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It gave no inkling of its unique exclusiveness, and equally unique expensiveness. As for Cressey, that simple, direct, and confident soul took not the smallest account of Banneker's standardized clothing, which made him almost as conspicuous in that environment as if he had entered clad in a wooden packing-case.
Banneker's wrists were props of steel as he gripped the tossing head. The old man took a turn with a bandage and fastened it. "He'll die, anyway," he said, and lifted his face. Banneker cackled like a silly girl at full sight of him. The spreading whisker on the far side of his stern face was gayly pied in blotches of red and green.
"I do, as it happens. But I fail to see how Christian Banneker's son and élève could. Yet you write editorials for The Ledger." "Not on those topics." "Have you never had your editorials altered or cut or amended, in such manner as to give a side-slant toward the paper's editorial fetiches?" Again and most uncomfortably Banneker felt his color change. "Yes; I have," he admitted.
He tossed an overcoat on over his pajamas, ran to the door and swung it open. The tiny ray of light advanced, hesitated, advanced again. She walked into the shack, and immediately the rain burst again upon the outer world. Banneker's fleeting impression was of a vivid but dimmed beauty.
Under the shameful threat Banneker's eyes lightened. Here at least was something he could face like a man. His undermining nausea mitigated. "What then?" he inquired in tones as level as those of his opponent. "Why, then I'd put a mark on you. A reporter's mark." "I think not." "Oh; you think not?" The horseman studied him negligently.
That noon Tommy Burt, the funny man, drawing down his hundred-plus a week on space, came over and sat on Banneker's desk, and swung his legs and looked at him mournfully and said: "You've broken through your shell at last." "Did you like it?" asked Banneker. "Like it! My God, if I could write like that! But what's the use! Never in the world." "Oh, that's nonsense," returned Banneker, pleased.
For all that Io's "my dear" was the most casual utterance imaginable, it brought a quick flush to Banneker's face. Chattering carelessly, she washed up the few dishes, put them away in the brackets, and then, smoking another of the despised Mellorosas, wandered to the book-shelves. "Read me something out of your favorite book, Ban.... No; this one." She handed him the thick mail-order catalogue.
Marrineal murmured smilingly something indefinite but complimentary as to Banneker's reputation on Park Row; but this was by no means a fair index to what he knew about Banneker. Indeed, that prematurely successful reporter would have been surprised at the extent to which Marrineal's private investigations had gone.
Or was he merely paraphrasing or perhaps only characterizing? There was a dim ring in Banneker's cerebral ear of previous words, half taken in, which would indicate the latter and ruin the deadly plan, strike the poison-dose from his hand. Should he ask Fitch? Pin him down to the details? The character-sketcher was now upon the subject of Judge Enderby. "Sly old wolf!
A girlish figure was revealed, one protective arm thrown across the eyes. "Don't strike me," said the girl again, and again Banneker's heart was shaken within him by such tremors as the crisis of some deadly fear might cause. "You needn't be afraid," he stammered. "I've never been afraid before," she said, hanging her weight away from him. "Won't you let me go?"
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