"Of course I do. He wore a quaint stand-up collar with two points sticking into his neck. It was he who warned Claude about the raid."
"Oh, did he? Well, when I was on my way up the stairs here at noon, he suddenly appeared, like a ghost stepping out of the stone wall. It gave me quite a start. I asked him where he was bound for. 'Nowhere in particular,' was his answer."
Robert had got to talking with the mysterious one, who confessed that he had just rented a flat in the model tenements. On Robert's alluding to the severance of his connection with the Evening Chronicle, his new acquaintance had asked permission to apply for the vacant place. He claimed to have an ear for news and remarked casually that information was always drifting his way.
"As if I had any permission to give!" continued Robert. "I warned him what he'd be up against in the person of Hutchins Burley, and bade him Godspeed."
"He's either a detective or the Prince of Zenda in disguise," said Janet. "Which do you think, Robert?"
"From the speed and completeness with which he obliterates himself, I should favor the detective theory. On the other hand, there's his get-up! That melancholy, drooping mustache, that semi-clerical collar, and that comical tip-tilted chin! The fellow's simply unforgettable. He must be a prince incognito."
"Yes, we'll have him a prince!" exclaimed Janet, who, at twenty-four, had a normal craving for romantic illusion. "But I should like him in any part."
"A prince! Nonsense, children!" interjected Cornelia, in her most languid cadences. "He's probably a burglar."
"A burglar!"
"Certainly not a detective. Detectives don't obliterate themselves. They don't know how to. And they never look like princes in disguise. They're not clever enough. All the detectives I ever saw looked like butchers on a strike. The only man, rich, skillful and bold enough to take his fellow man at a right royal disadvantage is a first-class burglar. A Raffles, for instance, might be a prince 'incognito.'"