“How does it feel?” inquired the city editor, turning his pale eyes on the other and fussing nervously with his fingers.
“At first you want to go on killing,” answered Banneker. “Then, when it’s over, there’s a big let-down. It doesn’t seem as if it were you.” He paused and added boyishly: “The evening papers are making an awful fuss over it.”
“What do you expect? It isn’t every day that a Wild West Show with real bullets and blood is staged in this effete town.”
“Of course I knew there’d be a kick-up about it,” admitted Banneker. “But, some way—well, in the West, if a gang gets shot up, there’s quite a bit of talk for a while, and the boys want to buy the drinks for the fellow that does it, but it doesn’t spread all over the front pages. I suppose I still have something of the Western view.... How much did you want of this, Mr. Greenough?” he concluded in a business-like tone.
“You are not doing the story, Mr. Banneker. Tommy Burt is.”
“I’m not writing it? Not any of it?”
“Certainly not. You’re the hero”—there was a hint of elongation of the first syllable which might have a sardonic connotation from those pale and placid lips—“not the historian. Burt will interview you.”
“A Patriot reporter has already. I gave him a statement.”
Mr. Greenough frowned. “It would have been as well to have waited. However.”
“Oh, Banneker,” put in Mallory, “Judge Enderby wants you to call at his office.”