“At least, I want you to know that it’ll be fair fight.”
“No ‘Junior-called-me-Bob’ trick this time?” smiled Enderby.
Banneker flushed and winced. “No,” he answered. “Next time I’ll be sure of my facts. Good-night and good luck. I hope you beat us.”
As he turned the corner into Fifth Avenue a thought struck him. He made the round of the block, came up the side of the street opposite, and met a stroller having all the ear-marks of the private detective. To think of a man of Judge Enderby’s character being continuously “spotted” for the mean design of an Ely Ives filled Banneker with a sick fury. His first thought was to return and tell Enderby. But to what purpose? After all, what possible harm could Ives’s plotting and sneaking do to a man of the lawyer’s rectitude? Banneker returned to The House With Three Eyes and his unceasing work.
The interview with Enderby had lightened his spirit. The older man’s candor, his tolerance, his clear charity of judgment, his sympathetic comprehension were soothing and reassuring. But there was another trouble yet to be faced. It was three days since the editorial appeared and he had heard no word from Io. Each noon when he called on the long-distance ‘phone, she had been out, an unprecedented change from her eager waiting to hear the daily voice on the wire. Should he write? No; it was too difficult and dangerous for that. He must talk it out with her, face to face, when the time came.
Meantime there was Russell Edmonds. He found the veteran cleaning out his desk preparatory to departure.
“You can’t know how it hurts to see you go, Pop,” he said sadly. “What’s your next step?”
“The Sphere. They want me to do a special series, out around the country.”
“Aren’t they pretty conservative for your ideas?”
Edmonds, ruminating over a pipe even smaller and more fragile than the one sacrificed to his rage and disgust, the day of his resignation, gave utterance to a profound truth: