“But what is the idea?”

Ives delivered himself of his pet theory.  “They’ll all bear watching.  It may come in handy some day.”

“What may?”

“Anything we can get.”

“What on earth could any but an insane man expect to get on Enderby?” contemptuously asked Banneker.

Shooting a covert look at his principal, Ives either received or assumed a permission.  “Well, there was some kind of an old scandal, you know.”

“Was there?” Banneker’s voice was negligent.  “That would be hard to believe.”

“Hard to get hold of in any detail.  I’ve dug some of it out through my Searchlight connection.  Very useful line, that.”

Ives ventured a direct look at Banneker, but diverted it from the cold stare it encountered.

“Some woman scrape,” he explicated with an effort at airiness.

Banneker turned a humiliating back on him.  “The Patriot is beginning to get a bad name on Park Row for this sort of thing,” he informed Marrineal.

“This isn’t a Patriot matter.  It is private.”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed Banneker in disgust.  “After all, it doesn’t matter.  You’ll have your trouble for your pains,” he prophesied, and returned to ’phone Betty Raleigh.

What had become of Banneker, Betty’s gay and pure-toned voice demanded over the wire.  Had he eschewed the theater and all its works for good?  Too busy?  Was that a reason also for eschewing his friends?  He’d never meant to do that?  Let him prove it then by coming up to see her....  Yes; at once.  Something special to be talked over.

It was a genuine surprise to Banneker to find that he had not seen the actress for nearly two months.  Certainly he had not specially missed her, yet it was keenly pleasurable to be brought into contact again with that restless, vital, outgiving personality.  She looked tired and a little dispirited and—­for she was of that rare type in which weariness does not dim, but rather qualifies and differentiates its beauty—­quite as lovely as he had ever seen her.  The query which gave him his clue to her special and immediate interest was: 

“Why is Haslett leaving The Patriot?” Haslett was the Chicago critic transplanted to take Gurney’s place.

“Is he?  I didn’t know.  You ought not to mourn his loss, Betty.”

“But I do.  At least, I’m afraid I’m going to.  Do you know who the new critic is?”

“No.  Do you?  And how do you?  Oh, I suppose I ought to understand that, though,” he added, annoyed that so important a change should have been kept secret from him.

With characteristic directness she replied, “You mean Tertius Marrineal?”

“Naturally.”

“That’s all off.”

“Betty!  Your engagement to him?”

“So far as there ever was any.”

“Is it really off?  Or have you only quarreled?”

“Oh, no.  I can’t imagine myself quarreling with Tertius.  He’s too impersonal.  For the same reason, and others, I can’t see myself marrying him.”