sh 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--"

"All of it?" she pleaded.

"All!" he declared emphatically. "She will doubtless be faithless to
me--under the circumstances, I cannot blame her--but so far as I am
concerned, I have no affection whatever for any one else."

She crept back to her place.

"I could be so useful to you," she murmured.

"You could and you shall, if you will be sensible," he answered.

"Tell me how?" she begged.

He was silent for a moment.

"Are you acting now?" he asked.

"I am understud