The ices were being cleared away when a newspaper man, not in evening clothes, slipped in and talked for a moment with Mr. Gordon of The Ledger.  Presently another quietly appropriated a seat next to Van Cleve of The Sphere.  The tidings, whatever they were, spread.  Then, the important men of the different papers gathered about Russell Edmonds.  They seemed to be putting to him brief inquiries, to which he answered with set face and confirming nods.  With his quickened faculties, Banneker surmised one of those inside secrets of journalism so often sacredly kept, though a hundred men know them, of which the public reads only the obvious facts, the empty shell.  Now and again he caught a quick and veiled glance of incomprehension of doubt, of incredulity, cast at him.

He chattered on.  Never did he talk more brilliantly.

Coffee.  Presently there would be cigars.  Then Marrineal would introduce him, and he would say to these men, this high and inner circle of journalism, the things which he could not write for his public, which he could present to them alone, since they alone would understand.  It was to be his magnum opus, that speech.  For a moment he had lost physical visualization in mental vision.  When again he let his eyes rest on the scene before him, he perceived that a strange thing had happened.  The table at which Van Cleve had sat, with seven others, was empty.  In the same glance he saw Mr. Gordon rise and quietly walk out, followed by the other newspaper men in the group.  Two politicians were left.  They moved close to each other and spoke in whispers, looking curiously at Banneker.

What manner of news could that have been, brought in by the working newspaper man, thus to depopulate a late-hour dining-table?  Had the world turned upside down?

Below him, and but a few paces distant, Tommy Burt was seated.  When he, too, got slowly to his feet, Banneker leaned across the strewn, white napery toward him.

“What’s up, Tommy?”

For an instant the star reporter stopped, seemed to turn an answer over in his mind, then shook his head, and, with an unfathomable look of incredulity and shrinking, went his way.  Bunny Fitch followed; Fitch, the slave of his paper’s conventions, the man without standards other than those which were made for him by the terms of his employment, who would go only because his proprietors would have him go:  and the grin which he turned up to Banneker was malignant and scornful.  Already the circle about Ely Ives, who was still drinking eagerly, had melted away.  Glidden, Mallory, Gale, Andreas, and a dozen others of his oldest associates were at the door, not talking as they would have done had some “big story” broken at that hour, but moving in a chill silence and purposefully like men seeking relief from an unendurable atmosphere.  The deadly suspicion of the truth struck in upon the guest of honor; they, his friends, were going because they could no longer take part in honoring him.  His mind groped, terrified and blind, among black shadows.