll find him at The Retreat, down on the Jersey coast."

The Retreat Banneker had heard of as being a bachelor country club whose distinguishing marks were a rather Spartan athleticism, and a more stiffly hedged exclusiveness than any other social institution known to the _elite_ of New York and Philadelphia, between which it stood midway.

"Then I'm to go and ask him," said Banneker slowly, "whether his sister is suing for divorce?"

"Yes," confirmed Mallory, a trifle nervously. "Find out who's to be named, of course. I suppose it's that new dancer, though there have been others. And there was a quaint story about some previous attachment of Mrs. Eyre's: that might have some bearing."

"I'm to ask her brother about that, too?"

"We want the story," answered Mallory, almost petulantly.