“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 humour.  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 custom houses, 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 clue 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 shuffled up, ’you won’t get 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 postoffice 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.