Lady Mary grasped both his hands.
“And Scotland Yard,” she exclaimed, with a withering glance at Dory, “have done their best to hang my brother!”
Peter Ruff raised his eyebrows.
“Dear Lady Mary,” he said, “remember that it is the business of Scotland Yard to find a man guilty. It is mine, when I am employed for that purpose, to find him innocent. You must not be too hard upon my friend Mr. Dory. He and I seem to come up against each other a little too often, as it is.”
“A little too often!” John Dory repeated, softly. “But one cannot tell. Don’t believe, Lady Mary,” he added, “that we ever want to kill an innocent man.”
“It is your profession, though,” she answered, “to find criminals—and his,” she added, touching Peter Ruff on the shoulder, “to look for the truth.”
Peter Ruff bowed low—the compliment pleased him.
CHAPTER V. DELILAH FROM STREATHAM
It was a favourite theory with Peter Ruff that the morning papers received very insufficient consideration from the majority of the British public. A glance at the headlines and a few of the spiciest paragraphs, a vague look at the leading article, and the sheets were thrown away to make room for more interesting literature. It was not so with Peter Ruff. Novels he very seldom read—he did not, in fact, appreciate the necessity for their existence. The whole epitome of modern life was, he argued, to be found among the columns of the daily press. The police news, perhaps, was his favourite study, but he did not neglect the advertisements. It followed, therefore, as a matter of course, that the appeal of “M” in the personal column of the Daily Mail was read by him on the morning of its appearance—read not once only nor twice—it was a paragraph which had its own peculiar interest for him.