him into the private office
of the president of the Nitrate Trust. There, as Schnitzel expressed it,
"I saw 'mine,' and I took it." To trace back the criminal instinct that
led Schnitzel to steal and sell the private letters of his employer was
not difficult. In all of his few early years I found it lying latent. Of
every story he told of himself, and he talked only of himself, there was
not one that was not to his discredit. He himself never saw this, nor
that all he told me showed he was without the moral sense, and with an
instinctive enjoyment of what was deceitful, mean, and underhand. That,
as I read it, was his character.

[Illustration: Schnitzel was smiling to himself]

In appearance he was smooth-shaven, with long locks that hung behind
wide, protruding ears. He had the unhealthy skin of bad blood, and his
eyes, as though the daylight hurt them, constantly opened and shut. He
was like hundreds of young men that you see loitering on upper Broadway
and making predatory raids along the Rialto. Had you passed him in that
neighborhood you would have set him down as a wire-tapper, a racing
tout, a would-be actor.

As I worked it out, Schnitzel was a spy because it gave him an
importance he had not been able to obtain by any other effort. As a
child and as a clerk, it was easy to see that among his associates
Schnitzel must always have been the butt. Until suddenly, by one dirty
action, he had placed himself outside their class. As he expressed it:
"Whenever I walk through the office now, where all the stenographers
sit, you ought to see those slobs look after me. When they go to the
president's door, they got to knock, like I used to, but now, when the
old man sees me coming to make my report after one of these trips he
calls out, 'Come right in, Mr. Schnitzel.' And like as not I go in with
my hat on and offer him a cigar. An' they see me do it, too!"

To me, that speech seemed to give Schnitzel's view of the values of his
life. His vanity demanded he be pointed at, if even with contempt. But
the contempt never reached him--he only knew that at last people took
note of him. They no longer laughed at him, they were afraid of him. In
his heart he believed that they regarded him as one who walked in the
dark places of world politics, who possessed an evil knowledge of great
men as evil as himself, as one who by blackmail held public ministers at
his mercy.

This view of himself was the one that he tried to give me