deferential door-holding of "office boys,"
the quick attentiveness of minor operatives. But this was not enough.
He felt the normal demand to assert himself, to be known at his true
worth by both his fellow workers and the world in general.

It was not until the occasion when he had run down a gang of
Williamsburg counterfeiters, however, that his name was conspicuously
in print. So interesting were the details of this gang's operations,
so typical were their methods, that Wilkie or some official under
Wilkie had handed over to a monthly known as _The Counterfeit Detector_
a full account of the case. A New York paper has printed a somewhat
distorted and romanticized copy of this, having sent a woman reporter
to interview Blake--while a staff artist made a pencil drawing of the
Secret Service man during the very moments the latter was smilingly
denying them either a statement or a photograph. Blake knew that
publicity would impair his effectiveness. Some inner small voice
forewarned him that all outside recognition of his calling would take
away from his value as an agent of the Secret Service. But his hunger
for his rights as a man was stronger than his discretion as an
official. He said nothing openly; but he allowed inferences to be
drawn and the artist's pencil to put the finishing touches to the
sketch.

It was here, too, that his slyness, his natural circuitiveness,
operated to save him. When the inevitable protest came he was able to
prove that he had said nothing and had indignantly refused a
photograph. He completely cleared himself. But the hint of an
interesting personality had been betrayed to the public, the name of a
new sleuth had gone on record, and the infection of curiosity spread
like a mulberry rash from newspaper office to newspaper office. A
representative of the press, every now and then, would drop in on
Blake, or chance to occupy the same smoking compartment with him on a
run between Washington and New York, to ply his suavest and subtlest
arts for the extraction of some final fact with which to cap an
unfinished "story." Blake, in turn, became equally subtle and suave.
His lips were sealed, but even silence, he found, could be made
illuminative. Even reticence, on occasion, could be made to serve his
personal ends. He acquired the trick of surrendering data without any
shadow of actual statement.

These chickens, however, all came home to roost. Official recognition
was taken