not account
for his hitting the description of Mulehaus in the make-up of his straw
man, but it would furnish the data for the dollar story. I had drawn the
latter a little before he was ready. It belonged in what he planned to
give me at two o'clock. But I thought I saw what the creature was about.
And I was right."

Walker put out his hand and moved the pages of his memoir on the table.
Then he went on:

"I was smoking a cigar on a bench at the entrance to Heinz's Pier when
the hobo shuffled up. He came down one of the streets from Pacific
Avenue, and the direction confirmed me in my theory. It also confirmed
me in the opinion that I was all kinds of a fool to let this dirty hobo
get a further chance at me.

"I was not in a very good humour. Everything I had set going after
Mulehaus was marking time. The only report was progress in linking
things up; not only along the Canadian and Mexican borders and the
custom houses, but we had also done a further unusual thing, we had an
agent on every ship going out of America to follow through to the
foreign port and look out for anything picked up on the way.

"It was a plan I had set at immediately the robbery was discovered. It
would cut out the trick of reshipping at sea from some fishing craft or
small boat. The reports were encouraging enough in that respect. We had
the whole country as tight as a drum. But it was slender comfort when
the Treasury was raising the devil for the plates and we hadn't a clue
to them."

Walker stopped a moment. Then he went on:

"I felt like kicking the hobo when he got to me, he was so obviously the
extreme of all worthless creatures, with that apologetic, confidential
manner which seems to be an abominable attendant on human degeneracy.
One may put up with it for a little while, but it presently becomes
intolerable.

"'Governor,' he began, when he shuffled up, 'you won't get mad if I say
a little somethin'?'

"'Go on and say it,' I said.

"The expression on his dirty unshaved face became, if possible, more
foolish.

"'Well, then, Governor, askin' your pardon, you ain't Mr. Henry P.
Johnson, from Erie; you're the Chief of the United States Secret
Service, from Washington.'"

Walker moved in his chair.

"That made me ugly," he went on, "the assurance of the creature and my
unspeakable carelessness in permitting the official letters brought to
me on the day before by the postoffice messenger to be seen. In my
relaxation I had