Graves walked over to the door, opened it, and closed it again behind him after entering the inner office. In both speech and action he appeared to be a very direct gentleman with a pronounced disinclination to waste either time or words.
“General O’Malley?”
“Yes. I’m glad to know you, Mr. Graves.”
As the two men shook hands there was a pause lasting several seconds. Eye to eye, they adjudged each other as strong men will when each knows that the other is worthy of his steel.
Graves knew that before him was perhaps the most brilliant and audacious of the younger officers of the army—the great chief of a hazardous service which even then was preparing to prove that its fledgeling wings would carry it far beyond where anyone save its officers believed it could go. As for the general, he had in his desk a letter from the Secretary of War—a brief note which stated succinctly that Mr. Graves would be treated with the utmost consideration, be cooperated with to the fullest extent, and that he carried with him authority the nature of which he personally would divulge.
O’Malley watched his visitor closely as he turned to find a chair. There was a change in his appearance when seen in profile which was almost startling. Full-face, his countenance was broad and strong, with the high forehead of a student and the slightly tightened lips of a firmly molded character. In profile Graves looked like a hawk—one saw that his nose jutted aggressively from his face, and that both forehead and chin subtly strengthened the impression. Even his body seemed thinner and taller.
Graves deliberately flipped the ash from his cigar and then reset the weed in his wide, slightly drooping mouth. His brilliant eyes rested on the general’s face.
“General, I have here some papers for your inspection, in order that you may become somewhat acquainted with my mission. Needless to say, not a soul aside from ourselves and persons whom I may find it necessary to tell must know even a detail of the matter.”
Very few men would have spoken as tersely and directly to O’Malley. The general, however, merely nodded.
“I surmised as much,” he said quietly.