, this art was inherent and his by birth. He
started with it, and his later training of practising his odd capacity
for recalling the smallest detail of every day that passed only
intensified his power in this direction. With this qualification alone
he could have been immensely useful as a secret agent, but in addition
to this he had also his other gift, his intuition and power of altering
his own point of view for that of another man, and seeing his subject
through the eyes of everyone concerned in a question.

His nervous vitality was great, and there were plenty of well-educated
native subordinates who believed him gifted with occult forces, since
his ways of getting at his astonishing conclusions were never explained
to any living soul, because Coryndon could not have explained them to
himself.

His identity was well known at Headquarters, but beyond that limit it
was carefully hidden from the lower branches of the executive, as too
wide and too public recognition would have narrowed his sphere of
action. As Wesley declared the whole world to be his parish, so the
whole of Asia was Coryndon's sphere of action, and only at Headquarters
was it ever known where he actually might be found, or what employment
occupied his brain. He came like a rain-cloud blown up soundlessly on
the east wind, and vanished like morning mists, and no one knew what he
had learnt during his silent passing.

Men with voices like brass trumpets praised and encouraged him, and men
who knew the dark byways of criminal investigation were hardly jealous
of him. Coryndon was a freak, an exception, a man who stood beyond
competition, and was as sure as he was mysterious. He was "explained" in
a dozen ways. His face, to begin with, made disguise easy, and the touch
of the country did much for him in this respect. He had played behind
his father's up-country bungalow with little Burmese boys and talked in
their speech before he knew any English; the Bazaar was an open book to
him, and the mind of the native, so some men said with a shade of
contempt, not too far from his own to make understanding impossible.

Besides all this, there were those other years, after he left the school
under the high snow ranges, when Coryndon had vanished entirely, and of
these years he never spoke. And yet, with all this, Coryndon was
unmistakably a "Sahib," a man of unusual culture and brilliant ability.
He had complete powers of self-control, and his one passion wa