Success, A Novel

All had worked out, in the matter of The Searchlight, quite as much to Mr. Ely Ives’s satisfaction as to that of Banneker.  From his boasted and actual underground wire into that culture-bed of spiced sewage (at the farther end of which was the facile brunette whom the visiting editor had so harshly treated), he had learned the main details of the interview and reported them to Mr. Marrineal.

“Will Banneker now be good?” rhetorically queried Ives, pursing up his small face into an expression of judicious appreciation.  “He will be good!”

Marrineal gave the subject his habitual calm and impersonal consideration.  “He hasn’t been lately,” he observed.  “Several of his editorials have had quite the air of challenge.”

“That was before he turned blackmailer.  Blackmail,” philosophized the astute Ives, “is a gun that you’ve got to keep pointed all the time.”

“I see.  So long as he has Bussey covered by the muzzle of The Patriot, The Searchlight behaves itself.”

“It does.  But if ever he laid down his gun, Bussey would make hash of him 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 frowned.  His cold blood inclined him to be deliberate; the ophidian habit, slow-moving until ready to strike.  He saw no reason for risking a venture which became safer the further it progressed.  Furthermore, he disliked direct, unsolicited advice.  Ignoring Ives’s remark he asked: 

“How are his investments going?”

Ives grinned again.  “Down.  Who put him into United Thread?  Do you know, sir?”

“Horace Vanney.  He has been tipping it off quietly to the club lot.  Wants to get out from under, himself.”

“There’s one thing about it, though, that puzzles me.  If he took old Vanney’s tip to buy for a rise, why did he go after the Sippiac Mills with those savage editorials?  They’re mainly responsible for the legislative investigation that knocked eight points off of United Thread.”

“Probably to prove his editorial independence.”

“To whom?  You?”

“To himself,” said Marrineal with an acumen quite above the shrewdness of an Ives to grasp.

But the latter nodded intelligently, and remarked:  “If he’s money-crazy you’ve got him, anyway, sooner or later.  And now that he’s woman-crazy, too—­”

“You’ll never understand just how sane Mr. Banneker is,” broke in Marrineal coldly.  He was a very sane man, himself.

“Well, a lot of the sane ones get stung on the Street,” moralized Ives.  “I guess the only way to beat that game is to get crazy and take all the chances.  Mr. Banneker stands to drop half a year’s salary in U.T. alone unless there’s a turn.”

Marrineal delivered another well-thought-out bit of wisdom.  “If I’m any judge, he wants a paper of his own.  Well … give me three years more of him and he can have it.  But I don’t think it’ll make much headway against The Patriot, then.”

“Three years?  Bussey and The Searchlight ought to hold him that long.  Unless, of course, he gets over his infatuation in the meantime.”

“In that case,” surmised Marrineal, eyeing him with distaste, “I suppose you think that he would equally lose interest in protecting her from The Searchlight.”

“Well, what’s a woman to expect!” said Ives blandly, and took his dismissal for the day.

It was only recently that Ives had taken to coming to The Patriot office.  No small interest and conjecture were aroused among the editorial staff as to his exact status, stimulus to gossip being afforded by the rumor that he had been, from Marrineal’s privy purse, shifted to the office payroll.  Russell Edmonds solved and imparted the secret to Banneker.

“Ives?  Oh, he’s the office sandbag.”

“Translate, Pop.  I don’t understand.”

“It’s an invention of Marrineal’s.  Very ingenious.  It was devised as a weapon against libel suits.  Suppose some local correspondent from Hohokus or Painted Post sends in a story on the Honorable Aminadab Quince that looks to be O.K., but is actually full of bad breaks.  The Honorable Aminadab smells money in it and likes the smell.  Starts a libel suit.  On the facts, he’s got us:  the fellow that got pickled and broke up the Methodist revival wasn’t Aminadab at all, but his tough brother.  If it gets into court we’re stung.  Well, up goes little Weaselfoot Ives to Hohokus.  Sniffs around and spooks around and is a good fellow at the hotel, and possibly spends a little money where it’s most needed, and one day turns up at the Quince mansion.  ’Senator, I represent The Patriot.’  ’Don’t want to see you at all.  Talk to my lawyer.’  ’But he might not understand my errand.  It relates to an indictment handed down in 1884 for malversasion of school funds.’  ’Young man, do you dare to intimate—­’ and so forth and so on; bluster and bluff and threat.  Says Ives, very cool:  ’Let me have your denial in writing and we’ll print it opposite the certified copy of the indictment.’  The old boy begins to whimper; ’That’s outlawed.  It was all wrong, anyway.’  Ives is sympathetic, but stands pat.  Drop the suit and The Patriot will be considerate and settle the legal fees.  Aminadab drops, ten times out of ten.  The sandbag has put him away.”

“But there must be an eleventh case where there’s nothing on the man that’s suing.”

“Say a ninety-ninth.  One libel suit in a hundred may be brought in good faith.  But we never settle until after Ives has done his little prowl.”

“It sounds bad, Pop.  But is it so bad, after all?  We’ve got to protect ourselves against a hold-up.”

“Dirty work, but somebody’s got to do it:  ay—­yes?  I agree with you.  As a means of self-defense it is excusable.  But the operations of the sandbag have gone far beyond libel in Ives’s hands.”

“Have they?  To what extent?”

“Any.  His little private detective agency—­he’s got a couple of our porch-climbing, keyhole reporters secretly assigned to him at call for ’special work’—­looks after any man we’ve got or are likely to have trouble with; advertisers who don’t come across properly, city officials who play in with the other papers too much, politicians—­”

“But that’s rank blackmail!” exclaimed Banneker.

“Carried far enough it is.  So far it’s only private information for the private archives.”

“Marrineal’s?”

“Yes.  He and his private counsel, old Mark Stecklin, are the keepers of them.  Now, suppose Judge Enderby runs afoul of our interests, as he is bound to do sooner or later.  Little Weaselfoot gets on his trail—­probably is on it already—­and he’ll spend a year if necessary watching, waiting, sniffing out something that he can use as a threat or a bludgeon or a bargain.”

“What quarrel have we got with Enderby?” inquired Banneker with lively interest.

“None, now.  But we’ll be after him hot and heavy within a year.”

“Not the editorial page,” declared Banneker.

“Well, I hope not.  It would be rather a right-about, wouldn’t it?  But Marrineal isn’t afraid of a right-about.  You know his creed as to his readers:  ‘The public never remembers.’  Of course, you realize what Marrineal is after, politically.”

“No.  He’s never said a word to me.”

“Nor to me.  But others have.  The mayoralty.”

“For himself?”

“Of course.  He’s quietly building up his machine.”

“But Laird will run for reelection.”

“He’ll knife Laird.”

“It’s true Laird hasn’t treated us very well, in the matter of backing our policies,” admitted Banneker thoughtfully.  “The Combined Street Railway franchise, for instance.”

“He was right in that and you were wrong, Ban.  He had to follow the comptroller there.”

“Is that where our split with Enderby is going to come?  Over the election?”

“Yes.  Enderby is the brains and character back of the Laird administration.  He represents the clean government crowd, with its financial power.”

Banneker stirred fretfully in his chair.  “Damn it!” he growled.  “I wish we could run this paper as a newspaper and not as a chestnut rake.”

“How sweet and simple life would be!” mocked the veteran.  “Still, you know, if you’re going to use The Patriot as a blunderbuss to point at the heads of your own enemies, you can’t blame the owner if he—­”

“You think Marrineal knows?” interposed Banneker sharply.

“About The Searchlight matter?  You can bet on one thing, Ban.  Everything that Ely Ives knows, Tertius Marrineal knows.  So far as Ives thinks it advisable for him to know, that is.  Over and above which Tertius is no fool, himself.  You may have noticed that.”

“It’s bothered me from time to time,” admitted the other dryly.

“It’ll bother both of us more, presently,” prophesied Edmonds.

“Then I’ve been playing direct into Marrineal’s hands in attacking Laird on the franchise matter.”

“Yes.  Keep on.”

“Strange advice from you, Pop.  You think my position on that is wrong.”

“What of that?  You think it’s right.  Therefore, go ahead.  Why quit a line of policy just because it obliges your employes?  Don’t be over-conscientious, son.”

“I’ve suspected for some time that the political news was being adroitly manipulated against the administration.  Has Marrineal tried to ring you in on that?”

“No; and he won’t.”

“Why not?”

“He knows that, in the main, I’m a Laird man.  Laird is giving us what we asked for, an honest administration.”

“Suppose, when Marrineal develops his plans, he comes to you, which would be his natural course, to handle the news end of the anti-Laird campaign.  What would you do?”

“Quit.”

Banneker sighed.  “It’s so easy for you.”

“Not so easy as you think, son.  Even though there’s a lot of stuff being put over in the news columns that makes me sore and sick.  Marrineal’s little theory of using news as a lever is being put into practice pretty widely.  Also we’re selling it.”

“Selling our news columns?”

“Some of ’em.  For advertising.  You’re well out of any responsibility for that department.  I’d resign to-morrow if it weren’t for the fact that Marrineal still wants to cocker up the labor crowd for his political purposes, and so gives me a free hand in my own special line.  By the way, he’s got the Veridian matter all nicely smoothed out.  Oh, my, yes!  Fired the general manager, put in all sorts of reforms, recognized the union, the whole programme!  That’s to spike McClintick’s guns if he tries to trot out Veridian again as proof that Marrineal is, at heart, anti-labor.”

“Is he?”

“He’s anti-anything that’s anti-Marrineal, and pro-anything that’s pro-Marrineal.  Haven’t you measured him yet?  All policy, no principle; there’s Mr. Tertius Marrineal for you….  Ban, it’s really you that holds me to this shop.”  Through convolutions of smoke from his tiny pipe, the old stager regarded the young star of journalism with a quaint and placid affection.  “Whatever rotten stuff is going on in the business and news department, your page goes straight and speaks clear….  I wonder how long Marrineal will stand for it …  I wonder what he intends for the next campaign.”

“If my proprietor runs for office, I can’t very well not support him,” said Banneker, troubled.

“Not very well.  The pinch will come as to what you’re going to do about Laird.  According to my private information, he’s coming back at The Patriot.”

“For my editorials on the Combined franchise?”

“Hardly.  He’s too straight to resent honest criticism.  No; for some of the crooked stuff that we’re running in our political news.  Besides, some suspicious and informed soul in the administration has read between our political lines, and got a peep of the aspiring Tertius girding himself for contest.  Result, the city advertising is to be taken from The Patriot.”

It needed no more than a mechanical reckoning of percentages to tell Banneker that this implied a serious diminution of his own income.  Further, such a procedure would be in effect a repudiation of The Patriot and its editorial support.

“That’s a rotten deal!” he exclaimed.

“No.  Just politics.  Justifiable, too, I should say, as politics go.  I doubt whether Laird would do it of his own motion; he plays a higher game than that.  But it isn’t strictly within his province either to effect or prevent.  Anyhow, it’s going to be done.”

“If he wants to fight us—­” began Banneker with gloom in his eyes.

“He doesn’t want to fight anybody,” cut in the expert.  “He wants to be mayor and run the city for what seems to him the city’s best good.  If he thought Marrineal would carry on his work as mayor, I doubt if he’d oppose him.  But our shrewd old friend, Enderby, isn’t of that mind.  Enderby understands Marrineal.  He’ll fight to the finish.”

Edmonds left his friend in a glum perturbation of mind.  Enderby understood Marrineal, did he?  Banneker wished that he himself did.  If he could have come to grips with his employer, he would at least have known now where to take his stand.  But Marrineal was elusive.  No, not even elusive; quiescent.  He waited.

As time passed, Banneker’s editorial and personal involvements grew more complex.  At what moment might a pressure from above close down on his pen, and with what demand?  How should he act in the crisis thus forced, at Marrineal’s slow pleasure?  Take Edmonds’s Gordian recourse; resign?  But he was on the verge of debt.  His investments had gone badly; he prided himself on the thought that it was partly through his own immovable uprightness.  Now, this threat to his badly needed percentages!  Surely The Patriot ought to be making a greater profit than it showed, on its steadily waxing circulation.  Why had he ever let himself be wrenched from his first and impregnable system of a straight payment on increase of circulation?  Would it be possible to force Marrineal back into that agreement?  No income was too great, surely, to recompense for such trouble of soul as The Patriot inflicted upon its editorial mouthpiece….  Through the murk of thoughts shot, golden-rayed, the vision of Io.

No world could be other than glorious in which she lived and loved him and was his.