His position in life was just what you might expect; he was the smallest imaginable cog in an organization so huge that to all save his immediate clerical companions he was but another name on the payroll.
He earned enough to live and eat and visit a theatre once a week and support a second cousin in Oregon whom he had never seen in his life, but whose demanding letters threw him into a perfect frenzy of obligation. He dressed soberly, let subway guards shove him around without protest, and permitted himself nothing more highly intoxicant than an occasional Dr. Zipper.
Thus Peter Pettigrew. Or thus, to be more accurate, the Peter Pettigrew who slipped his brief and unobtrusive way before the public eye.
But—there was another Peter Pettigrew! An unknown and unsuspected Peter Pettigrew in whose veins raced the fire of heroes, behind whose mild and tawny eyes burned slumbering volcanoes. This was the man—the laughing, taunting, daring champion of derring-do—whom Peter dreamed himself to be. A questing knight with thews of steel and agile mind and tongue of rapier wit. This was the man whom Peter was when, in dead of night, his meagre body tossing restlessly on bunchy kapok, his untrammeled soul rode the magic highways of Dream-world in search of dark adventure. This man was Peter when, blackness engulfing a lean, tense figure straining forward in his movie seat, Peter's hungry heart followed a shaft of silver brilliance to identify itself with whatever solitary soul was worst beset by the encroaching forces of evil.
This was the strange, new Peter Pettigrew who now, a sliver of darkness in the shadow of a doorway, now smiled and hurled defiance at the hordes of foes arraigned against him.
"So!" hissed Peter mockingly. "So! You think you'd like to blow up the Armory, would you? Well, we'll see about that, you dirty, sneaky old Japs, you! Brrrp-brrrp-brrrp—" His small frame trembled with excitement as he swept the gray street with imaginary Tommy-gun fire—"there's no use crying for mercy now!" laughed Peter triumphantly. "You should have thought of that before you attacked us! Oh, it's knives now? No, you don't! Remember Pearl Harbor! Brrrrrrp—"
"Cut out that damned racket! Stop it!" The roaring voice sheared a path through Peter's concentration, dealing a sudden end to his tiny, private drama. "What the hell do you think you're doing, anyhow? Who—Oh! I might have known!"
Only gloom masked the sick mantle of Peter's crimson embarrassment. His heart within him shriveled to the size of a raisin, and leaden butterflies fluttered in his stomach.
"H-hello, Sergeant McCurdle," he ventured weakly.