With surplus of beatitude I bless,
I'm the confidant of Destiny and Doom,
I'm the apogee of knowledge more or less.
If I lie, it is to temporize with lying
Lest obliquity should suffer in the light.
If I prey upon the widow and the dying,
They withheld; and I compel them to do right.
I am justified in all that I endeavor,
If I fail it is because the rest are fools.
I'm serene and unimpeachable forever,
The upheld, ordained interpreter of rules.


"Discretion is better part of secrecy!"

Some of what follows presently was told to Yasmini afterward by Sita Ram,
some of it by Tom Tripe, and a little by Dick Blaine, who had it from
Samson himself. The rest she pieced together from admissions by
Jinendra's fat priest and the gossip of some dancing girls.

Sir Roland Samson, K. C. S. I., as told already, was a very demon for
swift office work, routine pouring off him into the hands of the right
subordinates like water into the runnels of a roof, leaving him free to
bask in the sunshine of self-complacency. But there is work that can
not be tackled, or even touched by subordinates; and, the fixed belief
of envious inferiors to the contrary notwithstanding, there are hours
unpaid for, unincluded in the office schedule, and wholly unadvertised
that hold such people as commissioners in durance vile.

On the night of Yasmini's escape Samson sat sweating in his private