“Everything. Straight. Without a chaser,” snapped Keatcham.
The colonel gave it to him. He began with his own acquaintance; he told about Phil Mercer; he did not slur a detail; neither did he underscore one; Keatcham got the uncolored facts. He heard them impassively, making only one comment: “A great deal of damage would be saved in this world if youngsters could be shut up until they had sense enough not to fool with firearms.” When Winter came to Mercer’s own exposition of his motives and his design if successful in his raid on the kings of the market, Keatcham grunted; at the end he breathed a noiseless jet of a sigh. “You don’t think Mercer is at all”—he tapped the side of the head.
“No more than you are.”
“Or you?”
“Oh, well,” the colonel jested, “we all have a prejudice in favor of our own sanity. What I meant was that Mercer is a bit of a fanatic; his hard luck has—well, prejudiced him—”
Keatcham’s cold, firm lips straightened into his peculiar smile, which was rather of perception than of humor.
One might say of him—Aunt Rebecca Winter did say of him—that he saw the incongruous, which makes up for humor, but he never enjoyed it; possibly it was only another factor in his contempt of mankind.
“Colonel,” said Keatcham, “do you think Wall Street is a den of thieves?”
“I do,” said the colonel promptly. “I should like to take a machine gun or two and clean you all out.”
Keatcham did not smile; he blinked his eyes and nodded. “I presume a good many people share your opinion of us.”