Marrineal, for once allowing discomposure to ruffle his imperturbability, rose to check the exodus.

“Gentlemen!  One moment, if you please.  As soon as—­”

The rest was lost to Banneker as he beheld Edmonds rear his spare form up from his chair a few paces away.  Reckless of ceremony now, the central figure of the feast rose.

“Edmonds!  Pop!”

The veteran stopped, turning the slow, sad judgment of his eyes upon the other.

“What is it?” appealed Banneker.  “What’s happened?  Tell me.”

“Willis Enderby is dead.”

The query, which forced itself from Banneker’s lips, was a self-accusation.  “By his own hand?”

“By yours,” answered Edmonds, and strode from the place.

Groping, Banneker’s fingers encountered a bottle, closed about it, drew it in.  He poured and drank.  He thought it wine.  Not until the reeking stab of brandy struck to his brain did he realize the error....  All right.  Brandy.  He needed it.  He was going to make a speech.  What speech?  How did it begin....  What was this that Marrineal was saying?  “In view of the tragic news....  Call off the speech-making?” Not at all!  He, Banneker, must have his chance.  He could explain everything.

Brilliantly, convincingly to his own mind, he began.  It was all right; only the words in their eagerness to set forth the purity of his motives, the unimpeachable rectitude of his standards, became confused.  Somebody was plucking at his arm.  Ives?  All right?  Ives was a good fellow, after all....  Yes:  he’d go home—­with Ives.  Ives would understand.

All the way back to The House With Three Eyes he explained himself; any fair-minded man would see that he had done his best.  Ives was fair-minded; he saw it.  Ives was a man of judgment.  Therefore, when he suggested bed, he must be right.  Very weary, Banneker was.  He felt very, very wretched about Enderby.  He’d explain it all to Enderby in the morning—­no:  couldn’t do that, though.  Enderby was dead.  Queer idea, that!  What was it that violent-minded idiot, Pop Edmonds, had said?  He’d settle with Pop in the morning.  Now he’d go to sleep....

He woke to utter misery.  In the first mail came the letter, now expected, from Io.  It completed the catastrophe in which his every hope was swept away.

I have tried to make myself believe (she wrote) that you could not have Betrayed him; that you would not, at least, have let me, who loved you, be, unknowingly, the agent of his destruction.  But the black record comes back to me.  The Harvey Wheelwright editorial, which seemed so light a thing, then.  The lie that beat Robert Laird.  The editorial that you dared not print, after promising.  All of one piece.  How could I ever have trusted you!