Others might hew out the trail thus
blazed; the reporter, bearing his searchlight, should pass on to other
dark spots. All his theories evaporated as soon as he confronted Judge
Enderby, forgotten in the interest inspired by the man.
A portrait painter once said of Willis Enderby that his face was that of
a saint, illumined, not by inspiration, but by shrewdness. With his
sensitiveness to beauty of whatever kind, Banneker felt the
extraordinary quality of the face, beneath its grim outline,
interpreting it from the still depth of the quiet eyes rather than from
the stern mouth and rather tyrannous nose. He was prepared for an abrupt
and cold manner, and was surprised when the lawyer rose to shake hands,
giving him a greeting of courtly congratulation upon his courage and
readiness. If the purpose of this was to get Banneker to expand, as he
suspected, it failed. The visitor sensed the cold reserve behind the
smile.
"Would you be good enough to run through this document?" requested the
lawyer, motioning Banneker to a seat opposite himself, and handing him a
brief synopsis of what the Law Enforcement Society hoped to prove
regarding police laxity.
Exercising that double faculty of mind which later became a part of the
Banneker legend in New York journalism, the reader, whilst absorbing the
main and quite simple points of the report, recalled an instance in
which an Atkinson and St.
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