“Don’t that other fellow want to get on?” asked the latter curiously.
“No, no, no!” Binns exclaimed irritably and yet pleading. “Don’t let him on! He hasn’t any right on here. I arranged to stop this train. I’m from the Star. I’ll pay you if you don’t let him on. It’s the train robber I want. Go ahead,” but even as he spoke Mr. Collins came up, panting and wet, but with a leer of triumph and joy over his rival’s discomfiture written all over his face as he pulled himself up the steps.
“You thought you’d leave me behind, didn’t you?” he sneered as he pushed his way upward. “Well, I fooled you this time, didn’t I?”
Now was the crucial moment of Mr. Binns’s career had his courage been equal to it, but it was not. He had the opportunity to do the one thing which might have wrested victory from defeat—that is, push Mr. Collins off and keep him off. The train was beginning to move. But instead of employing this raw force which Mr. Collins would assuredly have employed, he hesitated and debated, unable in his super-refinement to make up his mind, while Mr. Collins, not to be daunted or parleyed with, dashed into the car in search of the robber. In the sudden immensity of his discomfiture, Binns now followed him with scarcely a thought for the moment, only to see Collins bustling up to the bandit in the third car ahead who, handcuffed to a country sheriff and surrounded by several detectives, was staring idly at the passengers.
“Gee, sport,” the latter was saying as Mr. Binns sat down, patting the burglar familiarly on the knee and fixing him with that basilisk gaze of his which was intended to soothe and flatter the victim, “that was a great trick you pulled off. The paper’ll be crazy to find out how you did it. My paper, the News, wants a whole page of it. It wants your picture, too. Say, you didn’t really do it all alone, did you? Well, that’s what I call swell work, eh, Cap?” and now he turned his ingratiating leer on the country sheriff and the detectives. In a moment or two more he was telling them all what an intimate friend he was of “Billy” Desmond, the chief of detectives of O—— and Mr. So-and-So, the chief of police, as well as various other dignitaries of that world.
Plainly, admitted Binns to himself, he was beaten now, as much so as this burglar, he thought. His great opportunity was gone. What a victory this might have been, and now look at it! Disgruntled, he sat down beside his enemy, beginning to think what to ask, the while the latter, preening himself in his raw way on his success, began congratulating the prisoner on his great feat.
“The dull stuff!” thought Mr. Binns. “To think that I should have to contend with a creature like this! And these are the people he considers something! And he wants a whole page for the News! My word! He’d do well if he wrote a half-column alone.”
Still, to his intense chagrin, he could not fail to see that Mr. Collins was making excellent headway, not only with the country sheriff, who was a big bland creature, but the detectives and even the burglar himself. The latter was a most unpromising specimen for so unique a deed—short, broad-shouldered, heavy-limbed, with a squarish, inexpressive, even dull-looking face, blue-gray eyes, dark brown hair, big, lumpy, rough hands, and a tanned and seamed skin. He wore the cheap, nondescript clothes of a laborer, a blue “hickory” shirt, blackish-gray trousers, brownish-maroon coat, and a red bandana handkerchief in lieu of a collar. On his head was a small round brown hat pulled down over his eyes after the manner of a cap. He had the still, indifferent expression of a captive bird, and when Binns finally faced him and sat down, he seemed scarcely to notice either him or Collins, or if so with eyes that told nothing. Binns often wondered afterward what he really did think. At the same time he was so incensed at the mere presence of Collins that he could scarcely speak.
The latter had the average detective-politician-gambler’s habit of simulating an intense interest and an enthusiasm which he did not feel, his face wreathing itself in a cheery smile, the while his eyes followed one like those of a hawk, attempting all the while to discover whether his assumed enthusiasm or friendship was being accepted at its face value or not. The only time Binns seemed to obtain the least grip on this situation, or to impress himself on the minds of the detectives and prisoner, was when it came to those finer shades of questioning which concerned just why, for what ulterior reasons, the burglar had attempted this deed alone. But even here, Binns noticed that his confrère was all ears, and making copious notes.
But always, to Binns’s astonishment and chagrin, the prisoner as well as his captors paid more attention to Collins than they did to himself. They turned to him as to a lamp, and seemed to be really immensely more impressed with him than with himself, although the principal lines of questioning fell to him. After a time he became so dour and enraged that he could think of but one thing that would really have satisfied him, and that was to attack Collins physically and give him a good beating.