He thought that under the circumstances the Duke might have very well come to him, but he was not prepared to labour the point. "We all make mistakes," said the Duke generously, "I for instance have been mistaken in you." Mr. Nape made another stern acknowledgment. "I thought your methods were unconventional; I mistrusted the new type of detective; I have been trained in the old school where the man who murders the banker is never the burglar who robs the safe, but the good bishop who calls for the missionary subscription; where the villain who steals the Crown jewels is not the impecunious soldier of fortune, but the heir apparent." Mr. Nape stood rigidly at attention and waited. It pleased him to see evidence of a great remorse upon the tanned young face before him, to observe deep shadows under his eyes, and—he had not noticed them before—a sprinkling of grey hairs at his temple. Mr. Nape drew his own conclusions. "Now," said the Duke with a self-depreciating wave of his hand, "I know that the old method is obsolete, that from the first the guilty party is the obvious—" "Obvious to all who employ the process of elimination," corrected Mr. Nape severely. "Exactly," agreed the Duke. "I now know, that if you catch a man with his hand in your pocket, you eliminate everybody whose hands do not happen to be in your pocket, and by this process arrive at the culprit." Mr. Nape looked a little dubious. "My confidence in your ability being established," the Duke went on, "I wish you to accept a commission from me." Mr. Nape regarded him with cold suspicion. "It isn’t by any chance connected with electric bells?" he asked sarcastically. "Not at all." "Or digging holes in a garden?" The Duke shot a reproachful glance at him. "As to that unfortunate incident," he said, "you have yourself to blame. But for the completeness of your disguise——" "Which you penetrated," said Roderick gloomily. "I confess," said the Duke, with pleasing frankness, "that I spotted the false whiskers—or was it a moustache? I said to Hank, ’Who on earth can it be?’ and Hank couldn’t think of anybody. ’It’s a detective,’ said Hank, ’but what detective?’ We thought of everybody till Hank—you know what a penetrating devil he is—said ’By Jove! It must be Jacko—I mean Nape!’" Mr. Nape looked important. "And the commission you wish me to accept?" he asked. "It will be necessary," said the Duke slowly, "to take you into my confidence. I am in a deuce of a mess: I have incurred the enmity of a great and powerful man, who has invoked the machinery of the law and threatened me with its instrument—in fact," he said in an outburst of candour, "brokers." Mr. Nape who had visions of something a trifle more heroic, said "Oh." "Not only this," the Duke went on, "but he has unscrupulously, pertinaciously and several other words which I cannot at the moment recall, brought to his aid the most powerful factor of all—the Press."