Five Thousand Dollars Reward
By MELVILLE DAVISSON POST
From Saturday Evening Post
I was before one of those difficult positions unavoidable to a man of letters. My visitor
must have some answer. He had come back for the manuscript of his memoir and for my
opinion. It was the twilight of an early Washington winter. The lights in the great library,
softened with delicate shades, had been turned on. Outside, Sheridan Circle was almost a
thing of beauty in its vague outline; even the squat ridiculous bronze horse had a certain
dignity in the blue shadow.
If one had been speculating on the man, from his physical aspect one would have taken
Walker for an engineer of some sort, rather than the head of the United States Secret
Service. His lean face and his angular manner gave that impression. Even now,
motionless in the big chair beyond the table, he seemed--how shall I say it?--mechanical.
And that was the very defect in his memoir. He had cut the great cases into a dry recital.
There was no longer in them any pressure of a human impulse. The glow of inspired
detail had been dissected out. Everything startling and wonderful had been devitalized.
The bulky typewritten manuscript lay on the table beside the electric lamp, and I stood
about uncertain how to tell him.
"Walker," I said, "did nothing wonderful ever happen to you in the adventure of these
cases?"
"What precisely do you mean?" he replied.
The practical nature of the man tempted me to extravagance.
"Well," I said, "for example, were you never kissed in a lonely street by a mysterious
woman and the flash of your dark lantern reveal a face of startling beauty?"
"No," he said, as though he were answering a sensible question, "that never happened to
me."
"Then," I continued, "perhaps you have found a prince of the church, pale as alabaster,
sitting in his red robe, who put together the indicatory evidence of the crime that baffled
you with such uncanny acumen that you stood aghast at his perspicacity?"
