"She was as well off there as she could be anywhere."

"Yes. But how did she seem? Mentally, I mean."

"Oh, that! The dazed condition cleared up at once."

"I wish I were sure that it had ever cleared up," muttered Densmore.

"Why shouldn't you be sure?"

"I'm going to be frank with you because I think you may be able to help me with a clue. Since she came back from the West, Io has been unlike herself. The family has never understood her marriage with Del Eyre. She didn't really care for Del. [To his dismay, Banneker here beheld the glowing tip of his cigar perform sundry involuntary dips and curves. He hoped that his face was under better control.] The marriage was a fizzle. I don't believe it lasted a month, really. Eyre had always been a chaser, though he did straighten out when he married Io. He really was crazy about her; but when she chucked him, he went back to his old hunting grounds. One can understand that. But Io; that's different.

She's always played the game before. With Del, I don't think she quite did. She quit: that's the plain fact of it. Just tired of him. No other cause that I can find. Won't get a divorce. Doesn't want it. So there's no one else in the case. It's queer. It's mighty queer. And I can't help thinking that the old jar to her brain--"

"Have you suggested that to her?" asked Banneker as the other broke off to ruminate mournfully.

"Yes. She only laughed. Then she said that poor old Del wasn't at fault except for marrying her in the face of a warning. I don't know what she meant by it; hanged if I do. But, you see, it's quite true: there'll be no divorce or separation.... You're sure she was quite normal when you last saw her at Miss Van Arsdale's?"

"Absolutely. If you want confirmation, why not write Miss Van Arsdale yourself?"

"No; I hardly think I'll do that.... Now as to that gray you rode, I've got a chance to trade him." And the talk became all of horse, which is exclusive and rejective of other interests, even of women.

Going back in the train, Banneker reviewed the crowding events of the day. At the bottom of his thoughts lay a residue, acid and stinging, the shame of the errand which had taken him to The Retreat, and which the memory of what was no less than a personal triumph could not submerge.

That he, Errol Banneker, whose dealings with all men had been on the straight and level status of self-respect, should have taken upon him the ignoble task of prying into intimate affairs, of meekly soliciting the most private information in order that he might make his living out of it--not different in kind from the mendicancy which, even as a hobo, he had scorned--and that, at the end, he should have discerned Io Welland as the object of his scandal-chase; that fermented within him like something turned to foulness.

At the office he reported "no story." Before going home he wrote a note to the city desk.

CHAPTER XI

Impenetrability of expression is doubtless a valuable attribute to a joss. Otherwise so many josses would not display it. Upon the stony and placid visage of Mr. Greenough, never more joss-like than when, on the morning after Banneker went to The Retreat, he received the resultant note, the perusal thereof produced no effect. Nor was there anything which might justly be called an expression, discernible between Mr.

Greenough's cloven chin-tip and Mr. Greenough's pale fringe of hair, when, as Banneker entered the office at noon, he called the reporter to him. Banneker's face, on the contrary, displayed a quite different impression; that of amiability.

"Nothing in the Eyre story, Mr. Banneker!"

"Not a thing."

"You saw Mr. Densmore?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would he talk?"

"Yes; he made a statement."

"It didn't appear in the paper."

"There was nothing to it but unqualified denial."

"I see; I see. That's all, Mr. Banneker.... Oh, by the way."

Banneker, who had set out for his desk, turned back.

"I had a note from you this morning."

As this statement required no confirmation, Banneker gave it none.

"Containing your resignation."

"Conditional upon my being assigned to pry into society or private scandals or rumors of them."

"The Ledger does not recognize conditional resignation."

"Very well." Banneker's smile was as sunny and untroubled as a baby's.

"I suppose you appreciate that some one must cover this kind of news."

"Yes. It will have to be some one else."

The faintest, fleeting suspicion of a frown troubled the Brahminical calm of Mr. Greenough's brow, only to pass into unwrinkled blandness.

"Further, you will recognize that, for the protection of the paper, I must have at call reporters ready to perform any emergency duty."

"Perfectly," agreed Banneker.

"Mr. Banneker," queried Mr. Greenough in a semi-purr, "are you too good for your job?"

"Certainly."

For once the personification of city-deskness, secure though he was in the justice of his position, was discomfited. "Too good for The Ledger?"

he demanded in protest and rebuke.

"Let me put it this way; I'm too good for any job that won't let me look a man square between the eyes when I meet him on it."

"A dull lot of newspapers we'd have if all reporters took that view,"

muttered Mr. Greenough.

"It strikes me that what you've just said is the severest kind of an indictment of the whole business, then," retorted Banneker.

"A business that is good enough for a good many first-class men, even though you may not consider it so for you. Possibly being for the time--for a brief time--a sort of public figure, yourself, has--"

"Nothing at all to do with it," interrupted the urbane reporter. "I've always been this way. It was born in me."

"I shall consult with Mr. Gordon about this," said Mr. Greenough, becoming joss-like again. "I hardly think--" But what it was that he hardly thought, the subject of his animadversions did not then or subsequently ascertain, for he was dismissed in the middle of the sentence with a slow, complacent nod.

Loss of his place, had it promptly followed, would not have dismayed the rebel. It did not follow. Nothing followed. Nothing, that is, out of the ordinary run. Mr. Gordon said no word. Mr. Greenough made no reference to the resignation. Tommy Burt, to whom Banneker had confided his action, was of opinion that the city desk was merely waiting "to hand you something so raw that you'll have to buck it; something that not even Joe Bullen would take." Joe Bullen, an undertaker's assistant who had drifted into journalism through being a tipster, was The Ledger's "keyhole reporter" (unofficial).