Ely Ives had
passed near by.
"Marrineal's familiar," said Banneker. "I wonder how he got here.
Certainly I didn't ask him.... Very well, Io. I'll compromise. But ... I
don't think I'll put that quotation from the Areopagitica at the head of
my column. That will have to wait. Perhaps it will have to wait until
I--we get a paper of our own."
"Poor Ban!" whispered Io.
CHAPTER VIII
Once a month Marrineal gave a bachelor dinner of Lucullan repute. The
company, though much smaller than the gatherings at The House With Three
Eyes, covered a broader and looser social range. Having declined several
of his employer's invitations in succession on the well-justified plea
of work, Banneker felt it incumbent upon him to attend one of these
events, and accordingly found himself in a private dining-room of the
choicest of restaurants, tabled with a curiously assorted group of
financiers, editors, actors, a small selection of the more raffish
members of The Retreat including Delavan Eyre; Ely Ives; an elderly
Jewish lawyer of unsavory reputation, enormous income, and real and
delicate scholarship; Herbert Cressey, a pair of the season's
racing-kings, an eminent art connoisseur, and a smattering of
men-about-town. Seated between the lawyer and one of the racing-men,
Banneker, as the dinner progressed, found himself watching Delavan Eyre,
opposite, who was drinking with sustained intensity, but without
apparent effect upon his debonair bearing.
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