ssion and said, "Will you have an eye-opener?" All
the air was thick with sarcasms.

But there was one man who moved calm, untouched, unaffected, through it
all. It was that heart of oak, the chief inspector. His brave eye never
drooped, his serene confidence never wavered. He always said:

"Let them rail on; he laughs best who laughs last."

My admiration for the man grew into a species of worship. I was at his
side always. His office had become an unpleasant place to me, and now
became daily more and more so. Yet if he could endure it I meant to
do so also--at least, as long as I could. So I came regularly, and
stayed--the only outsider who seemed to be capable of it. Everybody
wondered how I could; and often it seemed to me that I must desert, but
at such times I looked into that calm and apparently unconscious face,
and held my ground.

About three weeks after the elephant's disappearance I was about to say,
one morning, that I should have to strike my colors and retire, when the
great detective arrested the thought by proposing one more superb and
masterly move.

This was to compromise with the robbers. The fertility of this man's
invention exceeded anything I have ever seen, and I have had a wide
intercourse with the world's finest minds. He said he was confident
he could compromise for one hundred thousand dollars and recover the
elephant. I said I believed I could scrape the amount together, but what
would become of the poor detectives who had worked so faithfully? He
said:

"In compromises they always get half."

This removed my only objection. So the inspector wrote two notes, in
this form:

DEAR MADAM,--Your husband can make a large sum of money (and be
entirely protected from the law) by making an immediate, appointment
with me. Chief BLUNT.

He sent one of these by his confidential messenger to the "reputed wife"
of Brick Duffy, and the other to the reputed wife of Red McFadden.

Within the hour these offensive answers came:

YE OWLD FOOL: brick Duffys bin ded 2 yere.
BRIDGET MAHONEY.

CHIEF BAT,--Red McFadden is hung and in heving 18 month. Any Ass
but a detective know that.
MARY O'HOOLIGAN.

"I had long suspected these facts," said the inspector; "this testimony
proves the unerring accuracy of my instinct."

The moment one resource failed him he was rea