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 bright young life clouded with an ugly story when she was a mere spotless pawn in a desperado's dirty game. This perception, coming to him as he rushed headlong to the beach, helped to steady him, to make his rage cool, calculating and self-controlled.

His first care was to look about for tracks in the damp sand. Yes; there was the mark of the prow of a boat and long plunging strides from it with toes pointing up the bank, and here on the other side they came back again, shorter strides with deeper imprints as of a man grown heavier by the addition of a burden.

Harrington scanned the blue surface of the channel. There was not a boat in sight. Nothing was in sight. Not even the car which should have been waiting for him at the mouth of Cub Creck was visible. For an instant this raised a flicker of hope. The man with the sawed-off shotgun! He might have returned, found the gold setting there unguarded and taken it in. But, no—he would have waited for him—Harrington—to appear. Failing that, he would have investigated.

As if to prove that this theory would not do, here came the boat, chugging belatedly round the point. When the craft forged fully into view, however, Henry saw that it was not the boat he had been expecting. It was freshly painted, dainty and fast—one of those spick-and-span specders with which wealthy men at times amuse themselves and yet, since it was the only craft in sight and seemed making directly for him, Harrington continued to study it narrowly—the more so because there was something familiar about the thickset figure in the stern. This figure waved a hand presently and Henry saw to his surprise and gratification that it was Scanlon. It was fortunate to have

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 shrewd old Scanlon here to report to and counsel with. Yet, what had brought him?

"Carburetor!" erupted the Chief Counsel, as soon as they were in conversational distance. "I thought my chauffeur never would get the darn thing going again. He claims to have a chief engineer's license too."

In acknowledgment of this taunt, a flushed and grease-stained countenance grinned above the engine housing as the launch curved swiftly in. It was Quackenbaugh—to Henry's further surprise and gratification; for this brought the two men here whom he would have most wished at the moment to see. "Some things break right for me anyhow!" he muttered hollowly.

"I told you, Henry, I was always nervous when we had the raw stuff uncaged," the president of Boland Cedar began volubly to explain. "I couldn't stick in my office half an hour. I had to rout out Scanlon and bring my own boat down here. We sent the other fellows home and started in to do the patrolling ourselves, but the engine died on me."

The men seemed well pleased with themselves and equally well pleased with Henry. They looked upon their presence as something of a lark, their nervous fears as something of a joke upon themselves and by this light-hearted manner struck the knife deeper into Henry's heart because of what he had to tell them.

"How'd you come out with the Indian?" cried Quackenbaugh.

"I didn't come out with him. He turned me down," answered Henry miserably. "But that's not the worst of it. The gold's been stolen."

"Stolen!" barked both voices at once, one hoarsely, the other harshly incredulous. "My God!"

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AVAGELY Quackenbaugh drove the prow of his launch high upon the shore and both men leaped out to come rushing at Harrington almost as if they menaced him. It was a severe test of nerves that had already been tested severely; but Harrington straightened under it, eyes level, lips firm, voice steady.

"Yes, I was alone here with the gold resting on that stump, wondering why in thunder those fellows didn't show up with the launch. The Indian had to go to his nets and left me."

"We saw him from where we were dead, heading up the Basin," explained Scanlon with nervous rapidity of utterance—a thing unusual with the Chief Counsel. "We hailed him for a tow but he couldn't seem to hear us."

"I guess not," said Henry, "for I didn't hear you, and believe me, I was listening, anxious till I could get that accursed coin on its way back to the vaults."

At this juncture Lahleet came down the path into the picture just as she foresaw that she was about to come into Henry's explanation.

Although pale and frightened, the girl in her dark tailor-mades managed somehow to appear dainty and impressive as usual and both Scanlon and Quackenbaugh greeted her appearance with looks of admiration and amazed curiosity as if she were a part of the mystery which encompassed them.

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 any event assist in establishing the specific facts surrounding the Complaints, I have made no finding about it and have not otherwise referred to it.

(4) Specificity

86. The DPM's written representations made a further point about the level of detail in the Complaints and in the summaries provided to him, contending that many of the matters included were "surprisingly non-specific". He argued that if I were to make factual findings based on non-specific allegations, there would be a risk of unfairness because there would not have been a sufficient opportunity to respond.

87. Where information such as dates and subject-matter of meetings was available, it was provided to the DPM. However, it is fair to acknowledge that some of the allegations made in the Complaints, together with the additional material obtained in the investigation, were based on what was said to have been an accumulation of experience but without specific details such as dates or particular meetings at which conduct is alleged to have occurred.

88. I have taken into account, in relation to the findings I have made, the legitimate difficulty for the DPM in dealing with allegations which were not specific. I should say that, in view of the nature of the allegations, I did not find such a lack of specificity to be particularly surprising. Nor did I regard it as a matter which by itself undermined the merit of any of the Complaints. In relation to those individuals working in private office, they would have had frequent contact with the DPM and often on numerous occasions every day. It was inherently difficult to remember any particular occasion. Unless a person had been keeping a contemporaneous record of events, it was unlikely that they would be able to remember specific details of dates and subject-matter. Meetings with policy officials tended to be less frequent and more focused on a particular subject-matter and so afforded a greater opportunity for specific recollection. Indeed, this was an obvious pattern in terms of the level of detail available in respect of the allegations made: allegations by policy officials tended to have a significantly higher level of specificity. Both specific and non-specific allegations were included within the Terms of Reference. If and to the extent that the allegations were put to the DPM in general terms, I was of course prepared to receive the DPM's response in similar terms and to make findings on that basis.


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 "This is Miss Marceau, teacher of the Indian school at Shell Point, who was kind enough to try to help me with Adam John," said Henry in introducing her.

Both men lifted their hats, each threw the girl one grateful glance as for her codperation in a project of theirs, and again centered the fierceness of their gaze on Harrington. "Say!" Harrington interrupted himself. "Didn't you men see anybody skulking around the island in the last hour?"

"Couple of fellows in a skiff fishing," remembered Scanlon; "one was rowing, the other trolling."

"How long ago?"

"About half an hour ago they passed out of our sight, coasting the island. We never picked them up again because we went dead."

"Did you notice if either of them had a Vandyke beard?"

"One did," said Scanlon. "Fellow in a blue shirt."

"Then that's the explanation," said Henry. "The man with the Vandyke is dead out here in the timber a couple of hundred yards. The other fellow got away with the gold."

"Dead?" gasped the hoarse-voiced Scanlon, with a sudden increase of excitement—a very marked increase, Henry remembered long afterwards—his face was livid, spotted, ghastly for a moment. "Go on and tell us what happened. Confound it, Henry, you're mixin' me all up."

Quackenbaugh was more self-contained. White, intense, his keen black eyes boring into Harrington's as if he would pierce to the very marrow of his soul, he put together what he had heard and asked impatiently for more. "Yes, yes. Go on. Just how did it happen?"

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 "Miss Marceau had left me to take a path through the woods to a canoe she used in visiting the homes of some of her pupils whose parents live on these islands. I was still wondering why the devil the boat didn't turn up, when I heard her scream. Naturally, I rushed to the rescue."

"Naturally," agreed Scanlon, but his eyes were narrowing and he was regaining his self-control.

"Naturally!" snapped Quackenbaugh.

"This fellow with the Vandyke beard was after her," Henry was continuing.

"And you—you plugged him?" broke in Scanlon like a flash, yellow eyes lighting, but with something like relief. "And you—you plugged him?" demanded the Chief Counsel. "I thought I heard a pistol shot."

There came a quick new light to Henry Harrington's eyes. "Come and see," he said.

"But about the gold?" reminded Quackenbaugh.

"I was gone not more than seven or eight minutes," declared Henry. "When I came back it was gone. There was no one in sight—nothing but the mark of a prow in the sand as you see it there with the footsteps leading to and from it."

"You're right, it was the man in the skiff," decided Quackenbaugh in that abrupt manner of his. "Where the devil could the fellow have got to so quick? I'll jump in the launch and take a quick scout around; and if I don't see anything, get to the nearest telephone and start Cosby." Cosby was the Boland secret service chief. "You and Harrington hike back to the dead man and see what story he's got to tell. If we get that money back, we've got to get it quick. And we've got to get it back, you bet your life!"

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 The President of Boland Cedar, acting with his usual decision, gave his craft a push, leaped into it and was off. Harrington led the way down the forest path. Lahleet followed at a distance, as if reluctant to go but more reluctant to be left alone.

But when they reached that green bed among the ferns, it was mysteriously empty. Harrington ejaculated and stared.

"But you plunked him?" demanded Scanlon anxiously.

Harrington pointed to a crimson lacquer upon the ferns.

"There's more than one of them," he deduced. "This fellow was heavy. One man couldn't have carried him off."

"We'll get 'em, no matter how many there are," boasted Scanlon. "No bunch of crooks can get away with a thing like that on us. By the way, did you recognize the dead guy? Ever see him before?"

"It was Count Eckstrom!"

Scanlon's fat-imbedded eyes opened wide with amazement. "Eckstrom? The man you asked me about? One of this bunch of foreign nobility that's trailed Billie Boland home?"

"Fake nobility," corrected Harrington. "Lord, what a shock it will be to her to know!"

"Know?" queried the practical Scanlon, his hoarse, throaty voice throatier than ever as he lowered it to tones of cunning and mystery. "She don't never need to know. With the disappearance of the corpus delicti this killing's a myth. It never happened. Nothing's happened for that matter. You don't think we want it advertised that we sent twenty thousand dollars in

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 gold out here to buy off a fool Siwash and got ourselves shell-gamed out of it, do you?"

"No, I suppose not," perceived Harrington, mind rather groping.

"And this young lady here? I guess she'd just as soon be relieved of any embarrassment." Scanlon had lowered his voice still more so that Lahleet, unhearing, remained staring at the empty bed amid the ferns.

Henry's heart leaped with gratitude at the perception of so much chivalry in coarse, ruthless old Scanlon, "That's fine of you, Scanlon—thinking of Miss Marceau that way," he whispered earnestly, and laid an appreciative hand upon the heavy shoulder of the man. "But"—his voice hardened—"if you think I'm going to let myself be jobbed out of the first twenty thousand dollars Boland General ever trusted me with, by a confidence man turned bandit, you're mistaken. Scanlon"—Harrington's tone was tense—"I'll get that twenty thousand and I'll get the thugs that got it!"

"Bully boy!" approved Scanlon heartily. "I like your spirit, Harrington. Yep! We'll get it; but it will be a still hunt. We'll run 'em down quick and fast but we'll pussy-foot to beat the devil. Quackenbaugh has got Cosby routed out by this time, and you can bet your bottom dollar that old Quack isn't doing any advertising and that he's got Cosby wised-up good and proper."

"It's just one o'clock now," he announced after looking at his watch. "By two o'clock there'll be twenty men on the island. We'll beat up every foot of it before dark. We better get back to the landing and meet Quackenbaugh. Everything I've said goes for both of us. I and Quack have hunted together before."

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 Just as the trio reached the landing, Quackenbaugh ran the prow of his speed boat once more upon the sandy beach.

"Not a sign of anybody around," he exclaimed as he leaped out. "How about the dead man?"

"He's gone."

"Gone?" cried Quackenbaugh, incredulously. Then his features grew tense with the sense of new mystery as he searched first the face of Scanlon and then of Harrington. "The devil!"

Scanlon told him what they had found and of their conjecture; also his decision to keep the matter secret unless publicity should become desirable.

"Right, of course!" approved Quackenbaugh, quick to grasp the salient points. "They're on the island and all we've got to do is to keep them here till Cosby and his men come: to make sure of that I'll continue my patrolling. You three keep together till reënforcements arrive. Then see Miss Marceau safely on her way. Take no chances. We are dealing with desperate characters."

But Cosby and his men found nothing after four hours' search. "They must have had a speeder concealed in some cove and shot away with the body and the gold while Quackenbaugh was on the north side telephoning." That was Cosby's theory. "But my net will pick 'em up before they get very far."

"I must insist on keeping nothing from Mr. Boland," Harrington said to Scanlon and Quackenbaugh, as about sunset they rode back down the channel in the speedboat, three baffled, wrathful men.

"Our strategy just went wrong," snapped Quackenbaugh angrily.

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 had surmised occurred. The confluence of these two rivers, as I have already described, is just above Lembarene, some twenty miles from the point this expedition reached. M. Serval, however, after the return of the expedition to Gaboon, made another attempt, and crossed by land from the Gaboon to the Ogowé, reaching Orongo a little above Osoamokita, definitely proving that the Gaboon estuary was not a mouth of the Ogowé and quite disconnected from it. In 1864 another expedition sent by the French Government succeeded in reaching the confluence of the Ngunie with the Ogowé (the Ngouyai with the Okanda of Du Chaillu). From those days, up to the time of de Brazza, the most important worker on the Ogowé has been Mr. R. B. N. Walker, of whose journey I regret to say no full account has been published, for it was a most remarkable one, undertaken before the Fans on the river bank had been overawed by M. de Brazza. Mr. Walker reached Lope, the furthest point attained until de Brazza's 1889 journey, and in addition to this, made many exploring expeditions in the region. Then come the missionary journeys of Dr. Nassau, who was well-established up at Talagouga with his house and church built when de Brazza came by in 1879. Since the latter opened up the district, the only travellers I know of, passing through the region up the Ogowé rapids, are MM. Alegret and Tesseris, who made a journey right up the Ogowé and out on to the Congo with a view to selecting a site for mission stations, and to these gentlemen I am indebted for many photographs of native types on the Upper Ogowé. Financial reasons have, I believe, militated against the establishment of further stations above Talagouga by the Mission Évangélique, to which these gentlemen belong; and this station, and a Roman Catholic Mission


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 "You men have been big with me, awfully big," Henry gulped gratefully. "And about Miss Marceau too—poor girl."

Each man contrived a look of almost painful modesty.

"You're with a big crowd now, Henry." For the first time in an hour Scanlon loosed a smile. "Wait till you see how big the Old Man will be."

Such fine generosity and the assurance of more from Mr. Boland himself, quickened Henry's eagerness to redeem himself—and he was eager enough already.

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WANT you to charge the twenty thousand to me, to my account. I'll get it back or pay it back," declared Henry, when Old Two Blades had received him in his den by appointment, at about eight-thirty that night, having already, no doubt, received the fullest account of what had transpired from both Quackenbaugh and Scanlon. It seemed to mean more to Mr. Boland to lose the twenty thousand than it did to Scanlon or Quackenbaugh. To them it was a black mark. To him it was like a pain. He winced as if it had been a pound of flesh taken off next his heart. And yet

"Nothing of the sort," he insisted, "it couldn't be your fault. You were carrying out instructions." With this soothing interpretation, Mr. Boland seemed to shrug the money out of consideration, so far as Henry was concerned, and to fasten his mind upon the tragedy.

"You thought you recognized the dead man?" he recalled with a peculiar penetrative quality in his tone, a peculiar glitter in his deeply recessed eyes—"before he disappeared?"

Henry's face became grave. "Yes," he said, lowering his voice. "I recognized him. It was the man Miss Billie introduced to me day before yesterday as Count Eckstrom."

Mr. Boland started perceptibly; then for a moment

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 his sharp features were set as graven stone and Harrington felt that recessed gaze sifting him—sifting almost as if it doubted. "Hum! That is a coincidence," he said eventually; then shifted the subject of his inquiries. "Quackenbaugh tells me that you . . . were unsuccessful with the Indian?"

Henry flushed but squared manfully to the admission. "Couldn't budge him, Mr. Boland. The Indian is stubborn and simply stood on his rights. There is nothing more that can be done. You will have to build your shingle mill somewhere else."

Mr. Boland's caverned eyes blinked behind their glasses. "You think so!" was his dry comment. But immediately he smiled. "Unfortunate," he ejaculated, "but don't let that worry you. That's a minor matter for Quackenbaugh and Scanlon to work out. The important question is"—Mr. Boland wet an eager lip—"have you made any progress on the Shell Point project? Any start yet?"

Henry's face lighted. "More—much more than a start, Mr. Boland," he assured with enthusiasm. "Miss Marceau, teacher of the Indian School, is committed to the project heart and soul. She has been sounding the Indians out already and feels certain they're going to be favorable."

Mr. Boland's tight features relaxed in a beatific smile. "I suppose knowledge of the Hurricane Island affair will leak out among the Indians and it probably won't do your influence any harm that you didn't crowd this fellow Adam John?" said Old Two Blades.

"Miss Marceau says that it will help us," responded Harrington eagerly, "that the Indians will think Adam John is a fool."

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 "Hum! Miss Marceau seems rather a sensible person."

"She is," affirmed Henry with emphasis. "Mr. Boland, I believe that within six weeks we shall have that petition signed by every Indian whose signature is required."

Harrington was so satisfied with this and so pleased that he could give that kind of assurance, that the sting of the Hurricane Island defeat was almost forgotten. It was cured entirely when Mr. Boland arose, beaming in every welt and wrinkle of his toil-chiseled face, and taking both of Harrington's hands in his, shook them warmly and said with enthusiasm: "Henry, I believe you will!

"But I must tell you of one mistake you are making about the Hurricane Island affair," he said, halting just inside the door, "The dead man was not Count Eckstrom."

"Not Eckstrom!" Henry was vastly incredulous.

"Count Eckstrom is in the music room now with Billie. There—that must be the count at the piano. It isn't her touch."

"Mr. Boland," said Henry solemnly, "I will take my oath that the man whom I saw dead in the ferns is the man Miss Billie presented to me day before yesterday as Count Eckstrom. I'd like to have a look at the fleshly phantom, if you don't mind."

"Certainly," smiled Mr. Boland, "we'll add another chapter to your mystery."

Arm in arm they advanced into the music room and stood halted just beyond the threshold; and there sat Eckstrom at the piano, the tails of his evening coat floating down behind the bench, his shoulders squared,

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 hands banging the keys, his large head thrown back as if in a kind of rapture, his little yellow Vandyke pointed straight ahead of him. It was the very beard, the very face.

Billie was draped across a Viennese chair, with the green fan, of which she was so fond, beating lazy time to the count's music.

"I'm dazed," Henry whispered to Mr. Boland. Then added, "I'm not satisfied."

"Pardon the intrusion, Billie," apologized her father, "but as Count Eckstrom is leaving tomorrow I thought it would be a pity if he and Mr. Harrington did not have an opportunity to broaden their acquaintance beyond a mere introduction."

Billie started with surprise at this revelation of the other two presences within the room; and Henry started at this revelation that Count Eckstrom, big, alive and well, was abruptly cutting short his stay—but that was as nothing to the start over his presence here and now!

"That was thoughtful of you, father," Billie was responding, casually; but centering her gaze on Harrington. Yesterday she had found this somewhat self-assured young man in a mood of depression. She had lectured him and left him—both for his own good; she had warned him to expect her father's displeasure. Yet, here he stood, with that father's arm linked through his, and pushed forward by him to interrupt a rather interesting tête-à-tête with a rather interesting gentleman of whom her father knew that she thought exceedingly well. The young man must have succecded then in his second mission to the island. He must have profited by her admonition. And her instinct

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 (5) Passage of time and lack of earlier complaints

89. The DPM's written representations made two points in this respect which to an extent I accept as well-founded. First, he referred to the length of time that had passed since the events in question and the inevitable effect on the quality of memory and his corresponding ability to respond.

90. This point was of greatest relevance in relation to the DExEU Complaint, given that the events in question related to a period between July and November 2018 and there were no available documents to assist. It was of less relevance to the FCDO Complaint because of the particular circumstances which gave rise to it and the availability of contemporaneous documents, albeit that the distance of over two years between the events and the investigation was bound to have affected the quality of recollection. It was relevant in part in respect of the MoJ Complaints, which concerned the period from September 2021 to September 2022. Some of the allegations in the MoJ Complaints were based on more detailed recollections than others.

91. In this context, it is worth noting that the typical time limit for a claim in the employment tribunal is three months from the date of the matter complained of, albeit that there is a power to extend time in certain cases and a series of events may be treated as ending at its conclusion. The DPM did not take a technical point in this respect, but observed correctly that the time limit in relation to legal proceedings in the employment tribunal provides an indication of the promptness with which the law expects a complaint to be brought forward.

92. Secondly, the DPM drew attention to the lack of any contemporaneous complaint. The DPM argued that the lack of a contemporaneous complaint should be regarded as a strong indication that the conduct was not regarded at the time as giving rise to legitimate grounds for complaint. The extent to which this argument was valid depended on the specifics of each of the Complaints and I therefore deal with it in the context of each of the Complaints. The DPM made a further point, that the allegations comprised in the Complaints were not raised with him at or close to the time of the events with which the allegations are concerned. I accept that point and have acknowledged that the passage of time since the event in question may in certain respects have diminished the DPM's ability to deal with the content of the Complaints.


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 always was to hail success. She rejoiced in young men who profited by admonitions.

"Ah, the burden-bearer!" patronized the count, arising and advancing.

Harrington was a bit stary. He saw approaching him an opossum grin and the wide expanse of white shirt over a breast which he was willing to wager he had seen only nine hours before covered with blue flannel and oozing a red welter upon the green of a forest floor. But he tried to rise to the moment.

"I am quite disappointed, Count Eckstrom, to hear of your leaving us," he began well enough; but his instinctive dislike for the man plus his suspicions and irritating bewilderment, made him suddenly rude. "By the way, Miss Boland," he inquired coolly: "Had you noticed how very much Count Eckstrom's voice resembles Mr. Scanlon's?"

Billie was shocked. This was rather gauche, since Scanlon was such a coarse person; and there was nothing charming about his voice either; it was unpleasant. True, Count Eckstrom's tones were husky, but they were charming. Count Eckstrom was all charm.

"I have not had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Scanlon," said Count Eckstrom suavely, but the line of his brow straightened proudly. "Perhaps he got his husk in the same cloud of phosgene that I got mine—not far from Châlons-sur-Marne."

This was the retort caustic.

"I am afraid it was Three Star Hennessey that gassed Scanlon's voice," smiled Mr. Boland as believing the conversation should be lightened; but nobody laughed. Billie continued slightly vexed. Harrington seemed still to be blundering.

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 "Have you, by any chance, a twin brother?" he asked, surveying the count, detail by detail.

"I have not the pleasure," responded the count, smilingly opaque.

"Strange, Count Eckstrom," mused Henry, as frankly absorbed in some haunting memory. "I've seen a face exactly like yours—somewhere—exactly. Strange, too, that when Miss Billie introduced you the other day I thought I had heard your voice before."

The count laughed, but a bit nervously, perhaps. "As I have said—there are many gassed voices. As for my face: if I have a double, do not charge me with his sins, I pray you. I have enough to answer for."

"Perhaps, instead, he will have virtues that we can credit you with," tormented Harrington.

But Billie, who prided herself on her discernment, felt hopelessly fogged. "Whatever are you two men talking about?" she demanded.

"We are talking, Miss Boland, about someone who looks and sounds like me," smiled Count Eckstrom, with a gesture of suave condescension toward Harrington.

"More like you than you look and sound like yourself, Count Eckstrom," indicated Henry, without a trace of a smile. "Have you ever by any chance been in India?"

"And why India, in particular, Mr. Harrington?" Billie interposed as protecting her guest. "Count Eckstrom has been every where."

"Because, in India I have heard that magicians sometimes bring the dead to life."

"Hum! Ahem! Oh—oh, by the way!" Mr. Boland immediately became explosive and interjectory,

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 shouldering in between them with: "I wonder, Billie, if you and Count Eckstrom won't excuse Mr. Harrington after all—at least for a moment. I have just remembered an important instruction that I want to give him."

Count Eckstrom's reception of his host's interjectory mood was the essence of good breeding. If, to a gentleman of his traditions, it was a trifle bizarre the way these Americans did mix business and social life; and if Mr. Boland, under the veil of a thin humility, was autocratic and self-indulgent to a degree, he could overlook it, since everybody indulged Mr. Boland.

"Father, you are so ridiculous!" flushed Billie. "You bring Mr. Harrington to us and then you snatch him away, before I get a chance even to ask him what all this absurd word play with the Count is about. It was too swift for me."

In truth, she was glad enough to have Harrington snatched away. Of course, this wire-haired manner of his toward the count was due solely to jealousy; he was Hellfire Harrington, she remembered; and while it piqued it also amused her; so that when Count Eckstrom took up once more the task of enthralling her mind, he found it more difficult than before.

"I—I'm groggy," confessed Harrington to Mr. Boland as his host was rather dragging him away. "And yet I—I tell you there's something phony about him; didn't you think I shook him up some? Didn't you think he betrayed himself a little?"

"You jarred him like an earthquake," opined Boland, and indulged a long low chuckle. The caverned beams with which he contemplated Harrington were benignant and highly approving.

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 "But phony or not, I'm glad you did go after him, Henry, because I had thought you might be lying to me about that disappearing dead man of yours. Now I know that you were not."

Henry darted a charged glance at Old Two Blades. "I will never lie to you, Mr. Boland," he said simply and directly. "I am not going to boast that I'm a little George Washington; but lying is not my habit. It is seldom my refuge. I shall never lie to you."

The older man weighed the younger in his eye.

"You will though, Henry," he prophesied, faintly pessimistic. "Everybody lies to me. They think that's the way to get on with me. Perhaps it is—in part. I am weak and mortal. The truth is often ugly, unpleasant. Somctimes people tell me lies and I know they are lies; yet because they are pleasant lies, I like them for telling them to me. But when a young man—still so young that he knows the difference between the naked truth and a fawning falschood—says to me what you have just said, I pause and consider what a golden thing truth is, and how impracticable at times."

Henry gasped. "Why, Mr. Boland, you amaze me. You want men to lie to you?"

"Expect them to, rather, let me say; and I must trust my own perspicacity to know when they are doing so. Upon that knowledge my control of them is built."

"But you do not lie, Mr. Boland?" Henry's glance was frank and inquiring.

Before Mr. Boland could answer, Billie had entered rather abruptly, a bright vision in pink chiffon, with a high-piled coiffure.

"Count Eckstrom would like a word with you, father, before he goes," she said quite innocently.

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 "Certainly—excuse me, Harrington!" Mr. Boland arose and went out.

Henry was groggy again—groggier than when Count Eckstrom confronted him alive in the music room. Did this mean that Eckstrom had proposed? That Billie had accepted him?

For a moment the girl's expression lent color to this theory—until with a bewitching toss of her wilful head it was made clear that she was only rebuking him for the presumption of his manner with the count.

"I—I'm sorry; but I had to go after that fellow," Harrington confessed with such sober honesty as must have mollified resentment.

For a moment Billie regarded Harrington steadily; then said with a far-away note in her voice: "Count Eckstrom is going away . . . forever." There was a look in her blue eyes as if she announced this for the young man's comfort.

"Miss Boland!" Henry exclaimed gratefully; but her manner held him off at the same moment that her features kindled with admiring interest in him and him alone.

"You are getting on well with father, aren't you?" she smiled with congratulation in her tone.

"I'd rather be sure I was getting on well with you," Henry countered daringly.

"And don't you feel that you are?"

"May I?" he challenged like a flash, but with voice lowered to a very tender significance as he advanced with outstretched hand.

But she held off again, this time with a laugh; yet there was admiration in it, cordial good feeling in it. Although her manner became elusive and bantering,

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 there was encouragement in it—all kinds of encouragement, Henry thought as a little later he went down the hill with long plunging strides, under the stars.

"I wonder if she canned him?" he speculated. "If he got scared and lit out? I wonder who beaned me? I wonder who got the twenty thousand? I wonder who the dead man was, and how the devil two men could look so much alike and not be the same? It would be a great thing for a con man to have a double though, wouldn't it? Well, Lahleet spoiled that! Fierce for the girl, wasn't it? And she stood it like the inscrutable stoic she can be!"

Thus did things sordid and unpleasant intrude themselves into the golden glory of Henry Harrington's romance, quite as things sordid and unpleasant have a way of doing with romance in this scrambled world of ours. And the most of these speculations had to go unanswered while weeks and months of time sped by; yet they remained vividly alive in his mind, for there was so much to occupy him now that he was rather unconscious of the flight of time. All these things were but of yesterday; all their solutions must come at the latest by tomorrow; but today—ah, today! Henry was very, very busy today.

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OREOVER, that love affair of Henry's required a great deal of attention. His passion for Billie Boland was fed by every meeting with her that he could contrive and he became exceedingly skilful at such contrivance. For one of these; that new five-thousand-dollar chase-about came, and Miss Boland had to teach him how to drive it. He proved a very dull pupil. He required an enormous amount of instruction each day. It seemed as if he never would learn to drive that car alone. Long before the mysteries of its control had been solved for him, he was calling Miss Boland Billie and she was calling him Henry.

Meanwhile Hornblower had come back to town. His presence gave timid souls the shudders. Despite the general belief that any structure built upon the signature of John Boland was impregnable, the fulminations of the shyster and the mystery of the vault robberies had raised a vague fear in many minds. But if Hornblower became a more and more sinister figure in the community, there was on the other hand the luminous character of Harrington growing taller and taller.

Hitherto a few crumple-winged souls had sensed that young man's fine capacity for sympathy and leadership and looked up to and trusted him. Now all at once everybody seemed to look up to and trust him.

It became the fashion to retain Henry in litigation. After the first disconcerting reverse on Hurricane

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 Island, of which only four persons knew—everything that his hand touched had prospered! Everything.

And his public spirit was recognized. Did a question affecting community interest arise? The people turned to Henry. Did a crisis threaten? They slanted an eye first at Harrington to learn if it were serious, before they lifted it higher to the throne where Old Two Blades reigned supreme.

Henry was tinglingly happy in all this popularity, in all this wide opportunity for public service. He had been transformed from a lackadaisical idler into a person of industry and potency. No career had ever boomed along as his boomed. It was pleasant to be trusted, as for instance, the Boland General Staff trusted him in everything; as the Shell Point Indians trusted him when one day they gave him their signed (or marked) and witnessed petition to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for permission to sell their joint inheritance to John Boland; as Gaylord trusted him when one day—Hornblower again!

For the shyster had become blatant and blustering once more. Egged on by him, represented by him, Adolph Salzberg of the Socialist Local had filed a suit in ejectment against the First National Bank, basing his allegation on that absurd title he had bought at auction for twenty-four dollars; and Gaylord proving either that he had forgiven that smack upon his jaw or that he had come to have the same deep-grounded faith in Henry Harrington that others had, selected him to defend the suit.

The trial was another Hornblower farce. Harrington did not permit it to become anything else. Hornblower based his entire contention upon the boundary

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 calls of the Salisheutte reservation as laid down by the treaty of 1855, which treaty reserved to those Indians, "all lands between Harper's Basin and the Pacific Ocean southward to and including the South Inlet to the said basin." Hornblower's points were:

First, that the survey of the said land boundaries was not made until thirty-five years after the date of the treaty.

Second, that the late John Wilkinson, in making this survey, erred in running it along the shore, not of the south inlet, but of the middle inlet, which had been ever since erroneously called South Inlet, while the real South Inlet had got down on the maps as Squaw River.

Third, that by this mistake—or fraud perhaps—there had been excluded from the just inheritance of the Salisheutte Indians and opened to United States patent—which Boland had secured—all that vast acreage of timber upon which his fortunes rested and upon a portion of the soil of which the town of Edgewater was built.

That was the case.

Henry coolly dynamited it by admitting that Squaw River was indeed the real south inlet to Harper's Basin, but proved by testimony that the Salisheutte Indians had actually never ranged south of the middle inlet and in their own nomenclature always referred to it as South Inlet; that, therefore, when the old treaty said "South Inlet" it meant middle inlet and the survey was properly run and the land patented to Boland was properly so patented.

This was so perfectly obvious, so much a matter of common knowledge, so highly palatable to the public, that it was easy to make a joke of Hornblower's con-

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 tention and a laughing-stock of him. The fat, pasty-faced, wily-eyed attorney, opposed and confronted by the man who had saved his life, fretted and fumed and blustered. He based the Salzberg title on a deed purporting to be signed by certain purported chiefs of the Salisheuttes as trustces, conveying all right, title and interest, etc., in the said described lands to Julius Hornblower. This deed Julius now ostentatiously offered in evidence, after having a few days previously offered it for record at the courthouse.

Henry held this deed up to ridicule. He read the names of its signers, Chief Left-Hand, Chief Charlie White, Chief Jim McDonald, Chief White Seal, calling each name loudly, demanding that these chiefs be subpenaed and that the subpenas be served; and when the sheriff could not find them Henry had the court bailiff page them loudly in the corridors. When these vociferous bawlings sounded from without, each empty echo a witness to the emptiness of Hornblower's case, the spectators tittered, the jury smiled and venerable Judge Allen with difficulty kept his mask of solemn dignity. The jury found for the defendant without leaving its box.

"We didn't have a chance—not a chance in this court," muttered Hornblower sullenly. "But we'll take it, by God, to where we do have a chance. We'll appeal!"

"Naturally," smiled Henry.

It was this victory in the court which raised the public clamor for Henry to represent the seventy-first assembly district in the legislature to a chorus which could hardly be denied. Yet Henry did deny it—until one morning Billie came into his office—came as

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 the accredited representative of the Women's Club of Socatullo County to ask him to seek the nomination.

Perfectly radiant, Billie was this morning, and never quite so beautiful, Henry thought. He instantly pressed his suit. "Aren't you willing to love me yet, dear?" he pleaded tenderly. "Aren't you?"

But again she put him off, although it was a very gentle putting off indeed.

"Almost ready," she breathed softly, and seemed to sway to him. "Almost—but not quite," and she swayed away from him again.

His comment was a sigh.

But her smile was more luminous, more full of promise than it had ever been. "You great big growing man," she flattered, "you're going to do something so tremendous some day that the last cool chamber of my heart will be warmed for you. I shall take fire and burn up with love for you—perhaps."

Perhaps. There was always that accursed reservation in her every promise. It maddened Henry now as it had maddened him before, and so he dared to think it accursed; but instantly he forgave, because he knew it was an expression of the girl's fundamental honesty. She had gone far—far this morning. His strategy was to be grateful for so much and he led the conversation back to its beginning with: "And so you think I ought to run for the legislature?"

"I am sure it is your duty," she declared thoughtfully, blue eyes appealing.

And so Henry Harrington ran for the legislature from the Seventy-first district. His sole opponent was Adolph Salzberg. Salzberg received 341 votes; Harrington got 4257.

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 Harrington made a good impression as a legislator at the State Capitol. Wise old heads marked the young man sagely and said that he would be governor one day. They liked him in Washington too—the bureau chiefs, the commissioner, the congressmen and senators with whom it was necessary to get and keep acquainted in connection with his Shell Point negotiations.

Only once in a while did doubts or misgivings arise about himself or the enterprises upon which he engaged himself. One of these came when he argued by brief before the State Supreme Court, Hornblower's appeal in the case of Adolph Salzberg vs. The First National Bank. Somehow as Henry went over this case the second time, he lost his feeling of lightness concerning it. There might be something in this old treaty and ancient map argument, after all, he reflected. But when he took these misgivings frankly to Mr. Boland, that gentleman laughed.

"Don't you be afraid, Henry," declared Old Two Blades stoutly. "There's nothing to it. You won once and you'll win again. The Supreme Court? Say! Who elects them? The people, don't they? Do you think they are going to upset the title to forty thousand people's homes just for some musty old map and a treaty that nobody understood when they wrote it? Good heavens, no!" And the State Supreme Court confirmed John Boland's faith in it.

"So that's over," Henry said with a sigh of relief to Scanlon. "You know I've thought lately there might be a point in that erroneous survey business."

"Did you, Henry? . . . Did you?" asked Scanlon, tones hoarsely tense, yellow eyes aglow.

"Yes," said Henry. "If it ever got up to the United

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 States Supreme Court. If they took the wrong view"

"If they did God, what a crash!" groaned Scanlon. "Why, it would jerk the bottom out from under everything!" He stared at Henry reproachfully, as if he had been traitorous to suggest such a thing.

"Supposing the Court holds, from the record, that Hornblower did prove his case at the trial, but that local feeling was so strong the jury refused to see the facts," persisted Henry, as if fascinated by such a melancholy prospect.

Scanlon shook himself as if cold. "Henry, you're pessimistic this morning!" he accused.

"Maybe so," sighed Henry; "but a gust of gloom Charlie Clayton was blowing at me has got my mind going on a lot of stuff. Funny Cosby never got any trace of that gold, isn't it? Or the disappearing dead man? You know, Scanlon, those things are more than a year old, those two little matters; but I've never let up on 'em for a minute. Not for a minute."

"Haven't, eh?" grunted Scanlon, expressionlessly, and contemplated the young man as from behind a screen. There were people who thought that Scanlon was getting jealous of Henry. Henry did not suspect it.

"They'll never carry that case to Washington," Scanlon announced out of silence.

"Hope not," said Henry, deep in thought—musing now upon the steady up-towering of the Boland fortune. For all this while that Henry was prospering, Boland General was also prospering. Axes resounded in the forest, trees crashed and donkey engines snaked out the logs to where trains and rivers bore them to the

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 mills. All was bustle and all was prosperity. The three towns hummed with it. The enterprises of John Boland budded, blossomed and fruited with seasonal regularity.

Only one thing lagged. That new shingle mill had not been built. But, all at once it turned out to have been a very lucky thing that the Hurricane Island site was not acquired; for, one morning while Mr. Boland was in the East, the Blade head-lined great news. The Edgewater and Eastern Railway was at last to be built. Sixty miles in length, it would make the three towns branch terminals of a transcontinental line.

It would skirt the southern shores of Harper's Basin, leap Squaw River on a bridge and come trundling north to turn finally west along the south shore of South Inlet. But where the road turned west, just after it crossed Cub Creek, was to be another bridge—a bridge that would span the channel to Hurricane Island, for Hurricane Island was to be the freight terminus of the road. Upon it, in that sheltered entrance to the Basin, deep water docks would be established. There the commerce of the ocean would meet the commerce of the continent.

"So that's what becomes of Adam John's island!" reflected Henry laying down the paper; for a railroad is not like a shingle mill. Private ownership is never permitted to block a railroad's progress. Adam John's island would be condemned, appraised and taken—all by due process of law. But—taken!

"Tough on the old fellow," reflected the occupied Henry, and let the subject slide out of mind. Indeed the next time he thought of it was when Adam John stood before him, his wry face more twisted than usual,

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 his dark eyes filled with pain and wonder. In one hand he held the summons of the court in the condemnation proceedings; in the other his original patent, bearing its official seal. He glanced bewildered from one to the other. Harrington shook his head. "No use, old fellow," he explained and felt very sorry for Adam John. "This is where one law transcends another."

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ATER Henry would have given everything if he had just taken more time with Adam John that morning; but this was a day upon the evening of which he must take the night steamer for Portland en route to Washington, for a consultation upon the Shell Point matter; for the time ripened and these were anxious days with Henry now, lest Hornblower, or some self-seeker of his character, get wind of what was in the air and block the beneficent project by persuading some drunken or unstable members of the Shell Point tribe into a malicious recalcitrancy.

But nothing untoward happened. The Indians kept faithfully the secret of the negotiations; so did the departmental representatives who came out to investigate. At last the thing was done. On this very trip to Washington, Henry got the nod. The ten years' task was finished. It had been accomplished in a few days less than twenty-four months, All was over but the preparation of the final documents for official signature and the affixing of those signatures themselves, following which the public announcement would be made. But the private announcement! Ah, that was a bit of news so precious that Henry would not use the telegraph, nor the long-distance telephone to communicate it to the man most in interest; not even to Lahleet, who had waited wistfully with unwavering faith; not even to Billie, who was now in that rapt state of admiration

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 There may of course be difficulties for an individual civil servant in feeling able to make a contemporaneous formal complaint about a serving Minister.

(6) Access to documents

93. The nature of the allegations in the Complaints is such that one would not expect much in the way of directly relevant documentary evidence. All of the allegations were in substance about the conduct of the DPM in meetings with policy officials or in daily interactions with members of private office. One would not expect such events to be the subject of documentary record.

94. The FCDO and the MoJ were able to provide all of the documents which the DPM requested, mainly for the purpose of providing factual context in respect of the meetings which were the subject of the allegations in the Complaints. DExEU has obviously ceased to exist and the events which were the subject of the DExEU Complaint were not likely to have been recorded in documents in any event.

95. It became apparent to me during the investigation that there were likely to be numerous ephemeral written communications in the form of text or WhatsApp messages. I was shown some such messages on request, but I did not consider it necessary or appropriate to seek access to the entire history of such messages, in view of their limited relevance (they did not form part of any of the alleged conduct) and the degree of intrusion involved. As a matter of substance, I have been able to reach conclusions on the specific facts surrounding the Complaints; to the limited extent that conclusions were not possible, the availability of such material is most unlikely to have made any difference.

(7) 'Cross-admissibility' and media coverage

96. The DPM made a number of points in this respect in his written representations, some of which I found persuasive and others which I did not. The DPM contended, and I agree, that each allegation in the Complaints should be subject to separate and careful scrutiny. He also contended, and I also agree, that it would not be appropriate for the number of allegations alone to lend weight to their credibility. However, a degree of similarity amongst allegations may be relevant in establishing a pattern of conduct; the extent to which it would or might do so would depend on the particular circumstances, including the degree of independence of the sources of evidence.


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 which made him feel that the time was at hand when he might storm the citadel of her heart—not even to her would he flash a signal of success.

It was to get the most shock-value out of his success that Harrington refrained, even from telling Billie that he was starting for home. But Lahleet met him at the dock. He was not surprised simply because he had become accustomed to her intuitions and the sublime faith with which she obeyed them—rested all upon them.

"Lahleet!" he whispered into her ear, in a voice hoarse with happiness. "It's done! It's done—all but the clerk's work—it's done! A few documents to engross, some seals and wax and scrawling signatures that are a mere matter of form and we have it."

"Oh!" exclaimed the girl in low joy-mad tones. "Oh! you great White Chief!" In an ecstasy of pleasure over his triumph—perhaps more for him than for her Indians—she seized his hands, pressed them and slipped away. It was a contact so brief that probably no eye in the jostling throng took note of it, any more than Harrington took note of that starved light of something tenderer than friendship in the dark, passionate eyes of the little habitant of the twilight land between aboriginal blood and the untainted strain of the white man.

Henry had come down on the night boat. It was but eight o'clock in the morning when he stepped upon the dock, yet he knew that he should find John Boland at his desk even at this hour, for Old Two Blades was an early riser; and the young man could not suppress a nervous tremor as he crossed familiar thresholds to stand at length before a door whose unmarked

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 surface gave no hint of what potentialities couched behind it.

He lifted his hand to knock and as he did so something knocked violently within his breast. This was consummation; this was achievement; this was empire-building—a step in the transformation of a stretch of savage wilderness into production for all the world. Yes; he, too, was a producer!

Once within that door the habitually restrained countenance of Old Two Blades glowed like an open hearth, and his usually clear voice crackled; although the spoken words were few.

"It's a great thing you've done, boy," he croaked happily. "A great thing! It will mean more than any single accomplishment of any one of us since old Tom Scanlon put in my hands the United States patents for our original holding. No one could have done it but you. Thank you, Henry. You shall not go scant of your reward."

"I've been rewarded already," assured Henry, eyes glistening as he vibrated to the fine and generous words of Mr. Boland, and to the memory of that ecstatic little gurgle of Lahleet's.

"But you'll get more," said the older man significantly, while benignant rays streamed out from the caverned eyes and he managed a smile of affection that was as fatherly and tender as the thin firm-set lips could muster.

More? Henry smiled almost pityingly. Why, certainly he would get more. He was going up the hill at once to get that more—get his final and his supreme reward. He rushed to the hotel to make ready, and the instant he reached his room must first cry out to

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 Billie over the telephone the news of his presence and the hint of its glad meaning.

"Henry!" she exclaimed, startled, but her fluted tones vibrating immediately to the joy in his. "Oh, hurry . . . hurry!" she urged, as divining. "I shall be waiting . . . among the roses."

Among the roses! Most—most auspicious. That was Henry's favorite trysting place, his favorite place for saying: "I love you and I love you."

Henry found Billie looking like some wonderful rose herself. She sat upon a marble bench on the raised floor of a colonnade, roofed only by vying crimson ramblers. Vines crept about the column against which she leaned and seemed to twine about her figure as she sat, bowered in green, the dark masses of her hair backgrounding a face all pink and white but for the violet blue of the eyes—bluer under this turquoise sky than they had ever seemed before.

Harrington had run lightly the length of the sward in front of the colonnade before he came upon her. Her eyes were on a humming bird hovering amid the blossoms over her, and he halted unseen for one delicious moment to drink in the picture. In her lap lay one of those huge garden hats of which she was so fond and which she wore so gracefully. It was inverted and heaped high with roses. Chaste in her beauty as the flowers, but not cold—warm as the red blood of life itself, she was waiting—waiting for her lover! So he found her.

And it was his hour. Henry Harrington knew it as he knew the sun was in the heavens, as he knew that she was there. She was there for him to take.

"Billie?" he cried softly.

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 "Henry!" she cried, and sprang up to meet him. He might have taken her to his arms without a word. He knew it; she knew it; but he postponed the rapture. There was exquisite pain in self-restraint. They greeted each other with both hands extended.

"You have done it!" she exulted; a proud break in her voice.

With this single recognition of things material, a golden mist flooded in and shut out all mundane matter. By a subtle change in her expression, by a mere glance from limpid eyes Billie Boland, vital, practical, ambitious and imperious, who had commanded her lover when she could, cajoled him when she must, and in certain things found herself unable to do either, flew the signals of surrender, gave up freely the confession that she was conquered by a mighty passion, that her restless soul was trapped by love and eager to surrender to it.

Henry read the message like a headline. Read it and for a moment was humbled by the matchlessness of beauty that he had won; for a moment he was impelled to sink upon his knees before her. Instead, he continued to hold her hands, gazing at her fixedly, very tenderly and very fondly.

"Billie! I love yow and I love you," he breathed softly.

For an instant the silken fringes of her lids were lowered while a maidenly blush widened, mounting to the roots of her hair and creeping down over her neck, over the white of her sculptured bosom. She was his! And yet for a delicious instant still he tantalized his own passion with letting himself want her and want her but without taking her. He waited—watching, gloat-

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 ing, until she—until the long lashes quivered and the eyes lifted to him, wet and shiny with something that made their blue depths sparkle like jeweled springs.

"And I love you!" She almost sobbed the words, and let herself go to him.

"You—you darling!"

He had meant to give her that first kiss gently, oh, so gently, as one inhales the perfume of the most delicate flower; but there was a fragrance in the air that was not of roses. It was of her, and Billie Boland was not a flower. When cornered behind the last barriers of reserve, she was warm and vital as any woman. That drooping glance, that slow spreading blush, this palpitating warmth between his hands—each gave her lover assurance, each was fuel to his flame.

"Billie!" he cried, almost as if with pain. "I have you!" His wild young strength bound her to him. "Billie," he panted, "I love you and I love you!"

But she too was strong—she too was suddenly unbridled. Of love she gave him draught for draught, thrill for thrill, strength for strength, until he felt himself suddenly weak before the magnificence, the opulence of her response.

June—June! It was June in the garden and it was June in two lives. Blind—they were both blind. Harrington did not know that he had closed his eyes in the very sublimity of his ecstasy. He thought merely that he had been drenched in a torrent that fired him while it swept him away. Shoaled at length as upon the brink of some new Niagara of emotion, he opened his eyes. They were still standing, still embowered by the vine-festooned colonnade. She lay, like a crushed and crumpled beauty in the hollow of his arm, her hair in dis-

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 array; but because it was crushed and crumpled, it was a sweeter, finer, more exciting beauty than before. The bouquet of it swirled his head like wine.

She was asleep—yes, her breast against his breast rose and fell rhythmically. No; the gates of her eyes were languidly ajar like one who slowly takes account of new environment. Suddenly their blue gaze was wide. The light in the eyes was of surprise and then a little bit of dismay and shock, almost of shame, and the face was somehow altered; the lips quivered and the exquisite cupid's bow line of them was broken a little.

Her lover breathed some soft ecstatic word to her. For that word she gave him back a pressure and buried her face for an instant. Thereafter their manner was of having discovered some delightful secret, each about the other, which a thousand delicacies forbade to mention, which their every move and glance and tone exulted in.

Henry led her back to her seat at the foot of the column and sank down beside her. Still breathing quickly as from the aftermath of a great emotion, he looked around him strangely.

It was the same world, the same rose garden, the same dancing blue inlet, the same far-flung panorama of greens with the white peak of Gregory pinning the sky in its place above.

But she—who had made this little local world so bright and real—she was changed. For this hour at least, the strong, the self-satisfied, the self-confident and managing Billie Boland was gone. In her place was a shy, impressed, clinging girl, who said little, who played with her lover's hands without ever looking at

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 his face; until all at once her twining, impulsive fingers reached upward, caught his neck, pulled him down to her and she was kissing him again—again with all the strength of her unleashed longing.

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ENRY'S was a big office now; it occupied all one corner of the third floor of the Boland Building. His staff had grown rapidly; there were stenographers, and there were clerks, with two or three gray-headed old diggers into the law to look up his points for him. On the morning after love's bright field-day, every face greeted him, it seemed, with knowing welcome as he passed through the outer offices to sit down in the big swivel chair before the wide and polished desk at which he began swiftly to dispose of those matters which Sergeant Thorpe had placed upon it.

In half an hour he was ready to receive callers. Poised, confident, smiling, he took up the first card which the office boy brought in and, as he read, the smile brightened for upon it was engraved in neat and proper script:

"Show her in!" Henry directed, thrilling with delightful anticipations.

But something was the matter with the girl. When barely within the room, she halted, white and tense, the black eyes big and burning as with some sort of accusation.

"Why—Lahleet!" protested Henry.

"Did you know that there was oil on the Shell Point

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 tract?" She fairly catapulted the question at him.

"Oil? . . . No!" Harrington's voice sounded a trifle bewildered.

"Hundreds of millions of barrels!" the girl declaimed. "Underground lakes of it. . . . Rivers of it! . . . Enough to make the tract worth ten times what Boland offered to pay for it! Did you know it?" demanded the girl, searching with terrible earnestness the face of the man she had trusted so entirely with the interests of all her tribesmen.

"Of course, I didn't know it," Henry fended impatiently. "Did anybody?"

"Mr. Boland knew it," the girl affirmed, bosom heaving. "Read this!"

From out of her red silk hand-bag she flung a crumpled document in pen-script upon the lawyer's desk. There were three foolscap pages of it, and Harrington, separating them for scrutiny, saw that the first page was addressed, "Dear Mr. Boland," and the last was signed, "Hiram Stanfield, M. E." Hiram Stanfield was the greatest authority on oil fields and oil indications in America—perhaps in the world.

Harrington started as he read the first lines and his face had whitened before he turned the first page over, for he was reading in it that the great John Boland was but a low, common trickster. The man who had become his idol, the father of the beautiful girl whose heart he had just won, had connived at a colossal fraud, and used him for the instrument of it. As Henry's eyes reached the end, the page shook with his trembling so that he could hardly see the lines. Last of all it occurred to him to look at the date.

"My God!" he groaned. The date of the document

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 was the date of that night when John Boland had made his first proposal to Henry regarding the Shell Point land. "In Stanfield's own handwriting, so that the secret was his and John Boland's alone," he murmured half-dazed; then suddenly and fiercely turned upon the girl. "Where did you get this, Lahleet?" But the girl would not tell him. She shook her head and smiled inscrutably; yet was instantly humble and appealing.

"Did I get it too late?" she whispered fearsomely, and stood with twisting hands, as if the soul of a man she loved were weighing itself in the balance before her eyes.

Harrington's shoulders heaved slowly with the upsurge of his indignation—slowly, till it seemed to the girl that he would never speak. "No!" he exploded thunderously at last. "So help me God, it is not too late!"

"You will block it?" Lahleet cried, her tones freighted with vindictive satisfaction. "You will take this paper back to Washington, and use it to denounce the cause you pleaded? . . . You will prove that John Boland is a despicable fraud? . . . You will tell him so here, and you will prove it to all the world there?"

"Yes—so help me God, I will!" declared Harrington hoarsely.

Out of the girl's breast leaped a low cry of gratitude and she darted upon him. "God bless you, Henry!" she breathed fervently—the first religious sentiment he had ever heard from her—and impulsively she caught his hand to her lips and kissed it. Then, with only a look, but such a look!—all the infinity of a woman's capacity to believe in a man wrapped up in it—she turned and darted out—one of her perfectly characteristic exits.

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 97. The DPM went further in his written representations and argued that, in view of the significant level of media reporting and the timing of the allegations in the Complaints, I should not treat the evidence of any witness as "cross-admissible" in relation to any other matter unless I was sure that the evidence was not in any way influenced–whether consciously or subconsciously–as a result of their exposure to or knowledge of allegations made by others. He submitted that I should exclude from consideration allegations which: resemble conduct reported in the press; were made after the relevant press reporting; and are not corroborated by other witnesses. The DPM made it clear that he did not suggest that there had been deliberate collusion to give false evidence.

98. It seems to me that these contentions go significantly further than necessary for the purpose of the conduct of a fair investigation of this kind. As I have said, the investigation was not a form of litigation procedure. I have not been required to apply and have not applied strict rules of evidence, still less the sort of rules which would be relevant in the context of a criminal trial (and in light of applicable statutory requirements ).

99. I accept that I should have in mind the potentially prejudicial effect of media reporting and should take into account the risk that allegations were prompted or embellished by exposure to such reporting or by unwitting influence arising from knowledge of another person's complaint. I have also considered whether and the extent to which the subject-matter of the Complaints was discussed by individuals making, participating in or supporting the Complaints. It may also be relevant for the Prime Minister to have in mind the extent to which allegations which were the subject of the Complaints have also been communicated directly to the media and the reason or reasons why that was done. I have addressed these matters, so far as possible and to the extent relevant, in the context of each of the Complaints.

(8) Allegations reported only in the media

100. If and to the extent that allegations have been reported in the media but have not been the subject of any evidence provided to me, I have excluded them entirely from consideration. All such allegations were made anonymously. It would be contrary to the essential requirement of fairness to take any such matter into account.


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 Harrington was left staring curiously at the back of the hand which Lahleet had kissed, curiously, for there was a tiny globule upon it that sparkled and glistened. It was a tear—Lahleet's tear. A tear of a Shell Point Indian! The tear of the dull and slowwitted of all the world, crying to be protected somewhat from the too-shrewd and grasping. As Harrington caught the rainbow colors in that quivering globule, and sensed its significance, his soul hardened; he saw the path of duty clear and felt himself strong enough to walk in it.

He kissed the tear away, and for a time was thinking deeply of what it meant—this appalling discovery—and of what it might mean to him today, to his interests, his position, his love—to go stoutly in to John Boland and tell him what he had discovered. A good many possibilities, some of them highly disagreeable, passed in review through Henry Harrington's mind in that ten minutes which intervened before he arose and stepped across the hall into the immediate purlieus of executive power.

Obsequious clerks made way for him. An alert efficient secretary, after the briefest interval, led him to the unmarked door. How perfectly oiled! With what smooth precision did the machinery of Boland General operate! And he was now about to commit an act of sabotage upon it. He felt grim and resolute, yet somehow small and mean—also distressingly embarrassed, painfully embarrassed. The situation was excruciating.

The secretary opened the door. Mr. Boland swung around in his great chair and upon his fine strong features was a most benevolent radiance, as he cried:

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 "Henry, my boy! Henry, our new Vice-President!"

"Vice-President?" Harrington mumbled, struck rather dumb.

"Yes," glowed Mr. Boland, rubbing his hands benignly; "we shall organize the Shell Point Land Company today—and you will be its president, and become automatically thereby one of the vice-presidents of Boland General and so a member of our general staff. You have been unofficially one of us for some time; now you are officially there."

To be preferred so young for such a place, was honor, reward, unassailable position. It was a more subtle emolument than money. If it were aimed to make Harrington feel both the lure of what was ahead for him and the baseness of that ingratitude which would turn and bite the hand that was feeding him so generously, it had been designed most skilfully. Besides, there was this engaging, ingratiating personality of Old Two Blades, bathing the young man in its warmth.

"That is wonderful of you, Mr. Boland—wonderful!" Henry found himself murmuring, and then something jerked his head up straight. "But I don't think I can accept it. I don't think you'll want to give it to me." He stopped breathless, but so far triumphant. He had broken through. There was perspiration on his brow, but he had made an opening. "I saw the Stanfield report this morning," he blurted.

There ensued silence. For the slightest fraction of time not a muscle, not a nerve of John Boland appeared to move. "Stanfield report?" he queried in an even colorless tone.

"About the oil in the Shell Point Land," elucidated Henry desperately.

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 For yet another infinitesimal fraction of time a veil as of blank incomprehension was lowered, and then suddenly the face of John Boland was the face of a man who saw his way clear before him.

"Yes—oh, yes! It looks pretty nice, doesn't it?" The magnate's hands fondled each other, while his face was permitted to beam the natural enthusiasm of a trader who has just bought for three millions what promises to be worth thirty.

"It doesn't look so nice to me," Harrington confessed miserably. "It makes the whole transaction look rather . . . phony; rather . . . suspicious."

"Suspicious?" inquired Mr. Boland, his features tight and edged, showing heat for the first time. "Why, what in the devil are you talking about?" His manner was finely indignant. It almost swept Harrington off his feet mentally. What in the devil was he talking about, really?

"I should have thought the Indians ought to have had more money for their land, in that case," he tried to explain. "I should have thought so."

"We gave them enough—far more than anybody else would have given," affirmed Mr. Boland with decision. "We paid them for the timber and the land; why should we pay them for the oil? They didn't put it there. Why, if the report had got out that there was oil in this Shell Point tract, do you think you would have got the Indian Commissioner to consent to the sale? Not on your life. He would have been afraid to. The department would have tied us up and hedged us around with restrictions till development was impossible, just like the coal in Alaska."

"But the oil couldn't run away—it would be there for

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 somebody to take out sometime," Henry struggled.

"Somebody! Sometime? . . ." Mr. Boland's mounting scorn blasted the whole idea from consideration; and then, as tapping the reservoirs of a very great patience, he began to pour out counsel. "But, don't you see, Henry, my boy, we—you and I—are living today. Your duty and mine is to our own time. Look out around us at these thriving, happy towns. Our policy has created them out of raw wilderness. I will build a city on Shell Point finer than Edgewater. Where now a few Indians fish and hunt, I'll show you in five years fifty thousand people earning a good living, some of them getting rich—the world paying them wages that they will buy food with and build homes with and educate their children with and enjoy life with—just because they are sending the Shell Point oil out to make ships go and drive automobiles and turn factory wheels and help do the world's work for it.

"That's the idea, Henry. These little matters of land laws and commissioners' rulings and congressional committees, all that—they are circumstances. They are the native obstacles that empire builders like me—and you, now you are one of us—have to cope with.

"We don't quit before things like that, do we? Any more than we quit when we find timber growing a long way from the water. We build a log chute, don't we? or a railroad, or we rig up a cable and snake it out. That's what we do with obstacles, Henry." Mr. Boland was standing up and slapping Harrington cheeringly on the shoulder. "We go around 'em if we can, and if we can't we go through 'em." The chest of Old Two Blades swelled proudly.

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 Henry was feeling as if he were off his feet and beginning to be swept downstream. "You think, then, it was perfectly ethical to keep from the Indians the knowledge that oil underlaid their land?" he asked.

"Ethical?" It was an uncommon word to Mr. Boland as applied to business. He chewed on it for a moment, and then swallowed it vigorously. "Why, certainly! It was my knowledge, my information that oil was there; and information, my son—business information—is property, just like land—just like oil itself, or any other commodity. Every big business is built on information—business secrets, trade secrets, manufacturing secrets—information.

"I always knew about the oil slicks on Shell Point streams. So did everybody. But it was me that got Stanfield here, that paid him ten thousand dollars for thirty days of his time and promised him a royalty of two percent on the gross of a ten-year output, if he kept his mouth shut on what he found until I was ready to make it public."

But Henry had got his feet on bottom again for one swirling instant. "It was very shrewd, Mr. Boland, no doubt; but was it—right?"

"Right? Of course it was right. Why, Henry! I'm surprised at you. I'll have to give you some lessons in the fundamental principles of business."

"I guess you will," confessed Harrington rather grimly.

"All right, here goes," began his self-appointed school-master resolutely, wetting an aggressive lip: "You were born in Missouri, didn't you tell me? Northwest Missouri? Well, I was born just over the line in Iowa. Let me ask you now, did you ever, in the

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 late summer, happen on a grove of wild plums down in the creek bottom, just as pink and ripe as your best girl's cheeks and just as sweet as sugar?"

"I found a rare patch of wild strawberries once," recalled the young man wonderingly.

"Well, what did you do?" demanded Mr. Boland quickly. "Rush out and tell the whole town about it? Or did you keep that secret rather carefully, and just sneak off down there every day or two yourself, and maybe take one trusted pal with you, and keep those strawberries to yourself all summer?"

Harrington flushed. "Well, I guess I kept it kind of dark," he smiled, "until the pal peached on me."

"Exactly," exulted Mr. Boland; "and then what did you do?"

"I licked him," admitted Henry.

"Well, was that ethical?"

"It was rather—rather human, I suppose," he confessed with a sickly smile.

"Exactly!" gloated Mr. Boland. "It was very human, and business, Henry, is very human. The ethics of business is the ethics of human nature. Business doesn't try to remake humanity—it caters to it. And the more successfully you cater, Henry, the bigger the business you build."

The young man was frankly stopped; he was beginning to surrender. He felt somehow that he had been out-maneuvered rather than out-argued, but here he was with nothing on his tongue.

"You mustn't let your sympathies run away with you, Henry," smiled Mr. Boland expansively. "You've done a big job for us; you found a nice little strawberry patch. Now don't go and tell all the boys in town

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 where it is. You remember what happened to that pal of yours, don't you?"

Mr. Boland made this observation jocularly, but if Henry had had time to think of it twice, he might have suspected a double meaning; but the generous head of B. G. was hurrying him a little.

"Your salary, Henry, as President of Shell Point will be twenty thousand a year, with the usual opportunities to acquire stock. And now—that's enough of business for this morning. Especially when there's something more important to talk about—and that's rare."

Mr. Boland's voice dropped significantly and his expression softened to a kind of domestic tenderness. "That was great news you and Billie had for us yesterday," he began in fond accents, eyes aglow. "I congratulate myself, Henry; for I love you almost as if you were my own boy. God did not give me a son. I have had to acquire one." The tone of this announcement was almost hallowed; the gratification it conveyed enormous.

Henry, recalling that mood of stern insurgence in which he had entered the office a few minutes ago and how grossly he had misjudged this acquisitive but gentle, kindly man, lowered his eyes in shame to the pattern of the rug.

"The dreams of my life are being realized, Henry," the older man went on mellowingly. "To see Billie pick up a fine run-of-the-mill young American like you, instead of one of these job-lot foreigners and team up with him to develop the business that I have created, you don't know how . . . how happy . . ."

There was a sudden halt in the mellow flow, and

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 Henry looked up quickly to find his intended father-in-law overcome with grateful emotion, Henry couldn't stand it. He reached out quickly and touched one of J. B.'s hands, meaning thereby a lot—everything.

A little later the President of the Shell Point Land Company and Vice-President of Boland General, with twenty thousand a year for that combination job alone, walked out rather dizzily.

"I must ring up Billie, right away," he was thinking; but as he reached his desk remembered: "Holy smoke! I left that Stanfield report . . . well, I don't want it any more. It's his, anyway," he murmured hollowly, and began to ruminate upon the wonder he had just beheld, the wonder of sublime patience and measureless generosity.

"Meandering Moses, but he must have been surprised—keen to know where I'd got it. . . . Must have been madder than a hornet at somebody's treachery . . . but he never turned a hair. Knew perfectly well what I'd come in there for, and just calmly, patiently showed me where I was wrong, then—smothered me with kindness, with affection. Wouldn't that jar you now?"

It did jar Henry a good deal and the more he pondered it the more it jarred him; yet eventually his mind turned from it to the scanning of a pile of opened letters which Thorpe had placed upon his desk. One of these jarred him also, It was dated New York; it was on the letterhead of Barrett & Wendell, those brilliant lawyers who had been specially retained by Mr. Boland to represent the respondent in the case of Adolph Salzberg vs. The First National Bank; for Hornblower had carried it up—up to the Supreme Court of the United States. It had been a relief to

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 Henry, with all he had on hand, to have the case taken out of his hands; and it never occurred to him that the real reason might have been because of that doubt he had confessed once to Mr. Boland and once again to Thomas Scanlon. If it had, he might have been mean enough to exult: for here were Barrett & Wendell confessing the same doubt.

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EAR MR. HARRINGTON," this disturbing letter began, and ran along through a half page of preliminaries to:

And so the letter went on.

"So, they're getting scared too," murmured Henry, a little bit awed; and proceeded to empty his files and his mind of everything that could possibly be helpful to the eloquent Mr. Wendell in the circumstances.

Having done this and attended to certain other routine matters, Henry was thinking of Lahleet. She must know of his—his enlarged perception of the Shell

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 Point transaction; but he decided to postpone sending for the girl. She was impulsive and quick-tempered, suspicious where Mr. Boland was concerned. She would be difficult to reason with; she was a dear little thing and he did not want to hurt her. But just at this juncture, Lahleet's card was sent in to him again.

"The little minx," he commented. "She must have just been hanging around the corridors till she saw me come back." It was the first time in their acquaintance that he had not been spontaneously glad to see her; yet the first sight of the girl was reassuring.

"Henry!" she cried cheerily, and came bounding to him as if on moccasined feet upon her island. "Henry! You have told him? . . . You have blocked the Shell Point deal? . . . You have saved their millions of oil for them? What did he say? How did he take it?" But the stream of naively gloating interrogation was halted. The girl had read something in Harrington's face. "You . . . you didn't tell him!" she panted in dismay. "You have fallen down!" She uttered the words hollowly, unbelievingly, as hoping to be assured that her deduction was false.

"Mr. Boland showed me that the deal was all right," answered Harrington with some dignity.

"All right!". . . Lahleet breathed the speech slowly. "All right? . . ." she whispered whitely, and sank into a chair, staring at the lawyer with great bewildered eyes. "All right? . . ." she said a third time.

Henry found this white, staring iteration difficult. He wished she had flown into a tantrum, raged, sworn, denounced him, anything but this appalled manner, this stunned incredulity in which shattered faith and regret were mingled so poignantly.

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 "But, you see, the knowledge that the oil was there was his knowledge," Harrington undertook to explain patiently. "He had paid for it and it belonged to him. The Indians did not put the oil there."

"Neither did John Boland," Lahleet retorted with rising spirit.

"But his enterprise discovered that it was there."

"And like a cheap trickster in a horsetrade, he took advantage of this knowledge," accused the girl.

"As I see it now, that was legitimate business strategy," argued Henry, uncomfortably.

"Business strategy? . . . Then stealing, any kind of ordinary stealing, is legitimate business strategy," the girl scorned, gazing at him for an instant in sheer incredulity, then screamed: "You are a cheat! A damned cheat is what you are!"

Harrington's face went white. "You little spitfire!" he frowned.

For a moment the girl stood a trifle aghast at herself. "Boland has ruined you! "she accused, eycs suffusing. "You're bribed; you're bought—bribed with position—bribed with money, bribed with all this public favor. Do you know where that public favor comes from? It comes from John Boland, Your own acts did a little and he arranged the rest. It was a deliberate propaganda of popularity. It began when he discovered that you had talents which"

"Miss Marceau!" thundered Harrington. "Enough of this!" But he was discovering how difficult it is for a gentleman to dam an angry woman's mouth.

The girl backed off unconquered. "Oh, you did not surrender easily," she taunted. "You came high. Boland has had to hold out glittering baits. It took

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 everything, his dearest possessions, or the promise of them, to get you where he has you now, but at last you are there—where a cruel, contemptible fraud seems to you a laudable business enterprise. No one else could have done this but John Boland. He is a cunning corrupter of the souls of men. In your old office you told me once that you could never be retained by 'the other side.' But today you are, Henry Harrington; you are."

"That is all. Positively all!" declared the lawyer, patience tried to the limit.

Suddenly the girl was calm—with the calmness of a tornado that had blown itself out. "Yes," she assented; "that is all." Her bosom still heaved with the aftermath of her emotions, but she was manifesting an almost impertinent self-possession. "You left the Stanfield report with Mr. Boland, I suppose?" she questioned coldly.

"I returned it to its rightful owner," Harrington responded with a bite in his tone.

"I had taken the precaution to have it photographed," the girl observed dryly.

"Photographed!" Harrington had learned to be suspicious of this Indian blood when it became unexpectedly calm or unexplainably complacent. He darted a threatening glance and moved swiftly between his visitor and the door. "You . . . you wouldn't take this thing up with Washington yourself? . . . You . . . You'd best not interfere!" he breathed angrily.

The girl's manner changed like lightning, as if a carefully designed maneuver had succeeded; and she thrust out her face at him, white teeth gleaming in a smile of exultation, "No!" she cried. "I wouldn't.

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 If anybody saves those Indians, it will be you, Henry Harrington. You protect or you victimize those helpless people yourself. I commit them entirely to your conscience."

With that she left him. . . . He was angry and insulted for a minute, then felt a great wave of sympathy for the girl.

"Now isn't that too bad?" he frowned, and stroked a troubled brow. "Too darned bad! . . . And she thinks I'm bribed!" He smiled. He could forgive such an absurdity from Lahleet—could forget it even, as he pressed the button and began to dictate articles of incorporation of the Shell Point Land Company; and thereafter plunged into the appetizing menu of his daily life which, in these days, was composed of unequal parts of business and of love, love getting the shade.

From his desk went frequent ecstatic telephone calls to the glowing beauty in the big house on the hill and there was astoundingly frequent: necessity for leaving the desk and rushing up the hill to conference with Billie on all sorts of pretexts from some of her own minor legal business to certain of her major social enterprises; while, once office or court hours were over, no sort of pretty little deceit was needed.

It was just to be with her, whether strolling on the terraces, or dancing or golfing at the Country Club with Billie beating him most of the time on the links now, for he was off his game these days. Always together and alone when it could be managed—always together! Everybody saw and knew. The town talked about it and admired and approved, save some who envied.

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 And while Henry's love flourished, his business flourished also, for somehow each contact with Billie was an incentive to diligence, although he had not even yet realized that it was because he was falling into love that he reached that sudden resolve to push his practice, and in these days of rapture he was quite incapable of suspecting that it was because his love had been approved that his business prospered so amazingly. He had no conception how closely love interests and business interests were united within the Boland breasts.

Oh, yes, there was much for Henry to do now, and so many, many thrills in the doing of it. And while he was busy in Edgewater, knot by knot the red tape was being tied in Washington. From desk to desk certain documents moved forward to that day when official seals and signatures would be attached and the landed inheritance of a handful of Indians would become the property of a corporation of which Henry Harrington was president.

But in Edgewater also, some knots were being tied—knots in that procedure by which Adam John's island was to become the island of the Edgewater & Eastern Railway. Each was made fast with meticulous care and a scrupulous regard for that great document which faithfully assures that no citizen shall be deprived of his property "without due process of law." Never were the processes more strictly observed, for the promoters of the Edgewater & Eastern, like John Boland, manifested a most exemplary regard for law.

And so the court condemned, the appraiser appraised; and the seven thousand dollars most generously found to be the value of the said Hurricane Island was tendered; but, lo, the Siwash owner spurned the

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 tender—stubbornly, disrespectful of those solemnly moving processes. The island was his. Uncle Sam had given it to him. No railroad, no anybody should take it away from him. So he stolidly affirmed.

The duty of the patient court was clear. It appointed a special commissioner to sign a deed conveying Hurricane Island to the railway, and to receive the said seven thousand dollars to be held subject to the order of the said Adam John, an Indian, but also a citizen. This deed was duly executed; the money was duly paid and duly held. All that remained was for the sheriff to go out and take the island and turn it over to the Edgewater & Eastern.

But when, blithely enough, glad of a chance for a launch-run up the inlet, Sheriff James Hogan headed in toward that little cove where boats were accustomed to land upon Hurricane Island, behold, a rifle cracked and a bullet ricocheted across the officer's bow.

"The hell!" remarked Sheriff Jim. "That damn Indian is going to fight." And he turned and gazed where the bullet skipped three times upon the blue.

But the sheriff was a man who had respect for a bullet, so he turned back to Edgewater for reënforcements. Excitement was instantly rife in the little city. Law had been defied in the county of Socatullo; the due processes of its court had been scorned and an officer of that court and county murderously fired upon. Such lawlessness had not been known before; it must be dealt with.

What made the offense more heinous was that the rebel was an Indian—a half-white, half-educated Siwash upon whom the right of citizenship had been conferred but recently by a mawkishly sentimental

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 government simply because the Siwash had gone out and let himself be shot at in the World War. The wider the rumor spread, the more wrathful the citizens waxed. Mr. Boland was inexpressibly shocked at this news of insurrection in his realm.

Sheriff Hogan, turning out the arsenal of his office, was swearing loudly that he would fix that damn Siwash and while he swore, his office was stormed with citizens volunteering their services for a posse and bringing with them a great variety of armament. All of them, the sheriff accepted heartily; the more the merrier, the mightier the lesson to the Indian insurrecto.

"Better coöperate with Hogan," Mr. Boland had said to Edmunds. "Hogan is a very worthy official. The law must be upheld at all times, Edmunds; at all times." Edmunds was Boland's vice-president in charge of transportation, and as such, commodore of the Boland fleet, from largest steamship to smallest skiff; and he placed unlimited motorboats at the sheriff's disposal.

When Hogan's posse turned out for the march from the courthouse to the dock, its members held themselves with dignity. Their chests swelled; they felt like heroes going out to defend their homes and properties against an insolent and dangerous enemy.

They fell into step and this rhythmic tread of feet along the street, with the sight of a moving column of determined men, roused the onlookers to a fervor. This fervor reacted on the marching militants and stirred them to a mild hysteria of patriotism. Somebody had thought of flags and brought along an armful of yard-square ones, mounted on short staffs.

Seven motorboats were required to carry the posse, and in their patriotic ardor the men nailed a flag to

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