It was two o'clock in the morning of September 5, 1939. For a year and a half I had been at work on the San Francisco Times. I had come there immediately after finishing my year's course at the army officers' flying school at San Antonio, on the chance that my work would lead me into enough tong wars and exciting murder mysteries to make life interesting.
The morning edition had just been "put to bed" and I was starting out of the office when the night editor called me to meet a visitor who had just come in. The stranger came forward quickly. Roughly clad in blue shirt and overalls, boots, and Stetson, he had the bronze skin, clear eyes, and smooth movements of one who has spent his life out-of-doors.
He stopped before me and held out his hand with a pleasant smile. I saw that his hair was gray; he was a little older than I had thought at first—fifty, perhaps. I liked the fellow instinctively.
"Robert Barrett?" he questioned in a pleasant drawl. I nodded.
"I'm Bill Johnson," he said briefly. "I want to see you. Secret Service business. Sabe?" He let me glimpse a badge, and we walked out into the night. As we started down the silent street it occurred to me that I had heard of this man before.
"Are you the William Johnson who unearthed the radio station of the revolutionaries in Mexico in 1917?"
"I guess so. I've been in Mexico thirty years, and I've helped Uncle Sam out a time or two. It's a case like that one, or worse, that I'm up here to see about now. I need a partner. I've been told about you. Are you game for a little adventure?"
"You've found your man."
"They call you 'Tiger Bob Barrett,' don't they?" he said irrelevantly.
"I used to play football."