company?"

A cold smile played about Bivens's mouth for a moment.

"You don't suppose I would make a statement like that unless I know it
to be true?"

"I found all your other facts correct. This I haven't been able to
verify. You make it incidentally, as though it were a matter of slight
importance. To my mind it's the key to the man's character and to every
act of his life. How did you discover it?"

"Very simply."

Bivens walked to his door, opened it, looked outside, stepped to one of
the great steel safes and drew its massive doors apart. He pulled a
slip from a cabinet fitted with a card-case index, noted the number,
replaced the card, opened another door and drew out a manuscript
notebook of some three hundred pages of type-written matter. Each page
was written without spacing and contained as many words as the average
page of a printed novel. On the back of the morocco cover was printed
in plain gold lettering:

"THE PRIVATE LIFE OF NO. 560."

He handed the volume to Stuart, closed the safe, and resumed his seat.

"You may take that book with you, Jim," he said quietly. "I trust to
your honour not to reveal its contents except in the discharge of your
sworn duty as an officer of the law. You will find in it the record of
the distinguished president's private life for the past ten years
without the omission of a single event of any importance."

Stuart glanced through the book with amazement.

"How did you come into possession of such facts?"

"No trouble at all," was the easy answer. "It only requires a little
money and a little patience and a little care in selecting the right
men for the right job. Any man in the business world who thinks he can
do as he pleases in this town will wake some morning with a decided
jolt. The war for financial supremacy has developed a secret service
which approaches perfection. The secret service of armies is child's
play compared to it.

"Not only do I systematically watch my employees until I know every
crook and turn of their lives, but I watch with even greater care the
heads of every rival firm in every department of the industrial world
where my interests touch theirs.

"I not only watch the heads of firms, I watch their trusted assistants
and confidential men. In that big safe a thousand secrets lie locked
whose revelation would furnish matter enough to run the yellow journals
for the next five years.

"Every man who holds a position of trust and puts