e, indicated that "the orders under which Smith is
working come from a higher source than the department."

Barclay's scorn of Inspector Smith--a man whom he could buy and sell
a dozen times from one day's income from his wealth--flamed into a
passion. He tore Myton's letter to bits, and refreshed his faith in
the god of Things As They Are by garroting a mill in Texas. While the
Texas miller was squirming, Barclay did not consider Inspector Smith
consciously, but in remote places in his mind always there lived the
scorned person whom Barclay knew was working against him.

From time to time in the early summer the newspapers contained
definite statements, authorized from Washington with increasing
positiveness, that the cordon around the N.P.C. was tightening. In
July Barclay's scorn of Inspector Smith grew into disquietude; for a
letter from Judge Bemis, of the federal court,--written up in the
Catskills,--warned him that scorn was not the only emotion with which
he should honour Smith. After reading Bemis' confidential and
ambiguous scrawl, Barclay drummed for a time with his hard fingers on
the mahogany before him, stared at the print sketches of machinery
above him, and paced the floor of his office with the roar of the mill
answering something in his angry heart. He could not know that the
tide was running out. He went to his telephone and asked for a city so
far away that when he had finished talking for ten minutes, he had
spent enough money to keep General Ward in comfort for a month. Neal
Ward, sitting in his room, heard Barclay say: "What kind of a damn
bunco game were you fellows putting up on me in 1900? You got my
money; that's all right; I didn't squeal at the assessment, did I?"
Young Ward in the pause closed his door. But the bull-like roar of
Barclay came through the wood between them in a moment, and he heard:
"Matter enough--here's this fellow Smith bullying my clerks out in
Omaha, and nosing around the St. Paul office; what right has he got?
Who is he, anyway--who got him his job? I wrote to Myton to get him
removed, or sent to some other work, and Myton said that the White
House was back of him. I wish you'd go over to Washington, and tell
them who I am and what we did for you in '96 and 1900; we can't stand
this. It's a damned outrage, and I look to you to stop it." In a
moment Ward heard Barclay exclaim: "You can't--why, that's a hell of
a note! What kind of a fellow is he, anyway? Tell him I gave