Said Mallory of The Ledger, bending over him:
“Look at Ban, Pop!”
“I’m looking,” gloomed Edmonds.
“What’s behind that smile? Something frozen. What’s the matter with him?” queried the observant Mallory.
“Too much success.”
“It’ll be too much dinner if he doesn’t look out,” remarked the other. “He’s trying to match cocktails with every one that comes up.”
“Won’t make a bit of difference,” muttered the veteran. “He’s all steel. Cold steel. Can’t touch him.”
Marrineal led the way out of the ante-room to the banquet, escorting Banneker. Never had the editor of The Patriot seemed to be more completely master of himself. The drink had brightened his eyes, brought a warm flush to the sun-bronze of his cheek, lent swiftness to his tongue. He was talking brilliantly, matching epigrams with the Great Gaines, shrewdly poking good-natured fun at the stolid and stupid mayor, holding his and the near-by tables in spell with reminiscences in which so many of them shared. Some wondered how he would have anything left for his speech.
While the game course was being served, Ely Ives was summoned outside. Banneker, whose faculties had taken on a preternatural acuteness, saw, when he returned, that his face had whitened and sharpened; watched him write a note which he folded and pinned before sending it to Marrineal. In the midst of a story, which he carried without interruption, the guest of honor perceived a sort of glaze settle over his chief’s immobile visage; the next moment he had very slightly shaken his head at Ives. Banneker concluded his story. Marrineal capped it with another. Ives, usually abstemious as befits one who practices sleight-of-hand and brain, poured his empty goblet full of champagne and emptied it in long, eager draughts. The dinner went on.
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.