adduced and frankly presented the facts, his social as well as
his professional duty is done. Others might hew out the trail thus
blazed; the reporter, bearing his searchlight, should pass on to other
dark spots. All his theories evaporated as soon as he confronted Judge
Enderby, forgotten in the interest inspired by the man.

A portrait painter once said of Willis Enderby that his face was that of
a saint, illumined, not by inspiration, but by shrewdness. With his
sensitiveness to beauty of whatever kind, Banneker felt the
extraordinary quality of the face, beneath its grim outline,
interpreting it from the still depth of the quiet eyes rather than from
the stern mouth and rather tyrannous nose. He was prepared for an abrupt
and cold manner, and was surprised when the lawyer rose to shake hands,
giving him a greeting of courtly congratulation upon his courage and
readiness. If the purpose of this was to get Banneker to expand, as he
suspected, it failed. The visitor sensed the cold reserve behind the
smile.

"Would you be good enough to run through this document?" requested the
lawyer, motioning Banneker to a seat opposite himself, and handing him a
brief synopsis of what the Law Enforcement Society hoped to prove
regarding police laxity.

Exercising that double faculty of mind which later became a part of the
Banneker legend in New York journalism, the reader, whilst absorbing the
main and quite simple points of the report, recalled an instance in
which an Atkinson and St. Philip ticket agent had been maneuvered into a
posture facing a dazzling sunset, and had adjusted his vision to find it
focused upon the barrel of a 45. Without suspecting the Judge of hold-up
designs, he nevertheless developed a parallel. Leaving his chair he
walked over and sat by the window. Halfway through the document, he
quietly laid it aside and returned the lawyer's studious regard.

"Have you finished?" asked Judge Enderby.

"No."

"You do not find it interesting?"

"Less interesting than your idea in giving it to me."

"What do you conceive that to have been?"

By way of reply, Banneker cited the case of Tim Lake, the robbed agent.
"I think," he added with a half smile, "that you and I will do better in
the open."

"I think so, too. Mr. Banneker, are you honest?"

"Where I came from, that would be regarded as a trouble-hunter's
question."

"I ask you to regard it as important and take it without offense."

"I don't know ab