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Sunday school and went to a meeting of a group called Christian Endeavour. ‘Read a little of the Gospel of Judas Iscariot ,’ he noted one day. ‘(Great Book).’
    The Judas Gospel , as one might expect, is a fictional account written from the viewpoint of Christ’s betrayer. The Judas concept lodged forever in Edgar’s mind; years later he would even have FBI researchers check the biblical details for him. The possibility that he himself might be betrayed – by real or imaginary traitors – would become an obsession.
    Edgar’s childhood dossier on Edgar suggests that he did occasionally have fun like other little boys. He celebrated Groundhog Day, dyed eggs at Easter time and – aged fourteen – ‘gave out Valentines.’ ‘Fooled lots of people,’ he noted with glee on April Fools’ Day. He would also claim, years later and less reliably, that when he played cops and robbers he ‘always wanted to be a robber.’
    Edgar was fascinated by the new phenomenon of manned flight, and built model airplanes with a friend. In 1909, when he was fourteen, he saw Orville Wright make a flight from downtown Washington to Alexandria and back, demonstrating that sustained air travel was possible. In his journal that day, Edgar proudly noted that he had been ‘the first outsider to shake Orville’s hand.’
    In the fall of 1909, Edgar started at a new school – walking three miles there in the morning, three miles home at night. These were his first real steps toward fame and power. For Edgar did not go to Eastern High, the school his brother and sister had attended. ‘His mother,’ said his niece Dorothy, ‘didn’t consider Eastern good enough for him. So he went to Central.’
    Central High School was the breeding ground for a Washington elite, a springboard to success. Its advantages have been compared to those of a top British public school, minus the hideous requirements of class and wealth that formthe basis of the English system. Like smart British schools, Central placed great emphasis on sport. While Edgar was a pupil, the school team – which included a future general, a future veterans’ leader and a future president of the Washington Board of Trade – amazed everyone by thrashing the University of Maryland at football, 14–0. Edgar, however, was no sportsman.
    â€˜I always wanted to be an athlete,’ he would recall ruefully, ‘but I only weighed 125 lbs in my first year at High School.’ As if to prove that he was plucky for all that, Edgar claimed that a sports injury was responsible for his famous ‘bulldog’ profile. A fly ball, he said, had smashed his nose during a school baseball game. According to Edgar’s niece Margaret Fennell, however, his squashed-looking nose was the legacy of a boil that healed badly.
    Edgar held men with fine physiques in awe. At school it was Lawrence ‘Biff’ Jones, who went on to become a famous football coach at West Point. Biff, the grown Edgar would admit, was the boy on whom he lavished his ‘hero-worship.’ ‘We buddied around together all the time, and it always drew a laugh from our friends to see the big powerful Biff accompanied by a youngster half his size.’
    Edgar threw himself full tilt into the other Central High activity that mirrored the English public school: the Cadet Corps. Central regularly sent graduates to West Point, including – in Edgar’s generation – Jones and several future generals.
    Edgar’s school nickname, one which stuck for years, was ‘Speed.’ A Hoover-approved biography suggested, improbably, that this referred to his dexterity with a football. Elsewhere Edgar would claim it went back to his childhood, when he earned pocket money carrying packages for customers at the local store. He was dubbed Speed, he said, because he ran so fast with the packages.
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