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

I came.”

      Her hands fell to her side, the pleasure died out of her face—only her eyes still questioned him. Fitzgerald carefully laid his hat on a vacant chair.

      “Something has happened?” she said. “Tell me that all that madness is over—that you are yourself again!”

      “So far as regards my engagement with Messrs. Howell & Wilson,” he said, despondently, “you are right. As regards—Miss Barnes, there has been no direct misunderstanding between us, but I am afraid, for the present, that I must consider that—well, in abeyance.”

      “That is something!” she exclaimed, drawing a little breath of relief. “Sit down, Peter. Will you have something to eat? I finished dinner an hour ago, but—”

      “Thank you,” Fitzgerald interrupted, “I supped—extremely well in Streatham!”

      “In Streatham!” she repeated. “Why, how did you get there? The fog is awful.”

      “Fogs do not trouble me,” Fitzgerald answered. “I walked. I could have done it as well blindfold. I will take a whisky and soda, if I may.”

      She led him to an easy-chair.

      “I will mix it myself,” she said.

      Without being remarkably good-looking, she was certainly a pleasant and attractive-looking young woman. Her cheeks were a little pale; her hair—perfectly natural—was a wonderful deep shade of soft brown. Her eyes were long and narrow—almost Oriental in shape—and they seemed in some queer way to match the room; he could have sworn that in the firelight they flashed green. Her body and limbs, notwithstanding her extreme slightness, were graceful, perhaps, but with the grace of the tigress. She wore a green silk dressing jacket, pulled together with a belt of lizard skin, and her neck was bare. Her skirt was of some thin black material. She was obviously in deshabille, and yet there was something neat and trim about the smaller details of her toilette.

      “Go on, please, Peter,” she begged. “You are keeping me in suspense.”

      “There isn’t much to tell,” he answered. “It’s over—that’s all.”

      She drew a sharp breath through her teeth.

      “You are not going to marry that girl—that bourgeois doll in Streatham?”

      Fitzgerald sat up in his chair.

      “Look here,” he said, seriously, “don’t you call her names. If I’m not going to marry her, it isn’t my fault. She is the only girl I have ever wanted, and probably—most probably—she will be the only one I ever shall want. That’s honest, isn’t it?”

      The girl winced.

      “Yes,” she said, “it is honest!”

      “I should have married her,” the young man continued, “and I should have been happy. I had my eye on a villa—not too near her parents—and I saw my way to a little increase of salary. I should have taken to gardening, to walks in the Park, with an occasional theatre, and I should have thoroughly enjoyed a fortnight every summer at Skegness or Sutton-on-Sea. We should have saved a little money. I should have gone to church regularly, and if possible I should have filled some minor public offices. You may call this bourgeois—it was my idea of happiness.”

      “Was!” she murmured.

      “Is still,” he declared, sharply, “but I shall never attain to it. To-night I had to leave Maud—to leave the supper table of Daisy Villa—through the window!”

      She looked at him in amazement.

      “The police,” he explained. “That brute Dory was at the bottom of it.”

      “But surely,” she murmured, “you told me that you had a bona-fide situation—”

      “So I had,” he declared, “and I was a fool not to be content with it. It was my habit of taking long country walks, and their rotten auditing, which undid me! You understand that this was all before I met Maud? Since the day I spoke to her, I turned over a new leaf. I have left the night work alone, and I repaid every penny of the firm’s money which they could ever have possibly found out about. There was only that one little affair of mine down at Sudbury.”

      “Tell me what you are going to do?” she whispered.

      “I have no alternative,” he answered. “The law has kicked me out from the respectable places. The law shall pay!”

      She looked at him with glowing eyes.

      “Have you any plans?” she asked, softly.

      “I have,” he answered. “I have considered the subject from a good many points of view, and I have decided to start in business for myself as a private detective.”

      She raised her eyebrows.

      “My dear Peter!” she murmured. “Couldn’t you be a little more original?”

      “That is only what I am going to call myself,” he answered. “I may tell you that I am going to strike out on somewhat new lines.”

      “Please explain,” she begged.

      He recrossed his knees and made himself a little more comfortable.

      “The weak part of every great robbery, however successful,” he began, “is the great wastage in value which invariably results. For jewels which cost—say five thousand pounds, and to procure which the artist has to risk his life as well as his liberty, he has to consider himself lucky if he clears eight hundred. For the Hermitage rubies, for instance, where I nearly had to shoot a man dead, I realized rather less than four hundred pounds. It doesn’t pay.”

      “Go on,” she begged.

      “I am not clear,” he continued, “how far this class of business will attract me at all, but I do not propose, in any case, to enter into any transactions on my own account. I shall work for other people, and for cash down. Your experience of life, Violet, has been fairly large. Have you not sometimes come into contact with people driven into a situation from which they would willingly commit any crime to escape if they dared? It is not with them a question of money at all—it is simply a matter of ignorance. They do not know how to commit a crime. They have had no experience, and if they attempt it, they know perfectly well that they are likely to blunder. A person thoroughly experienced in the ways of criminals—a person of genius like myself—would have, without a doubt, an immense clientele, if only he dared put up his signboard. Literally, I cannot do that. Actually, I mean to do so! I shall be willing to accept contracts either to help nervous people out of an undesirable crisis; or, on the other hand, to measure my wits against the wits of Scotland Yard, and to discover the criminals whom they have failed to secure. I shall make my own bargains, and I shall be paid in cash. I shall take on nothing that I am not certain about.”

      “But your clients?” she asked, curiously. “How will you come into contact with them?”

      He smiled.

      “I am not afraid of business being slack,” he said. “The world is full of fools.”

      “You cannot live outside the law, Peter,” she objected. “You are clever, I know, but they are not all fools at Scotland Yard.”

      “You forget,” he reminded her, “that there will be a perfectly legitimate side to my profession. The other sort of case I shall only accept if I can see my way clear to make a success of it. Needless to say, I shall have to refuse the majority that are offered to me.”

      She came a little nearer to him.

      “In any case,” she said, with a little sigh, “you have given up that foolish, bourgeois life of yours?”

      He looked down into her face, and his eyes were cold.

      “Violet,” he said, “this is no time for misunderstandings. I should like you to know that apart from one young lady, who possesses my whole affection—”