ified as a well-dressed mendicant or an indifferently dressed
book agent; he was pretty sure, though, that the stranger fell somewhere
within the general ban touching on dubious persons having dubious
intentions. This doubt on the part of the doorman was rather a
compliment to Mullinix, considering Mullinix's real calling. For
Mullinix resembled neither the detective of fiction nor yet the
detective of sober fact, which is exactly what the latter usually is--a
most sober fact; sober, indeed, often to the point of a serious and
dignified impressiveness. This man, though, did not have the eagle-bird
eye with which the detective of fiction so often is favoured. He did not
have the low flattened arches--frontal or pedal--which frequently
distinguish the bona-fide article, who comes from Headquarters with a
badge under his left lapel and a cigar under his right moustache to
question the suspected hired girl. About him there was nothing
mysterious, nothing portentous, nothing inscrutable. He had a face which
favourably would have attracted a person taking orders for enlarging
family portraits. He had the accommodating manner of one who is willing
to go up when the magician asks for a committee out of the audience to
sit on the stage.

Not ten individuals alive knew of his connection with the Secret Service.
Probably in all his professional life not ten others--outsiders--had ever
appraised him for what he was. His finest asset was a gift of Nature--a
sort of protective colouration which enabled him to hide in the
background of commonplaceness and do his work with an assurance which
would not have been possible had he worn an air of assurance. In short
and in fine, Mullinix no more resembled the traditional hawkshaw than
Miss Mildred Smith resembled the fashionable conception of a fashionable
artist. She never gestured with an upturned thumb; nor yet made a
spy-glass of her cupped hand through which to gaze upon a painting. She
had never worn a smock frock in her life.

The smartest of smart tailor-mades was none too smart for her. Nothing
was too smart for her, who was so exquisitely fine and well-bred a
creature. She was wearing tailor-mades, with a trig hat to match, when
she opened the door of her entry hall for Mullinix.

"Just going out, weren't you?" he asked as they shook hands.

"No, just coming in," she said. "I had only just come in when the hall
man called me up saying you were downstairs."

"I had trouble get