_ PART III. FULFILLMENT CHAPTER IX
Io Eyre was one of those women before whom Scandal seems to lose its teeth if not its tongue. She had always assumed the superb attitude toward the world in which she moved. "They say?--What do they say?--Let them say!" might have been her device, too genuinely expressive of her to be consciously contemptuous. Where another might have suffered in reputation by constant companionship with a man as brilliant, as conspicuous, as phenomenal of career as Errol Banneker, Io passed on her chosen way, serene and scatheless.
Tongues wagged, indeed; whispers spread; that was inevitable. But to this Io was impervious. When Banneker, troubled lest any breath should sully her reputation who was herself unsullied, in his mind, would have advocated caution, she refused to consent.
"Why should I skulk?" she said. "I'm not ashamed."
So they met and lunched or dined at the most conspicuous restaurants, defying Scandal, whereupon Scandal began to wonder whether, all things considered, there were anything more to it than one of those flirtations which, after a time of faithful adherence, become standardized into respectability and a sort of tolerant recognition. What, after all, is respectability but the brand of the formalist upon standardization?
With the distaste and effort which Ban always felt in mentioning her husband's name to Io, he asked her one day about any possible danger from Eyre.
"No," she said with assurance. "I owe Del nothing. That is understood between us."
"But if the tittle-tattle that must be going the rounds should come to his ears--"
"If the truth should come to his ears," she replied tranquilly, "it would make no difference."
Ban looked at her, hesitant to be convinced.
"Yes; it's so," she asseverated, nodding, "After his outbreak in Paris--it was on our wedding trip--I gave him a choice. I would either divorce him, or I would hold myself absolutely free of him so far as any claim, actual or moral, went. The one thing I undertook was that I would never involve his name in any open scandal."
"He hasn't been so particular," said Ban gloomily.
"Of late he has. Since I had Cousin Billy Enderby go to him about the dancer. I won't say he's run absolutely straight since. Poor Del! He can't, I suppose. But, at least, he's respected the bargain to the extent of being prudent. I shall respect mine to the same extent."
"Io," he burst out passionately, "there's only one thing in the world I really want; for you to be free of him absolutely."
She shook her head. "Oh, Ban' Can't you be content--with me? I've told you I am free of him. I'm not really his wife."
"No; you're mine," he declared with jealous intensity.
"Yes; I'm yours." Her voice trembled, thrilled. "You don't know yet how wholly I'm yours. Oh, it isn't _that_ alone, Ban. But in spirit and thought. In the world of shadowed and lovely things that we made for ourselves long ago."
"But to have to endure this atmosphere of secrecy, of stealth, of danger to you," he fretted. "You could get your divorce."
"No; I can't. You don't understand."
"Perhaps I do understand," he said gently.
"About Del?" She drew a quick breath. "How could you?"
"Wholly through an accident. A medical man, a slimy little reptile, surprised his secret and inadvertently passed it on."
She leaned forward to him from her corner of the settee, all courage and truth. "I'm glad that you know, though I couldn't tell you, myself. You'll see now that I couldn't leave him to face it alone."
"No. You couldn't. If you did, it wouldn't be Io."
"Ah, and I love you for that, too," she whispered, her voice and eyes one caress to him. "I wonder how I ever made myself believe that I could get over loving you! Now, I've got to pay for my mistake. Ban, do you remember the 'Babbling Babson'? The imbecile who saw me from the train that day?"
"I remember every smallest thing in any way connected with you."
"I love to hear you say that. It makes up for the bad times, in between. The Babbler has turned up. He's been living abroad for a few years. I saw him at a tea last week."
"Did he say anything?"
"Yes. He tried to be coy and facetious. I snubbed him soundly. Perhaps it wasn't wise."
"Why shouldn't it be?"
"Well he used to have the reputation of writing on the sly for The Searchlight."
"That sewer-sheet! You don't think he'd dare do anything of the sort about us? Why, what would he have to go on?"
"What does The Searchlight have to go on in most of its lies, and hints, and innuendoes?"
"But, Io, even if it did publish--"
"It mustn't," she said. "Ban, if it did--it would make it impossible for us to go on as we have been. Don't you see that it would?"
He turned sallow under his ruddy skin. "Then I'll stop it, one way or another. I'll put the fear of God into that filthy old worm that runs the blackmail shop. The first thing is to find out, though, whether there's anything in it. I did hear a hint...." He lost himself in musings, trying to recall an occult remark which the obsequious Ely Ives had made to him sometime before. "And I know where I can do it," he ended.
To go to Ives for anything was heartily distasteful to him. But this was a necessity. He cautiously questioned the unofficial factotum of his employer. Had Ives heard anything of a projected attack on him in The Searchlight? Why, yes; Ives had (naturally, since it was he and not Babson who had furnished the material). In fact, he had an underground wire into the office of that weekly of spice and scurrility which might be tapped to oblige a friend.
Banneker winced at the characterization, but confessed that he would be appreciative of any information. In three days a galley proof of the paragraph was in his hands. It confirmed his angriest fears. Publication of it would smear Io's name with scandal, and, by consequence, direct the leering gaze of the world upon their love.
"What is this; blackmail?" he asked Ives.
"Might be."
"Who wrote it?"
"Reads like the old buzzard's own style."
"I'll go and see him," said Banneker, half to himself.
"You can go, but I don't think you'll see him." Ives set forth in detail the venerable editor's procedure as to troublesome callers. It was specific and curious. Foreseeing that he would probably have to fight with his opponent's weapons, Banneker sought out Russell Edmonds and asked for all the information regarding The Searchlight and its proprietor-editor in the veteran's possession. Edmonds had a fund of it.
"But it won't smoke him out," he said. "That skunk lives in a deep hole."
"If I can't smoke him out, I'll blast him out," declared Banneker, and set himself to the composition of an editorial which consumed the remainder of the working day.
With a typed copy in his pocket, he called, a little before noon, at the office of The Searchlight and sent in his card to Major Bussey. The Major was not in. When was he expected? As for that, there was no telling; he was quite irregular. Very well, Mr. Banneker would wait. Oh, that was quite useless; was it about something in the magazine; wouldn't one of the other editors do? Without awaiting an answer, the anemic and shrewd-faced office girl who put the questions disappeared, and presently returned, followed by a tailor-made woman of thirty-odd, with a delicate, secret-keeping mouth and heavy-lidded, deep-hued eyes, altogether a seductive figure. She smiled confidently up at Banneker.
"I've always wanted so much to meet you," she disclosed, giving him a quick, gentle hand pressure. "So has Major Bussey. Too bad he's out of town. Did you want to see him personally?"
"Quite personally." Banneker returned her smile with one even more friendly and confiding.
"Wouldn't I do? Come into my office, won't you? I represent him in some things."
"Not in this one, I hope," he replied, following her to an inner room. "It is about a paragraph not yet published, which might be misconstrued."
"Oh, I don't think any one could possibly misconstrue it," she retorted, with a flash of wicked mirth.
"You know the paragraph to which I refer, then."
"I wrote it."
Banneker regarded her with grave and appreciative urbanity. All was going precisely as Ely Ives had prognosticated; the denial of the presence of the editor; the appearance of this alluring brunette as whipping-girl to assume the burden of his offenses with the calm impunity of her sex and charm.
"Congratulations," he said. "It is very clever."
"It's quite true, isn't it?" she returned innocently.
"As authentic, let us say, as your authorship of the paragraph."
"You don't think I wrote it? What object should I have in trying to deceive you?"
"What, indeed! By the way, what is Major Bussey's price?"
"Oh, Mr. Banneker!" Was it sheer delight in deviltry, or amusement at his direct and unstrategic method that sparkled in her face. "You surely don't credit the silly stories of--well, blackmail, about us!"
"It might be money," he reflected. "But, on the whole, I think it's something else. Something he wants from The Patriot, perhaps. Immunity? Would that be it? Not that I mean, necessarily, to deal."
"What is your proposition?" she asked confidentially.
"How can I advance one when I don't know what your principal wants?"
"The paragraph was written in good faith," she asserted.
"And could be withdrawn in equal good faith?"
Her laugh was silvery clear. "Very possibly. Under proper representations."
"Then don't you think I'd better deal direct with the Major?"
She studied his face. "Yes," she began, and instantly refuted herself. "No. I don't trust you. There's trouble under that smooth smile of yours."
"But _you're_ not afraid of me, surely," said Banneker. He had found out one important point; her manner when she said "Yes" indicated that the proprietor was in the building. Now he continued: "Are you?"
"I don't know. I think I am." There was a little catch in her breath. "I think you'd be dangerous to any woman."
Banneker, his eyes fixed on hers, played for time and a further lead with a banality. "You're pleased to flatter me."
"Aren't you pleased to be flattered?" she returned provocatively.
He put his hand on her wrist. She swayed to him with a slow, facile yielding. He caught her other wrist, and the grip of his two hands seemed to bite into the bone.
"So you're _that_ kind, too, are you!" he sneered, holding her eyes as cruelly as he had clutched her wrists. "Keep quiet! Now, you're to do as I tell you."
(Ely Ives, in describing the watchwoman at the portals of scandal, had told him that she was susceptible to a properly timed bluff. "A woman she had slandered once stabbed her; since then you can get her nerve by a quick attack. Treat her rough.")
She stared at him, fearfully, half-hypnotized.
"Is that the door leading to Bussey's office? Don't speak! Nod."
Dumb and stricken, she obeyed.
"I'm going there. Don't you dare make a movement or a noise. If you do--I'll come back."
Shifting his grasp, he caught her up and with easy power tossed her upon a broad divan. From its springy surface she shot up, as it seemed to him, halfway to the ceiling, rigid and staring, a ludicrous simulacrum of a glassy-eyed doll. He heard the protesting "ping!" and "berr-rr-rr" of a broken spring as she fell back. The traverse of a narrow hallway and a turn through a half-open door took him into the presence of bearded benevolence making notes at a desk.
"How did you get here? And who the devil are you?" demanded the guiding genius of The Searchlight, looking up irritably. He raised his voice. "Con!" he called.
From a side room appeared a thick, heavy-shouldered man with a feral countenance, who slouched aggressively forward, as the intruder announced himself.
"My name is Banneker."
"Cheest!" hissed the thick bouncer in tones of dismay, and stopped short.
Turning, Banneker recognized him as one of the policemen whom his evidence had retired from the force in the wharf-gang investigation.
"Oh! Banneker," muttered the editor. His right hand moved slowly, stealthily, toward a lower drawer.
"Cut it, Major!" implored Con in acute anguish. "Canche' see he's gotche' covered through his pocket!"
The stealthy hand returned to the sight of all men and fussed among some papers on the desk-top. Major Bussey said peevishly:
"What do you want with me?"
"Kill that paragraph."
"What par--"
"Don't fence with me," struck in Banneker sharply. "You know what one."
Major Bussey swept his gaze around the room for help or inspiration. The sight of the burly ex-policeman, stricken and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, disconcerted him sadly; but he plucked up courage to say:
"The facts are well authent--"
Again Banneker cut him short. "Facts! There isn't the semblance of a fact in the whole thing. Hints, slurs, innuendoes."
"Libel does not exist when--" feebly began the editor, and stopped because Banneker was laughing at him.
"Suppose you read that," said the visitor, contemptuously tossing the typed script of his new-wrought editorial on the desk. "_That's_ libellous, if you choose. But I don't think you would sue."
Major Bussey read the caption, a typical Banneker eye-catcher, "The Rattlesnake Dies Out; But the Pen-Viper is Still With Us." "I don't care to indulge myself with your literary efforts at present, Mr. Banneker," he said languidly. "Is this the answer to our paragraph?"
"Only the beginning. I propose to drive you out of town and suppress 'The Searchlight.'"
"A fair challenge. I'll accept it."
"I was prepared to have you take that attitude."
"Really, Mr. Banneker; you could hardly expect to come here and blackmail me by threats--"
"Now for my alternative," proceeded the visitor calmly. "You are proposing to publish a slur on the reputation of an innocent woman who--"
"Innocent!" murmured the Major with malign relish.
"Look out, Major!" implored Con, the body-guard. "He's a killer, he is."
"I don't know that I'm particularly afraid of you, after all," declared the exponent of The Searchlight, and Banneker felt a twinge of dismay lest he might have derived, somewhence, an access of courage. "A Wild West shooting is one thing, and cold-blooded, premeditated murder is another. You'd go to the chair."
"Cheerfully," assented Banneker.
Bussey, lifting the typed sheets before him, began to read. Presently his face flushed.
"Why, if you print this sort of thing, you'd have my office mobbed," he cried indignantly.
"It's possible."
"It's outrageous! And this--if this isn't an incitement to lynching--You wouldn't dare publish this!"
"Try me."
Major Bussey's wizened and philanthropic face took on the cast of careful thought. At length he spoke with the manner of an elder bestowing wisdom upon youth.
"A controversy such as this would do nobody any good. I have always been opposed to journalistic backbitings. Therefore we will let this matter lie. I will kill the paragraph. Not that I'm afraid of your threats; nor of your pen, for that matter. But in the best interests of our common profession--"
"Good-day," said Banneker, and walked out, leaving the Major stranded upon the ebb tide of his platitudes.
Banneker retailed the episode to Edmonds, for his opinion.
"He's afraid of your gun, a little," pronounced the expert; "and more of your pen. I think he'll keep faith in this."
"As long as I hold over him the threat of The Patriot."
"Yes."
"And no longer?"
"No longer. It's a vengeful kind of vermin, Ban."
"Pop, am I a common, ordinary blackmailer? Or am I not?"
The other shook his head, grayed by a quarter-century of struggles and problems. "It's a strange game, the newspaper game," he opined. _