Confronted, for example, with some Daltonian dilemma, Rodriguez could instantly see what should be done. He would perhaps ask Swoboda to prepare such-and-such a draft memorandum to that effect. Swoboda would do so but, by the time the draft had reached the In-tray, a dozen fanciful doubts had been raised in Rodriguez’s mind and a dozen specters of possible misfire sat about Rodriguez at his desk. The strength of the doubts appeared to be in direct ratio to the significance of the issue and the clarity of the proposed solution. “Thinking it over, Swoboda,” Rodriguez would say, “I feel we should add…” Swoboda began to dread these final paragraphs, these postscripts or parenthetical observations that so often merely served to draw attention to potential errors that would never otherwise have been committed. “Perhaps it should be pointed out” or “I need hardly warn the members of the committee” or, worst of all, “In order to avoid confusion” frequently preceded a knockout blow to the argument so lucidly adduced in the body of the letter.

Caution, concluded Swoboda, is a very dangerous thing.

There were, in addition, issues that Rodriguez would perpetually and ignominiously evade rather than oppose—a multiplicity of useless regulations, an inundation of documents whose pages were more commonly committed to the wastepaper basket than to memory, the infringements of troublesome subordinates, the harassments of Miss Sadie Graine. (It would not have been accurate to say that Mr. Rodriguez-O’Hearn was afraid of Miss Sadie Graine, but it would have been so nearly accurate that it did not quite bear thinking about.)

Rodriguez had a peculiarity, too, of gratifying—almost of acting out—another’s misunderstanding of him. With those who thought him unyielding, he would be at his most taciturn; with those who thought him irresolute, at his most discursive. Swoboda saw these things and, feeling he understood the matter, regretted them. Yet it cannot be said that they lowered Rodriguez-O’Hearn in Swoboda’s regard. They were authentic human aberrations, and Swoboda’s tolerance of them only increased the friendship which, for all its restraint, gradually grew up between him and his new chief.