“No, it’s not,” replied Binns truculently, “and I won’t do it. It’s all right about Hill and Weaver. I know they’ll give me a picture if the paper will let them, but I know the paper won’t let them, and besides, you’re not doing it for that reason. I know what you want. You want to be able to claim in the morning that you brought this man to the News first. I know you.”
For a moment Collins appeared to be quieted by this, and half seemed to abandon the project. He took it up again after a few moments, however, seemingly in the most conciliatory spirit in the world, only now he kept boring Binns with his eyes, a thing which he had never attempted before.
“Aw, come on,” he repeated genially, looking Binns squarely in the eyes. “What’s the use being small about this? You know you’ve got the best of the story anyhow. And you’re goin’ to get a picture too, the same as us. If you don’t, then we’ll have to go clear to your office or send a man down to the jail. Think of the time it’ll take. What’s the use of that? One picture’s as good as another. And you can’t take any good pictures down there to-night, anyhow, and you know it.”
As he talked he held Binns’s eyes with his own, and all at once the latter began to feel a curious wave of warmth, ease and uncertainty or confusion creep over him in connection with all this. What was so wrong with this proposition, anyhow, he began to ask himself, even while inwardly something was telling him that it was all wrong and that he was making a great mistake. For the first time in his life, and especially in connection with so trying a situation, he began to feel an odd sense of ease and comfort, or as if surrounded by a cloud of something that was comfortable and soothing. This scheme of Collins’s was not so bad after all, he thought. What was wrong with it? Hill and Weaver were his friends. They would make a good picture and give him one. Everything Collins was saying seemed true enough, only, only—— For the first time since knowing him, and in spite of all his opposition of this afternoon and before, Binns found himself not hating his rival as violently as he had in the past, but feeling as though he weren’t such an utterly bad sort after all. Curiously, though, he still didn’t believe a word that Collins said, but——
“To the News, sure,” he found himself saying in a dumb, half-numb or sensuously warm way. “That wouldn’t be so bad. It’s nearer. What’s wrong with that? Hill or Weaver will make a good picture seven or eight inches long, and then I can take it along,” only at the same time he was thinking to himself, “I shouldn’t really do this. I shouldn’t think it. He’ll claim the credit of having brought this man to the News office. He’s a big bluff, and I hate him. I’ll be making a big mistake. The Star or nothing—that’s what I should say. Let him come down to the Star.”
In the meantime they were entering O——, the station of which now appeared. By now, somehow, Collins had not only convinced the officers, but the prisoner himself. Binns could even see the rural love of show and parade a-gleam in their eyes, their respect for the News, the larger paper, as opposed to the Star. The Star might be all right, but plainly the News was the great place in the sight of these rurals for such an exhibition as this. What a pity, he thought, that he had ever left the News!
As he arose with the others to leave the train he said dully, “No, I won’t come in on this. It’s all right if you want to bring him down to the Star, or you can take him to police headquarters. But I’m not going to let you do this. You hear now, don’t you?”
But outside, Collins laying hold of his arm in an amazingly genial fashion, seemed to come nearer to him humanly than he had ever dreamed was possible before.
“You come up with me to the News now,” Collins kept saying, “and then I’ll go down with you to the Star, see? We’ll just let Hill or Weaver take one picture, and then we’ll go down to your place—you see?”
Although Mr. Binns did not see, he went. For the time, nothing seemed important. If Collins had stayed by him he could possibly have prevented his writing any story at all. Even as Binns dreamed, Collins hailed a carriage, and the six of them crowded into it and were forthwith whirled away to the door of the News where, once they had reached it and Collins, the detectives, and the bandit began hurrying across the sidewalk to that familiar door which once had meant so much to him, Binns suddenly awoke. What was it—the door? Or the temporary distraction of Collins? At any rate, he awoke now and made a frantic effort to retrieve himself.