the Enigma

Secret Services

Very little is known about the woman addressed as Miss Knox and even less about her can be verified. In practice she is the first female Secret Service agent in history, but any additional information on her leads to the office of Secret Service Chief Wilkie - where it stays hidden.

Who is this young woman Chief Wilkie secretly employs, and why does she enjoy the confidence of such key figures in Washington? Is she one of Wilkie's "special Agents," and if so, what does her work entail? could she be using an alias? Better yet, is Miss Knox even an American citizen?

Only two people in Washington know the truth about Miss Knox, and neither of them is US Secret Service Chief Wilkie.

Not without Precedent

Although unconventional, it would not have been completely uNPRECEDENTED for a man like Chief Wilkie to hire a woman like Miss Knox for presidential security.

During the Civil War, Allan Pinkerton employed a woman named Kate Warne in the Pinkerton Detective Agency as the nation's first female detective. Mrs. Warne was an asset to the agency and personally gathered vital INTELLIGENCE on the alleged plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln in Baltimore only days before his inauguration in 1861.

Not only would Chief Wilkie have known about this Baltimore plot, but it most certainly would have been on his mind in the wake of President McKinley's assassination.

The Killer Angel

No matter who Miss Knox is or where she comes from, one element to her biography appears to be genuine. She is indeed a former student of Edith Margaret Garrud's school of jujutsu in London, and likely one of the few students Mrs. Garrud trained in ADVANCED jujutsu techniques. Such classes were open only to members of the British women's Suffrage movement as a safeguard against policemen who tried to arrest them.

Such sought-after experience in hand-to-hand combat would unquestionably make Miss Knox a valuable addition to the United States Secret Service. That is, as long as we assume Chief Wilkie possessed the FORESIGHT to subject Miss Knox to some sort of test worthy of her abilities.