to know things. He was a human card index, a governmental ready
reference posted to the minute and backed by all the tremendous
resources of a nation. From the little office in the Secret Service
Bureau, where he sat day after day, radiating threads connected with the
huge outer world, and enabled him to keep a firm hand on the diplomatic
and departmental pulse of Washington. Perhaps he came nearer knowing
everything that happened there than any other man living; and no man
realized more perfectly than he just how little of all of it he did
know.

In person Mr. Campbell was not unlike a retired grocer who had shaken
the butter and eggs from his soul and settled back to enjoy a life of
placid idleness. He was a little beyond middle age, pleasant of face,
white of hair, and blessed with guileless blue eyes. His genius had no
sparkle to it; it consisted solely of detail and system and
indefatigability, coupled with a memory that was well nigh infallible.
His brain was as serene and orderly as a cash register; one almost
expected to hear it click.

He sat at his desk intently studying a cable despatch which lay before
him. It was in the Secret Service code. Leaning over his shoulder was
Mr. Grimm--_the_ Mr. Grimm of the bureau. Mr. Grimm was an utterly
different type from his chief. He was younger, perhaps thirty-one or
two, physically well proportioned, a little above the average height,
with regular features and listless, purposeless eyes--a replica of a
hundred other young men who dawdle idly in the windows of their clubs
and watch the world hurry by. His manner was languid; his dress showed
fastidious care.

Sentence by sentence the bewildering intricacies of the code gave way