“Are you really a chief constable?” she asked. “Somehow you aren't like the idea I had of chief constables.”
“I'm on holiday at present,” Sir Clinton answered lightly; “perhaps that makes a difference. But I'm sorry to fall below your ideal—especially in my own district. If you could tell me what you miss, perhaps I could get it. What's wanted? Constabulary boots, or beetle-brows, or a note-book ready to hand, or a magnifying glass, or anything of that sort?”
“Not quite. But I thought you'd look more like an official somehow.”
“Well, in a way that's a compliment. I've spent a fair part of my existence trying hard not to look like an official. I wasn't born a chief constable, you know. I was once a mere detective sort of person at the other end of the world.”
“Were you really? But, then, you don't look like my idea of a detective, either!”
Sir Clinton laughed.
“I'm afraid you're hard to please, Mrs. Fleetwood. Mr. Wendover's just as bad. He's a faithful reader of the classics, and he simply can't imagine anyone going in for detective work without a steely eye and a magnifying glass. It jars on his finer feelings merely to think of a detective without either of them. The only thing that saves me is that I'm not a detective nowadays; and he salves his conscience by refusing to believe that I ever was one.”
Wendover took up the challenge.
“I've only seen you at work once in the detective line,” he confessed, “and I must admit I thought your methods were simply deplorable, Clinton.”
“Quite right,” Sir Clinton admitted: “I disappointed you badly in that Maze affair, I know. Even the success in the end hardly justified the means employed in reaching it. Let's draw a veil, eh?”