m and his lady-love."

"What about her?" interrogated Marrineal. "Do you really think--" His
uplifted brows, sparse on his broad and candid forehead, consummated the
question.

For reply the factotum gave him a succinct if distorted version of the
romance in the desert.

"She dished him for Eyre," he concluded, "and now she's dishing Eyre for
him."

"Bussey's got all this?" inquired Marrineal, and upon the other's
careless "I suppose so," added, "It must grind his soul not to be able
to use it."

"Or not to get paid for suppressing it," grinned Ives.

"But does Banneker understand that it's fear of his pen, and not of
being killed, that binds Bussey?"

Ives nodded. "I've taken care to rub that in. Told him of other cases
where the old Major was threatened with all sorts of manhandling; scared
out of his wits at first, but always got over it and came back in The
Searchlight, taking his chance of being killed. The old vulture really
isn't a coward, though he's a wary bird."

"Would Banneker really kill him, do you think?"

"I wouldn't insure his life for five cents," returned the other with
conviction. "Your editor is crazy-mad over this Mrs. Eyre. So there you
have him delivered, shorn and helpless, and Delilah doesn't even suspect
that she's acting as our agent."

Marrineal's eyes fixed themselves in a lifeless sort of stare upon a far
corner of the ceiling. Recognizing this as a sign of inward cogitation,
the vizier of his more private interests sat waiting. Without changing
the direction of his gaze, the proprietor indicated a check in his
ratiocination by saying incompletely:

"Now, if she divorced Eyre and married Banneker--"

Ives completed it for him. "That would spike The Searchlight's guns, you
think? Perhaps. But if she were going to divorce Eyre, she'd have done
it long ago, wouldn't she? I think she'll wait. He won't last long."

"Then our hold on Banneker, through his ability to intimidate The
Searchlight, depends on the life of a paretic."

"Paretic is too strong a word--yet. But it comes to about that.
Except--he'll want a lot of money to marry Io Eyre."

"He wants a lot, anyway," smiled Marrineal.

"He'll want more. She's an expensive luxury."

"He can get more. Any time when he chooses to handle The Patriot so that
it attracts instead of offends the big advertisers."

"Why don't you put the screws on him now, Mr. Marrineal?" smirked Ives
with thin-lipped malignancy.

Marrineal fr