elf to stretch the one nor to trim the other. If his
subjects did not fit, they were cast aside. This was decision. The
greater the number of the too longs or the too shorts the greater his
complacence in the contemplation of his labours. There was one other
weakness that was strongly rooted within him. If perchance one worthless
stick fitted his arbitrary conditions it was from then on advanced to
the rank of deity.

Hartwell was strongly prejudiced against Firmstone, but was wholly
without malice. He suspected that Firmstone was at least
self-interested, if not self-seeking; therefore he assumed him to be
unscrupulous. Firmstone's words and actions were either counted not at
all, or balanced against him.

In approaching others, if words were spoken in his favour, they were
discounted or discarded altogether. Only the facts that made against him
were treasured, all but enshrined. Even in his cynical beliefs Hartwell
was not consistent. He failed utterly to take into account that it might
suit the purpose of his advisers to break down the subject of his
inquiry.

For these reasons the interview with Pierre, even with its mortifying
termination, left a firm conviction in his mind that Firmstone was
dishonest, practically a would-be thief, and this on the sole word of a
professional gambler, a rumshop proprietor, a man with no heritage, no
traditions, and no associations to hold him from the extremities of
crime.

Not one of the men whom Hartwell had interviewed, not even Pierre
himself, would for an instant have considered as probable what Hartwell
was holding as an obvious truth. This, however, did not prevent
Hartwell's actions from hastening to the point of precipitation the very
crisis he was blindly trying to avert. He had not discredited Firmstone
among the men, he had only nullified his power to manage them. Hartwell
had succeeded in completing the operation of informing himself
generally. Having reached this point, he felt that the only thing
remaining to be done was to align his information, crush Firmstone
beneath the weight of his accumulated evidence, and from his dismembered
fragments build up a superintendent who would henceforth walk and act in
the fear of demonstrated omniscient justice. He even grew warmly
benevolent in the contemplation of the gratefully reconstructed man who
was to be fashioned after his own image.

Firmstone coincided with one of Hartwell's conclusions, but from a
wholly differ