er continue to be as good as
the real thing. We'll make it a fifty thousand guarantee, if you say so.
And, as for your editorial policy--well, I'll take a chance on your
seeing reason. After all, there's plenty of earth to prance on without
always treading on people's toes.... Well, don't decide now. Take your
time to it." He rose and went to the door. There he turned, flapping the
loose imitations in his hands.

"Banneker," he said chuckling, "aren't they really dam' good!" and
vanished.

In that moment Banneker felt a surge of the first real liking he had
ever known for his employer. Marrineal had been purely human for a
flash.

Nevertheless, in the first revulsion after the proprietor had left,
Banneker's unconquered independence rose within him, jealous and
clamant. He felt repressions, claims, interferences potentially closing
in upon his pen, also an undefined dread of the sharply revealed
overseer. That a force other than his own mind and convictions should
exert pressure, even if unsuccessful, upon his writings, was
intolerable. Better anything than that. The Mid-West Syndicate, he knew,
would leave him absolutely untrammeled. He would write the general
director at once.

In the act of beginning the letter, the thought struck and stunned him
that this would mean leaving New York. Going to live in a Middle-Western
city, a thousand miles outside of the orbit in which moved Io Eyre!

He left the letter unfinished, and the issue to the fates.

CHAPTER VI

Put to the direct question, as, for example, on the witness stand, Mr.
Ely Ives would, before his connection with Tertius Marrineal, have
probably identified himself as a press-agent. In that capacity he had
acted, from time to time, for a railroad with many axes to grind, a
widespread stock-gambling enterprise, a minor political ring, a liquor
combination, and a millionaire widow from the West who innocently
believed that publicity, as manipulated by Mr. Ives, could gain social
prestige for her in the East.

In every phase of his employment, the ex-medical student had gathered
curious and valuable lore. In fact he was one of those acquisitive
persons who collect and hoard scandals, a miser of private and furtive
information. His was the zeal of the born collector; something of the
genius, too: he boasted a keen instinct. In his earlier and more
precarious days he had formed the habit of watching for and collating
all possible advices concerning