s, indeed, the basis on which Ives drew a
considerable stipend from his patron's private purse, as "personal
representative of Mr. Marrineal" for purposes unspecified.

"A railroad man. From what he tells me there was some sort of
love-affair there. A girl who materialized from nowhere and spent two
weeks, mostly with the romantic station-agent. Might have been a
princess in exile, by my informant, who saw her twice. More likely some
cheap little skate of a movie actress on a bust."

"A station-agent's taste in women friends--" began Marrineal, and
forbore unnecessarily to finish.

"Possibly it has improved. Or--well, at any rate, there was something
there. My railroad man thinks the affair drove Banneker out of his job.
The fact of his being woman-proof here points to its having been
serious."

"There was a girl out there about that time visiting Camilla Van
Arsdale," remarked Marrineal carelessly; "a New York girl. One of the
same general set. Miss Van Arsdale used to be a New Yorker and rather a
distinguished one."

Too much master of his devious craft to betray discomfiture over
another's superior knowledge of a subject which he had tried to make his
own, Ely Ives remarked:

"Then she was probably the real thing. The princess on vacation. You
don't know who she was, I suppose," he added tentatively.

Marrineal did not answer, thereby giving his factotum uncomfortably to
reflect that he really must not expect payment for information and the
information also.

"I guess he'll bear watching." Ives wound up with his favorite
philosophy.

It was a few days after this that, by a special interposition of kindly
chance, Ives, having returned from a trip out of town, saw Banneker and
Io breakfasting in the station restaurant. To Marrineal he said nothing
of this at the time; nor, indeed, to any one else. But later he took it
to a very private market of his own, the breakfast-room of a sunny and
secluded house far uptown, where lived, in an aroma of the domestic
virtues, a benevolent-looking old gentleman who combined the attributes
of the ferret, the leech, and the vulture in his capacity as editor of
that famous weekly publication, The Searchlight. Ives did not sell in
that mart; he traded for other information. This time he wanted
something about Judge Willis Enderby, for he was far enough on the
inside politically to see in him a looming figure which might stand in
the way of certain projects, unannounced as ye