"Do you mean to say," she asked, deliberately, "that this man I set you in search of is really the celebrated criminal called Gentleman George?"
"I do,—I've said it, and I say it again. Your married man with the German wife that boarded in Persia Street, Boston, in a respectable boarding-house, is the high-roller Gentleman George."
This man was honest, Chelda knew that, for, true to her instinct to trust no one, she had taken pains to ascertain his character before she entrusted her case to him. H. Robinson was not a genius, but a man discharged from a regular police detective force on account of insubordination and inability to work under orders. Singly, he did pretty good service and could be trusted. But for the latter assurance she would never have gone to him.
While she studied his face, he composedly studied hers. He was hurt, but not made angry by her disdain. H. Robinson was first of all a man of business; he did not allow private likes and dislikes to stand in the way of professional advancement.
"If you've a mind to carry the affair through," he said, with some sympathy in the depths of his pair of matched gooseberries, "you'll get used to it. You ought to see some women in court for the first time, and then see 'em for the last."
"You know that I will not carry it through," she said, with arrogance.
He could not conceal his satisfaction. For a few seconds he silently expanded and contracted his rounded chest, then he burst out with a relieved, "I expected you'd back out. It ain't an affair a lady ought to glory in."
"I began the thing from curiosity," she went on. "I am going to wash my hands of it now."
He choked back his delight, and energetically repressed the words of thankfulness gurgling in his throat. In imagination he saw himself hurling his grand discovery at an aggregation of detective forces, and thereby triumphing gloriously over his former unappreciative associates.
Chelda was becoming increasingly anxious to get rid of him. "I requested you at the beginning to keep our correspondence strictly private," she said, hastily. "Have you done so?"