“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.”