Eyre. So there you
have him delivered, shorn and helpless, and Delilah doesn't even suspect
that she's acting as our agent."
Marrineal's eyes fixed themselves in a lifeless sort of stare upon a far
corner of the ceiling. Recognizing this as a sign of inward cogitation,
the vizier of his more private interests sat waiting. Without changing
the direction of his gaze, the proprietor indicated a check in his
ratiocination by saying incompletely:
"Now, if she divorced Eyre and married Banneker--"
Ives completed it for him. "That would spike The Searchlight's guns, you
think? Perhaps. But if she were going to divorce Eyre, she'd have done
it long ago, wouldn't she? I think she'll wait. He won't last long."
"Then our hold on Banneker, through his ability to intimidate The
Searchlight, depends on the life of a paretic."
"Paretic is too strong a word--yet. But it comes to about that.
Except--he'll want a lot of money to marry Io Eyre."
"He wants a lot, anyway," smiled Marrineal.
"He'll want more. She's an expensive luxury."
"He can get more. Any time when he chooses to handle The Patriot so that
it attracts instead of offends the big advertisers."
"Why don't you put the screws on him now, Mr. Marrineal?" smirked Ives
with thin-lipped malignancy.
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