“Oh, let it drop,” answered Bronston, as though the topic were of no consequence.
“No,” pressed Keller, “I won’t let it drop. I’d like to know what you meant. I don’t care much for that sort of talk.”
Bronston had his shaving kit open and was soaping his cheeks in front of a small mirror at a stationary washstand in the corner of the room. He turned with the lather brush in his hand.
“If you insist then,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I meant. If the facts about our relationship should get out—if the truth should leak out in any way—I’m inclined to think there might be some sympathy for me aboard this ship. People are apt to have a sympathy for [423] any man who’s in trouble through no real fault of his own, especially as there are apt to be people on this boat—Americans—who’ve heard some of the inside history of this trouble I’m in. They might believe me when I told them that I was an innocent party to the transaction, especially as there is no way, as things stand now, of my proving my innocence. But you’re a private detective, and at the risk of wounding your feelings I’m going to repeat something which you probably realise already, and that is that people at large don’t particularly fancy a person of your calling in life. No, nor the calling either. I presume you remember, don’t you, what the biggest detective in America said not so very long ago in a signed article? He said most of the private detective agencies were recruited from among ex-convicts—said a big percentage of the private detectives in the United States were jailbirds and evidence-fixers and blackmailers and hired thugs!”
“I don’t care what Burns or anybody else said.” Keller’s voice betokened indignation. “I may not have had as much education as some other people, but I’ve made my own way in the world and I’m no crook, nor no old lag neither. There’s nobody got anything on me. Besides, unless somebody tells ’em, how’re they going to know what line of business I’m in, any more than they’ll
know, just from looking at you, that you’re on your way back to London to stand trial for a felony?”
[424]
“My friend,” said Bronston gently, “everything about you spells private detective. You’ve got it written all over you in letters a foot high.”
“What now, for instance, gives me away?” There was incredulity in the question, but also there was a tinge of doubtfulness too.
“Everything about you, or nearly everything, gives you away—your clothes, your shoes, your moustache. But particularly it’s your shoes and your moustache. I wonder why all detectives wear those broad-toed, heavy-soled shoes?” he added, half to himself.
“What’s wrong with my moustache?” asked Keller, craning to contemplate himself over Bronston’s shoulder in the mirror. “Seems to me you used to wear a moustache yourself. The description that was sent to our people said you wore one, and your not wearing it made it all the harder for me to trail you when I was put on the case.”