Captain Beatty is Montag's boss at the fire station. He is aware that Montag has books hidden in his house before Montag even knows he's going to turn against his society by reading them. The evidence is in the fact that at the beginning of the book, Montag senses that the Mechanical Hound is slightly irritated whenever Montag is around. He asks Beatty about it and his response is that the hound is just a robot. Montag counters with the following:
"Its calculators can be set to any combination, so many amino acids, so much sulphur, so much butterfat and alkaline. Right?" (26).
Montag is trying to see if Beatty will tell him that he programmed the hound to his genetic makeup for some reason. Beatty asks if he is feeling guilty about something, but Montag ends the discussion there.
When Montag starts down the slippery slope of investigating books, Beatty sends the Mechanical Hound around to his house twice as a warning; but, Montag doesn't get the message at the time because he's too engrossed with books. Later, Beatty even admits that he sent the hound around when Montag didn't show up to work:
"Well. . . now you did it. Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he's burnt his damn wings, he wonders why. Didn't I hint enough when I sent the Hound around your place?" (113).
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