printed in gold on the back of detective novels, no doubt it is a
wide-staring eye, with the legend, "WE NEVER SLEEP." When detectives
called for a drink, the would-be facetious barkeeper resurrected an
obsolete form of expression 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