Going doggedly over the
counterfeit ten-dollar national bank note that had been given him after
two older operatives had failed in the case, he discovered the word
"Dollars" in small lettering spelt "Ddllers." Concluding that only a
foreigner would make a mistake of that nature, and knowing the activity
of certain bands of Italians in such counterfeiting efforts, he began
his slow and scrupulous search through the purlieus of the East Side.
About that search was neither movement nor romance. It was humdrum,
dogged, disheartening labor, with the gradual elimination of
possibilities and the gradual narrowing down of his field. But across
that ever-narrowing trail the accidental little clue finally fell, and
on the night of the final raid the desired plates were captured and the
notorious and long-sought Todaro rounded up.

So successful was Blake during the following two years that the
Washington authorities, coming in touch with him through the operations
of the Secret Service, were moved to make him an offer. This offer he
stolidly considered and at last stolidly accepted. He became an
official with the weight of the Federal authority behind him. He
became an investigator with the secrets of the Bureau of Printing and
Engraving at his beck. He found himself a cog in a machinery that
seemed limitless in its ramifications. He was the agent of a vast and
centralized authority, an authority against which there could be no
opposition. But he had to school himself to the knowledge that he was
a cog, and nothing more. And two things were expected of him,
efficiency and silence.

He found a secret pleasure, at first, in the thought of working from
under cover, in the sense of operating always in the dark, unknown and
unseen. It gave a touch of something Olympian and godlike to his
movements. But as time went by the small cloud of discontent on his
horizon grew darker, and widened as it blackened. He was avid of
something more than power. He thirsted not only for its operation, but
also for its display. He rebelled against the idea of a continually
submerged personality. He nursed a keen hunger to leave some record of
what he did or had done. He objected to it all as a conspiracy of
obliteration, objected to it as an actor would object to playing to an
empty theater. There was no one to appreciate and applaud. And an
audience was necessary. He enjoyed the unctuous salute of the
patrolman on his beat, the