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Page 17
"`When I stopped the admiral says: "Cut across to the hole in
that old board fence and see if an automobile has been there, and
I'll give you a dollar." An' I done it, an' I got it.'
"Then he shuffled off.
"`Be on the spot, Governor, an' I'll lead him to you.'"
Walker leaned over, rested his elbows on the arms of his chair,
and linked his fingers together.
"That gave me a new flash on the creature. He was a slicker
article than I imagined. I was not to get off with a tip. He
was taking some pains to touch me for a greenback. I thought I
saw his line. It would not account for his hitting the
description of Mulehaus in the make-up of his straw-man, but it
would furnish the data for the dollar story. I had drawn the
latter a little before he was ready. It belonged in what he
planned to give me at two o'clock. But I thought I saw what the
creature was about. And I was right."
Walker put out his hand and moved the pages of his memoir on the
table. Then he went on:
"I was smoking a cigar on a bench at the entrance to Heinz's Pier
when the hobo shuffled up. He came down one of the streets from
Pacific Avenue, and the direction confirmed me in my theory. It
also confirmed me in the opinion that I was all kinds of a fool
to let this dirty hobo get a further chance at me.
"I was not in a very good humor. Everything I had set going
after Mulehaus was marking time. The only report was progress in
linking things up; not only along the Canadian and Mexican
borders and the customhouses, but we had also done a further
unusual thing, we had an agent on every ship going out of America
to follow through to the foreign port and look out for anything
picked up on the way.
"It was a plan I had set at immediately the robbery was
discovered. It would cut out the trick of reshipping at sea from
some fishing craft or small boat. The reports were encouraging
enough in that respect. We had the whole country as tight as a
drum. But it was slender comfort when the Treasury was raising
the devil for the plates and we hadn't a clew to them."
Walker stopped a moment. Then he went on:
"I felt like kicking the hobo when he got to me, he was so
obviously the extreme of all worthless creatures, with that
apologetic, confidential manner which seems to be an abominable
attendant on human degeneracy. One may put up with it for a
little while, but it presently becomes intolerable.
"`Governor,' he began, when he'd shuffled up, `you won't git mad
if I say a little somethin'?
"`Go on and say it,' I said.
"The expression on his dirty unshaved face became, if possible,
more foolish.
"`Well, then, Governor, askin' your pardon, you ain't Mr. Henry
P. Johnson, from Erie; you're the Chief of the United States
Secret Service, from Washington.'"
Walker moved in his chair.
"That made me ugly," he went on, "the assurance of the creature
and my unspeakable carelessness in permitting the official
letters brought to me on the day before by the post-office
messenger to be seen. In my relaxation I had forgotten the eye
of the chair attendant. I took the cigar out of my teeth and
looked at him.
"`And I'll say a little something myself!' I could hardly keep
my foot clear of him. `When you got sober this morning and
remembered who I was, you took a turn up round the post office to
make sure of it, and while you were in there you saw the notice
of the reward for the stolen bond plates. That gave you the
notion with which you pieced out your fairy story about how you
got the dollar tip. Having discovered my identity through a
piece of damned carelessness on my part, and having seen the
postal notice of the reward, you undertook to enlarge your little
game. That's the reason you wouldn't take fifty cents. It was
your notion in the beginning to make a touch for a tip. And it
would have worked. But now you can't get a damned cent out of
me.' Then I threw a little brush into him: `I'd have stood a
touch for your finding the fake tanner, because there isn't any
such person.'
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