HE big man looked at the little fellow—hard.
“No,” said the big man.
He was a big man in more ways than one. He was tall and broad, and he held a high position with a long title. In Washington nearly everybody owns a long title, and scarcely anybody is called by it. This personage's subordinates knew him as “the chief,” but on the rolls of the United States government he appeared as “chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice.” He commanded all the Secret Service under the Attorney-General.
“Well, anyway,” urged Steve, “will you please look at my letter of introduction?”
The little fellow had waylaid the chief passing through the tiny waiting room. The big man, when he caught sight of the blue type on the proffered envelope, took it.
Its writer was a man who commanded some attention—Senator Thomas J. Partington, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the upper house. His note introduced “Stephen Smith, son of one of my most esteemed constituents, who for the past year has capably performed the duties of my under stenographer, and who is now ambitious to qualify as an agent in your bureau.” Several lines extolled, in set phrases, this protégé's honesty, industry, and reliability. Using a sonorous term for it, Thomas J. declared that Steve knew how to keep his mouth shut.
“Anything that you can properly and conveniently do for him will be appreciated by yours very truly,” the letter ended.
“Wait here a minute,” said the chief.
He entered his own office and called the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee on the telephone.
“About this young Smith,” he began. “Are you very set for him to have that particular job, Senator?”
It appeared that Senator Partington was not; but there was another “most esteemed constituent” who decidedly wanted his own son to have Steve's present position, and to this constituent the great man owed certain favors. That was one side of the affair. The other side was formed by young Smith. Stephen was “crazy to be a government Secret Service agent”—thought about nothing else—and, in short, an appointment would please all parties and relieve the Hon. Thomas of embarrassment.
When he talked to a close acquaintance, the Senator used less Senatorial language than on other occasions.
“But it 'll be O. K. just so you get him off my hands somehow,” he said.
Wherefore the chief hung up the telephone and sent for Stephen.
“Tell you what I'll do,” he told the ambitious youth. “I've got about all the stenographers we can use here, but I'll make a job for you among 'em somehow.”
Steve's lean, freckled face fell. He ran a thin hand through his brilliant, bristling hair. He was sick and tired of stenography—hated every separate key on a writing machine. Still, he tried to combine politeness with persistence.
“I've got that sort of position now,” he explained. “I don't want to keep on being a typewriter operator. I want to be a Secret Service operative.”
That, as he would have expressed it, put the chief's back up. He had a busy day ahead, and, after all, his favors account with Senator Partington showed, just now, a comfortable balance on the chief's side.
“You'll never in the world do for an operative!” he snapped.
Steve swallowed.
“Why?”
But he knew what the answer would be, and it came as truly and sharply as the rifle's report replies to the trigger finger's pressure:
“You're too small, and you've got red hair.”
Yes, here it came again! That unlucky combination had always proved his fatal handicap.
Steve's stature fell considerably below the average, and, though he kept his muscles hard by constant exercise, he appeared a weakling. There had been a time when he hoped to work his way through college at jobs provided by a zealous athletic coach; but the coach ridiculed his proposition. Nobody would have looked at him twice, had it not been for his hair; but everybody looked at him often—and laughed—exactly because of that.
It was red. It was more than red—it flamed. He had been derisively “Reddy” and “Red Top” to his scornful acquaintances. On the street—oil his hair and keep it cut, as he would, wear hats a size too large, as he did—people nudged one another and pointed:
“Pipe that red currycomb!”
“We need hefty fellows mostly,” said the chief; “and the only good detective is a man who looks just like everybody else.”
“I'm strong—”
“Humph! That doesn't matter, anyhow. With hair like that, anybody would know you the second time he saw you.”
“I could wear a wig.”
“And lose it. The fire underneath would burn holes in it.”