There was also the adventuress in a low (very low) red evening dress, smoking cigarettes upon a gilded settee. The plot was rather involved. There was a young man in a tweed suit, who kept appearing and calling to heaven to support his claim to the villain's place and wealth, which the villain himself dismissed with a most villainesque snarl. There was also a simple maiden in sky-blue muslin, with golden (very golden) hair, who was generally clinging to the young man or sobbing on his shoulder while he appealed to heaven to make him worthy of her.
But the Great Detective was the real hero of the play. He appeared (always in a dressing-gown) in his room smoking a pipe and working up clues, with his hand upon the collar of his amiable bloodhound, who tried to assure the audience by little deprecating wags of his tail that he wouldn't hurt a fly.
The last scene was the great excitement. The villain, still in evening dress, with his background of palms and pillars, was packing to go away. The Great Detective arrived, tore open his suit-case, and there were his handkerchiefs, adorned round the edges with red triangles—irrefutable proofs—policemen with handcuffs sprang from behind the palms—the young man, still wearing the young woman round his neck, appeared from nowhere and thanked heaven for bringing the guilty to justice—the bloodhound, in a sudden spasm of emotion, licked the villain's hand as he was led out, and all was over, leaving only the young man and young woman wringing the hand of the Great Detective, who was still wearing his dressing-gown and smoking his pipe.
William walked out of the hall in a dream. It all seemed so wonderful and yet so simple. Probably half the people one saw about were criminals and murderers, if only one knew.
You just found a clue and worked it up. It would be fine to be a detective. Of course, one needed a dressing-gown and a bloodhound, but he had a dressing-gown, and though Jumble wasn't exactly a bloodhound, he was a bloodhound as much as he was any kind of a dog. Jumble was all sorts of dog. That was what was so convenient about him.
Before William had retired to bed that night he had firmly made up his mind to lose no time in bringing some great criminal to justice with the aid of Jumble and his dressing-gown.
******
"There have been," said Mrs. Brown, William's mother, at breakfast the next morning, "a lot of burglaries around here lately."
William stiffened. A little later he went out, calling Jumble. He walked down the road, scowling at the houses as he went. In one of those larger houses the criminal must live, somewhere where there were palm-trees and a butler. Of course, a murderer was more exciting, but a burglar would do to begin on.
