CLOWNS AND CRIMINALS - Complete Series (Thriller Classics). E. Phillips Oppenheim

know me at all, do you? And I have only heard of you through the newspapers. You might think all sorts of things about my coming here to make enquiries about a gentleman.”

      “I can assure you,” Peter Ruff said, sincerely, “that you need have no fears—no fears at all. Just speak to me quite frankly. Mr. Fitzgerald was a friend of yours, was he not?”

      Maud simpered.

      “He was more than that,” she answered, looking down. “We were engaged to be married.”

      Peter Ruff sighed.

      “I knew all about it,” he declared. “Fitzgerald used to tell me everything.”

      “You were his friend?” she asked, looking him in the face.

      “I was,” Peter Ruff answered fervently, “his best friend! No one was more grieved than I about that—little mistake.”

      She sighed.

      “In some ways,” she remarked softly, “you remind me of him.”

      “You could scarcely say anything,” Peter Ruff murmured “which would give me more pleasure. I am flattered.”

      She shook her head.

      “It isn’t flattery,” she said, “it’s the truth. You may be a few years older, and Spencer had a very nice moustache, which you haven’t, but you are really not unlike. Mr. Ruff, do tell me where he is!”

      Peter Ruff coughed.

      “You must remember,” he said, “that Mr. Fitzgerald’s absence was caused by events of a somewhat unfortunate character.”

      “I know all about it,” she answered, with a little sigh.

      “You can appreciate the fact, therefore,” Peter Ruff continued, “that as his friend and well-wisher I can scarcely disclose his whereabouts without his permission. Will you tell me exactly why you want to meet him again?”

      She blushed—looked down and up again—betrayed, in fact, all the signs of confusion which might have been expected from her.

      “Must I tell you that?” she asked.

      “You are married, are you not?” Peter Ruff asked, looking down at her wedding ring.

      She bit her lip with vexation. What a fool she had been not to take it off!

      “Yes! Well, no—that is to say—”

      “Never mind,” Peter Ruff interrupted. “Please don’t think that I want to cross-examine you. I only asked these questions because I have a sincere regard for Fitzgerald. I know how fond he was of you, and I cannot see what there is to be gained, from his point of view, by reopening old wounds.”

      “I suppose, then,” she remarked, looking at him in such a manner that Miss Brown had to cover her mouth with her hands to prevent her screaming out—“I suppose you are one of those who think it a crime for a woman who is married even to want to see, for a few moments, an old sweetheart?”

      “On the contrary,” Peter Ruff answered, “as a bachelor, I have no convictions of any sort upon the subject.”

      She sighed.

      “I am glad of that,” she said.

      “I am to understand, then,” Peter Ruff remarked, “that your reason for wishing to meet Mr. Fitzgerald again is purely a sentimental one?”

      “I am afraid it is,” she murmured; “I have thought of him so often lately. He was such a dear!” she declared, with enthusiasm.

      “I have never been sufficiently thankful,” she continued, “that he got away that night. At the time, I was very angry, but often since then I have wished that I could have passed out with him into the fog and been lost—but I mustn’t talk like this! Please don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Ruff. I am happily married—quite happily married!”

      Peter Ruff sighed.

      “My friend Fitzgerald,” he remarked, “will be glad to hear that.”

      Maud fidgeted. It was not quite the effect she had intended to produce!

      “Of course,” she remarked, looking away with a pensive air, “one has regrets.”

      “Regrets!” Peter Ruff murmured.

      “Mr. Dory is not well off,” she continued, “and I am afraid that I am very fond of life and going about, and everything is so expensive nowadays. Then I don’t like his profession. I think it is hateful to be always trying to catch people and put them in prison—don’t you, Mr. Ruff?”

      Peter Ruff smiled.

      “Naturally,” he answered. “Your husband and I work from the opposite poles of life. He is always seeking to make criminals of the people whom I am always trying to prove worthy members of society.”

      “How noble!” Maud exclaimed, clasping her hands and looking up at him. “So much more remunerative, too, I should think,” she added, after a moment’s pause.

      “Naturally,” Peter Ruff admitted. “A private individual will pay more to escape from the clutches of the law than the law will to secure its victims. Scotland Yard expects them to come into its arms automatically—regards them as a perquisite of its existence.”

      “I wish my husband were in your profession, Mr. Ruff,” Maud said, with a sidelong glance of her blue eyes which she had always found so effective upon her various admirers. “I am sure that I should be a great deal fonder of him.”

      Peter Ruff leaned forward in his chair. He, too, had expressive eyes at times.

      “Madam,” he said—and stopped. But Maud blushed, all the same.

      She looked down into her lap.

      “We are forgetting Mr. Fitzgerald,” she murmured.

      Peter Ruff glanced up at the clock.

      “It is a long story,” he said. “Are you in a hurry, Mrs. Dory?

      “Not at all,” she assured him, “unless you want to close you office, or anything. It must be nearly one o’clock.”

      “I wonder,” he asked, “if you would do me the honour of lunching with me? We might go to the Prince’s or the Carlton—whichever you prefer. I will promise to talk about Mr. Fitzgerald all the time.”

      “Oh, I couldn’t!” Maud declared, with a little gasp. “At least—well, I’m sure I don’t know!”

      “You have no engagement for luncheon?” Peter Ruff asked quietly.

      “Oh, no!” she answered; “but, you see, we live so quietly. I have never been to one of those places. I’d love to go—but if we were seen! Wouldn’t people talk?”

      Peter Ruff smiled. Just the same dear, modest little thing!

      “I can assure you,” he said, “that nothing whatever could be said against our lunching together. People are not so strict nowadays, you know, and a married lady has always a great deal of latitude.”

      She looked up at him with a dazzling smile.

      “I’d simply love to go to Prince’s!” she declared.

      “Cat!” Miss Brown murmured, as Peter Ruff and his client left the room together.

      Peter Ruff returned from his luncheon in no very jubilant state of mind. For some time he sat in his easy-chair, with his legs crossed and his finger tips pressed close together, looking steadily into space. Contrary to his usual custom, he did not smoke. Miss Brown watched him from behind her machine.

      “Disenchanted?” she asked calmly.

      Peter Ruff did not reply