“What is this; blackmail?” he asked Ives.

“Might be.”

“Who wrote it?”

“Reads like the old buzzard’s own style.”

“I’ll go and see him,” said Banneker, half to himself.

“You can go, but I don’t think you’ll see him.”  Ives set forth in detail the venerable editor’s procedure as to troublesome callers.  It was specific and curious.  Foreseeing that he would probably have to fight with his opponent’s weapons, Banneker sought out Russell Edmonds and asked for all the information regarding The Searchlight and its proprietor-editor in the veteran’s possession.  Edmonds had a fund of it.

“But it won’t smoke him out,” he said.  “That skunk lives in a deep hole.”

“If I can’t smoke him out, I’ll blast him out,” declared Banneker, and set himself to the composition of an editorial which consumed the remainder of the working day.

With a typed copy in his pocket, he called, a little before noon, at the office of The Searchlight and sent in his card to Major Bussey.  The Major was not in.  When was he expected?  As for that, there was no telling; he was quite irregular.  Very well, Mr. Banneker would wait.  Oh, that was quite useless; was it about something in the magazine; wouldn’t one of the other editors do?  Without awaiting an answer, the anemic and shrewd-faced office girl who put the questions disappeared, and presently returned, followed by a tailor-made woman of thirty-odd, with a delicate, secret-keeping mouth and heavy-lidded, deep-hued eyes, altogether a seductive figure.  She smiled confidently up at Banneker.

“I’ve always wanted so much to meet you,” she disclosed, giving him a quick, gentle hand pressure.  “So has Major Bussey.  Too bad he’s out of town.  Did you want to see him personally?”

“Quite personally.”  Banneker returned her smile with one even more friendly and confiding.

“Wouldn’t I do?  Come into my office, won’t you?  I represent him in some things.”

“Not in this one, I hope,” he replied, following her to an inner room.  “It is about a paragraph not yet published, which might be misconstrued.”

“Oh, I don’t think any one could possibly misconstrue it,” she retorted, with a flash of wicked mirth.

“You know the paragraph to which I refer, then.”

“I wrote it.”

Banneker regarded her with grave and appreciative urbanity.  All was going precisely as Ely Ives had prognosticated; the denial of the presence of the editor; the appearance of this alluring brunette as whipping-girl to assume the burden of his offenses with the calm impunity of her sex and charm.

“Congratulations,” he said.  “It is very clever.”

“It’s quite true, isn’t it?” she returned innocently.

“As authentic, let us say, as your authorship of the paragraph.”

“You don’t think I wrote it?  What object should I have in trying to deceive you?”