"You say that Mr. Banneker is in the police station?" asked the city
editor.

"Or at headquarters. They're probably working the third degree on him."

"That won't do," declared the city desk incumbent, with conviction. He
caught up the telephone, got the paper's City Hall reporter, and was
presently engaged in some polite but pointed suggestions to His Honor
the Mayor. Shortly after, Police Headquarters called; the Chief himself
was on the wire.

"The Ledger is behind Mr. Banneker, Chief," said Mr. Greenough crisply.
"Carrying concealed weapons? If your men in that precinct were fit to be
on the force, there would be no need for private citizens to go armed.
You get the point, I see. Good-bye."

"Unless I am a bad guesser we'll have Banneker back here by evening. And
there'll be no manhandling in his case," Mallory said to Burt.

Counsel was taken of Mr. Gordon, as soon as that astute managing editor
arrived, as to the handling of the difficult situation. The Ledger,
always cynically intolerant of any effort to better the city government,
as savoring of "goo-gooism," which was its special _bete noire_, could
not well make the shooting a basis for a general attack upon police
laxity, though it was in this that lay the special news possibility of
the event. On the other hand, the thing was far too sensational to be
ignored or too much slurred.

Andreas, the assistant managing editor, in charge of the paper's
make-up, a true news-hound with an untainted delight in the unusual and
striking, no matter what its setting might be, who had been called into
the conference, advocated "smearing it all over the front page, with
Banneker's first-hand statement for the lead--pictures too."

Him, Mr. Greenough, impassive joss of the city desk, regarded with a
chill eye. "One reporter visiting another gets into a muss and shoots up
some riverside toughs," he remarked contemptuously. "You can hardly
expect our public to get greatly excited over that. Are we going into
the business of exploiting our own cubs?"

Thereupon there was sharp discussion to which Mr. Gordon put an end by
remarking that the evening papers would doubtless give them a lead;
meantime they could get Banneker's version.

First to come in was The Evening New Yorker, the most vapid of all the
local prints, catering chiefly to the uptown and shopping element. Its
heading half-crossed the page proclaiming "Guest of Yachtsman Shoots
Down Thugs." Nowhere in th