"The Ledger is behind Mr. Banneker, Chief," said Mr. Greenough crisply. "Carrying concealed weapons? If your men in that precinct were fit to be on the force, there would be no need for private citizens to go armed. You get the point, I see. Good-bye." "Unless I am a bad guesser we'll have Banneker back here by evening. And there'll be no manhandling in his case," Mallory said to Burt. Counsel was taken of Mr. Gordon, as soon as that astute managing editor arrived, as to the handling of the difficult situation. The Ledger, always cynically intolerant of any effort to better the city government, as savoring of "goo-gooism," which was its special _bete noire_, could not well make the shooting a basis for a general attack upon police laxity, though it was in this that lay the special news possibility of the event. On the other hand, the thing was far too sensational to be ignored or too much slurred. Andreas, the assistant managing editor, in charge of the paper's make-up, a true news-hound with an untainted delight in the unusual and striking, no matter what its setting might be, who had been called into the conference, advocated "smearing it all over the front page, with Banneker's first-hand statement for the lead--pictures too." Him, Mr. Greenough, impassive joss of the city desk, regarded with a chill eye. "One reporter visiting another gets into a muss and shoots up some riverside toughs," he remarked contemptuously. "You can hardly expect our public to get greatly excited over that. Are we going into the business of exploiting our own cubs?" Thereupon there was sharp discussion to which Mr. Gordon put an end by remarking that the evening papers would doubtless give them a lead; meantime they could get Banneker's version. First to come in was The Evening New Yorker, the most vapid of all the local prints, catering chiefly to the uptown and shopping element. Its heading half-crossed the page proclaiming "Guest of Yachtsman Shoots Down Thugs." Nowhere in the article did it appear that Banneker had any connection with the newspaper world. He was made to appear as a young Westerner on a visit to the yacht of a millionaire business man, having come on from his ranch in the desert, and presumptively--to add the touch of godhead--a millionaire himself. "The stinking liars!" said Andreas. "That settles it," declared Mr. Gordon. "We'll give the facts plainly and without sensationalism; but all the facts." "Including Mr. Banneker's connection here?" inquired Mr. Greenough. "Certainly." The other evening papers, more honest than The Evening New Yorker, admitted, though, as it were, regretfully and in an inconspicuous finale to their accounts that the central figure of the sensation was only a reporter. But the fact of his being guest on a yacht was magnified and glorified.