The chief clerk of the state treasury sat there and smoothed his smarting face with trembling hands and worked his jaws to dislodge the grinding ache in his neck.  But the stinging, malevolent rancor within him burned hotter and hotter.  He started to get up out of the chair and sat back again, much disturbed.

A man who had been hidden by an adjoining rack of newspapers was now leaning forward, jutting his head past the ambuscade.  He was an elderly man with an up-cocked gray mustache, and there was a queer little smile in his shrewd blue eyes.  Dodd knew him; he was one Mullaney, a state detective.

“What are you doing here—­practicing your sneak work?” demanded the young man.  As a state official he did not entertain a high opinion of the free-lance organization to which Mullaney belonged.

“I’m here reading a paper—­supposed it’s what the room is for,” returned Detective Mullaney.  “But excuse me—­I’ll get out.  Room seems to be reserved for prize-fighters.”

“You keep your mouth shut about that—­that insult.”

“I never talk—­it would hurt my business.”

“I don’t fight in a public place.  I’m a gentleman.  I want you to remember what you saw, Mullaney!  I’ll get to that cheap bum in a way he won’t forget.”

“Do you mind telling me who your friend is?” asked the detective.

Dodd shot him a sour side-glance and muttered profanity.

“I couldn’t help wondering what particular kind of business you and he could have, seeing how it was transacted,” pursued the detective.

Dodd glowered at the floor.  “Look here, Mullaney!  There’s a whole lot about that man I want to know, if you can help me and keep your mouth closed.  I haven’t got much confidence in the work you fellows do—­they tell me you can’t detect mud on your own boots.”

Mr. Mullaney pulled his chair out from behind the papers and leaned back in it and crossed his hands over his stomach and smiled without a trace of resentment.

“I might tell you something right now about that tall friend of yours that would jump you, Mr. Dodd—­I’m that much of a detective!”

“Tell me, then.”

“Just as it stands it’s guesswork—­considerable guesswork.”

“What does that amount to?”

“A great deal in my business.  Take this city of one hundred thousand!  I’m the only man in it who is making guesswork about strangers his special line of work.  The rest of the citizens rub elbows with all passers and don’t give a hoot.  There are a good many thousand men in this country whom the law wants and whom the law can’t find.  That fellow may be one of them, for all I know.  I guess he is, for instance.  Then I make it my business to prove guesswork.”

“You must be doing a devil of a rushing business!” sneered Dodd.

“I manage to make a good living.  I don’t talk about my business, for if I should blow it I wouldn’t have any.  I say, I guess!  Then I spend my spare time hunting through my books of pointers.  For ten years I have read every newspaper I could get hold of.  I come in here and study papers from all over.  Every crime that has been committed, every man wanted, every chap who has got away, I write down all I can find out about him.  Then, if anything comes up to make me guess about a man I begin to hunt my books through.”