“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?”