In truth, the country elsewhere swarmed with Billy's
lawful prey, and only Little Arcady seemed good.
Billy also gloated over the portraits of well-known deputy sheriffs and
other officers of the law printed in the same charming police paper. It
seemed not too much to hope that his own likeness might one day grace
that radiant page--himself in a long, fashionable overcoat, carelessly
flung back to reveal the badge, with its never closing eye, and
underneath, "William P. Durgin, the Dashing Young Detective, whose
Coolness, Skill, and Daring have made his Name a Terror to Evil-Doers."
Famished for adventure, thirsting for danger, yearning for the perilous
midnight encounter, avid of secrecy and disguises, Billy had been forced
to toil prosaically, barrenly, unprofitably, about the sinless corridors
of the City Hotel. All he had been able to do thus far was to regard
every newcomer to the town with a steely eye of distrust; to watch each
one furtively, to shadow him in his walks, and to believe during his
sojourn that he might be "Red Mike, alias James K. Brown, wanted for
safe-breaking at Muskegon, Michigan; reward, $1000," or some like
desperado.
As such did he view them all--from the ornately garbed young man who
came among us purveying windmills to the portly, broadclothed,
gray-whiskered and forbiddingly respectable colporteur of the American
Bible Society.
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