imself; he is
profoundly impressed with his own cleverness. He is a braggart; he
swaggers; he defeats himself. A strange idiocy mingles with his
cleverness."

"Even people who are not criminals do just that sort of thing," said
Lady Agatha. "Look at Samuel Pepys. He was one of the most timid of
beings. And he valued his place in the world mightily. But he wrote
down the story of his own disgrace in his diary--it had to come out of
him! And then, timid and cautious as he was, he did not destroy the
book! He let it get out of his possession."

It was an evil, a monstrous personality which leered out of Logan
Black's diary. Boastful of his own iniquity, swaggering in his
wickedness, fatuous with self-love, he recounted his deeds with gusto
and with particularity. They did not read a quarter of this terrible
autobiography at the time, but they read enough to see the man in the
process of building up a criminal organization of his own, with
ramifications of the most surprising nature.

"This man," said Dr. Farnsworth, with a shudder, "actually has the
ambition to be the head of nothing less than a crime trust."

"It seems to be something more than an ambition," said Cleggett. "It
seems to be almost an accomplished fact."

"Ugh!" said Lady Agatha, with a gesture of disgust, "he's like a great
horrid spider spinning webs!"

Interested in anarchy only on its practical side, as the paid dynamiter
of the inner circle of radicals, Logan Black in his diary jeered at and
mocked the cause he served. And more than that, the man seemed to take
a perverted pleasure in attaching to himself young enthusiasts of the
radical type, eager to follow him as the disinterested leader of a
group of Reds, and then betraying them into the most sordid sort of
crime. Cleggett found--and could imagine the grimace of malevolent
satisfaction with which it had been written--this note:

Heinrich is about ready to leave off talking his cant of universal
brotherhood, and make a little easy money in the way I have shown him.
It will be interesting to see what happens in side of Heinrich when he
realizes he is not an idealist, but a criminal. Will he stick to me on
the new lay? But those Germans are so sentimental--he may commit
suicide.

Cleggett recalled the manhandling Heinrich had received. A little
farther along he came upon this entry:

The Italian-American boy is a find. Jones and Giuseppe! Puritan
father, Italian mother--and