“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Well he used to have the reputation of writing on the sly for The Searchlight.”
“That sewer-sheet! You don’t think he’d dare do anything of the sort about us? Why, what would he have to go on?”
“What does The Searchlight have to go on in most of its lies, and hints, and innuendoes?”
“But, Io, even if it did publish—”
“It mustn’t,” she said. “Ban, if it did—it would make it impossible for us to go on as we have been. Don’t you see that it would?”
He turned sallow under his ruddy skin. “Then I’ll stop it, one way or another. I’ll put the fear of God into that filthy old worm that runs the blackmail shop. The first thing is to find out, though, whether there’s anything in it. I did hear a hint....” He lost himself in musings, trying to recall an occult remark which the obsequious Ely Ives had made to him sometime before. “And I know where I can do it,” he ended.
To go to Ives for anything was heartily distasteful to him. But this was a necessity. He cautiously questioned the unofficial factotum of his employer. Had Ives heard anything of a projected attack on him in The Searchlight? Why, yes; Ives had (naturally, since it was he and not Babson who had furnished the material). In fact, he had an underground wire into the office of that weekly of spice and scurrility which might be tapped to oblige a friend.
Banneker winced at the characterization, but confessed that he would be appreciative of any information. In three days a galley proof of the paragraph was in his hands. It confirmed his angriest fears. Publication of it would smear Io’s name with scandal, and, by consequence, direct the leering gaze of the world upon their love.
“What is this; blackmail?” he asked Ives.