“`I forgot about that, Governor,’ he said. `It was like this:  The admiral kept looking out at the sea where an old freighter was going South.  You know, the fruit line from New York.  One of them goes by every day or two.  And I kept pushing him along.  Finally we got up to the Inlet, and I was about to turn when he stopped me.  You know the neck of ground out beyond where the street cars loop; there’s an old board fence by the road, then sand to the sea, and about halfway between the fence and the water there’s a shed with some junk in it.  You’ve seen it.  They made the old America out there and the shed was a tool house.

“`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.