f any higher official standing
to even such a genius. Born and bred to such conditions, Muller
understands them, and his natural modesty of disposition asks for no
outward honours, asks for nothing but an income sufficient for his
simple needs, and for aid and opportunity to occupy himself in the way
he most enjoys.

Joseph Muller's character is a strange mixture. The kindest-hearted man
in the world, he is a human bloodhound when once the lure of the trail
has caught him. He scarcely eats or sleeps when the chase is on, he does
not seem to know human weakness nor fatigue, in spite of his frail body.
Once put on a case his mind delves and delves until it finds a clue,
then something awakes within him, a spirit akin to that which holds
the bloodhound nose to trail, and he will accomplish the apparently
impossible, he will track down his victim when the entire machinery of
a great police department seems helpless to discover anything. The high
chiefs and commissioners grant a condescending permission when Muller
asks, "May I do this? ... or may I handle this case this way?"
both parties knowing all the while that it is a farce, and that the
department waits helpless until this humble little man saves its honour
by solving some problem before which its intricate machinery has stood
dazed and puzzled.

This call of the trail is something that is stronger than anything else
in Muller's mentality, and now and then it brings him into conflict with
the department,... or with his own better nature. Sometimes his unerring
instinct discovers secrets in high places, secrets which the Police
Department is bidden to hush up and leave untouched. Muller is then
taken off the case, and left idle for a while if he persists in his
opinion as to the true facts. And at other times, Muller's own warm
heart gets him into trouble. He will track down his victim, driven by
the power in his soul which is stronger than all volition; but when he
has this victim in the net, he will sometimes discover him to be a
much finer, better man than the other individual, whose wrong at this
particular criminal's hand set in motion the machinery of justice.
Several times that has happened to Muller, and each time his heart got
the better of his professional instincts, of his practical common-sense,
too, perhaps,... at least as far as his own advancement was concerned,
and he warned the victim, defeating his own work. This peculiarity of
Muller's character ca