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.”