But she seems to have gone over the whole thing with the Federal authorities that morning, explaining all about my relations with the two highwaymen, how I had come to get into it and how I had been carried along; and then she promised to deliver the money to them provided the government would grant me immunity. The matter was taken up and discussed there in detail on that morning. The result was that Maggie got the promise, that, if everything proved to be as she described it, I should not be held responsible for the desperate crimes that these men had carried out. She was in fact a very skillful person and she conducted it with immense cleverness. They were amazed to find that she had the money in what they imagined, when she came, was merely a personal traveling bag. And they were astonished to discover that I was, in fact, merely the big awkward, thoughtless youth that she had described to them; as they were astonished to find the confirmatory discoloration of my burned hand. On the outside of the door I found Maggie and my fairy sweetheart. The girl was in tears, but Maggie was a grim figure, with her little crumpled ears lying tight to her head, her beady eyes and her hard features—precisely like the devil, which she was not. “You can kiss her, just once!” she said. I stood like one in a dream, but the girl came up and put her arms around my neck ... and I kissed her. And then, through the rosy haze of the world, Maggie pushed in between us. “That’ll do,” she said. “You are to go to work now and make a man out of yourself ... and then ... in three years we shall see about it.” I went along the corridor, to Dix ... in the room on the right. * * * * * And so came Walker into the United States Secret Service. The story of his way upward in that service is not written out here. If you wish to hear it ask his charming wife whose memories go back to the time when the big tent of a circus was the Kingdom of Romance. But you will find in the chapters to follow, some adventures in mystery with which he was connected. CHAPTER VII The Diamond The thing that keeps life keen is that you can never figure out what’s ahead. There’s always a surprise around the corner. The thing changes on you, to use an expression of the vernacular. One begins in an English drawing-room and winds up on the Gobi Desert. You never know where the road’s going. Take it in big things, or take it in the trivialities of life—it’s the same system. But I am not going to lecture on philosophy; I am going to cite a case—a case that had an immense surprise in it to me, and a series of events that started out in one direction and concluded in another. I saw them start simply enough, but they “changed on me,” to keep our colloquialism.