A surprisingly good auto was found in the town of his destination, to speed him to the stone gateway of The Retreat.  The guardian, always on duty there, passed him with a civil word, and a sober-liveried flunkey at the clubhouse door, after a swift, unobtrusive consideration of his clothes and bearing, took him readily for granted, and said that Mr. Densmore would be just about going on the polo field for practice.  Did the gentleman know his way to the field?  Seeing the flag on the stable, Banneker nodded, and walked over.  A groom pointed out a spare, powerful looking young man with a pink face, startlingly defined by a straight black mustache and straighter black eyebrows, mounting a light-built roan, a few rods away.  Banneker accosted him.

“Yes, my name is Densmore,” he answered the visitor’s accost.

“I’m a reporter from The Ledger,” explained Banneker.

“A reporter?” Mr. Densmore frowned.  “Reporters aren’t allowed here, except on match days.  How did you get in?”

“Nobody stopped me,” answered the visitor in an expressionless tone.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the other, “since you’re here.  What is it; the international challenge?”

“A rumor has come to us—­There’s a tip come in at the office—­We understood that there is—­” Banneker pulled himself together and put the direct question.  “Is Mrs. Delavan Eyre bringing a divorce suit against her husband?”

For a time there was a measured silence.  Mr. Densmore’s heavy brows seemed to jut outward and downward toward the questioner.

“You came out here from New York to ask me that?” he said presently.

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes.  Who is named as co-respondent?  And will there be a defense, or a counter-suit?”

“A counter-suit,” repeated the man in the saddle quietly.  “I wonder if you realize what you’re asking?”

“I’m trying to get the news,” said Banneker doggedly striving to hold to an ideal which momentarily grew more sordid and tawdry.

“And I wonder if you realize how you ought to be answered.”

Yes; Banneker realized, with a sick realization.  But he was not going to admit it.  He kept silence.

“If this polo mallet were a whip, now,” observed Mr. Densmore meditatively.  “A dog-whip, for preference.”

Under the shameful threat Banneker’s eyes lightened.  Here at least was something he could face like a man.  His undermining nausea mitigated.

“What then?” he inquired in tones as level as those of his opponent.

“Why, then I’d put a mark on you.  A reporter’s mark.”

“I think not.”

“Oh; you think not?” The horseman studied him negligently.  Trained to the fineness of steel in the school of gymnasium, field, and tennis court, he failed to recognize in the man before him a type as formidable, in its rugged power, as his own.  “Or perhaps I’d have the grooms do it for me, before they threw you over the fence.”