«Oh, they do,» agreed the detective, «but one learns to discount that almost automatically, you know. When I was at college, I was all on the other side — Conybeare and Robertson and Drews and those people, you know, till I found they were all so busy looking for a burglar whom nobody had ever seen, that they couldn't recognize the footprints of the household, so to speak. Then I spent two years learning to be cautious.»
«Hum,» said Lord Peter, «theology must be good exercise for the brain then, for you're easily the most cautious devil I know. But I say, do go on reading — it's a shame for me to come and root you up in your off-time like this.»
«It's all right, old man,» said Parker.
The two men sat silent for a little, and then Lord Peter said:
«D'you like your job?»
The detective considered the question, and replied:
«Yes — yes, I do. I know it to be useful, and I am fitted to it. I do it quite well — not with inspiration, perhaps, but sufficiently well to take a pride in it. It is full of variety and it forces one to keep up to the mark and not get slack. And there's a future to it. Yes, I like it. Why?»
«Oh, nothing,» said Peter. «It's a hobby to me, you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it — up to a point. If it was all on paper I'd enjoy every bit of it. I love the beginning of a job — when one doesn't know any of the people and it's just exciting and amusing. But if it comes to really running down a live person and getting him hanged, or even quodded, poor devil, there don't seem as if there was any excuse for me buttin' in, since I don't have to make my livin' by it. And I feel as if I oughtn't ever to find it amusin'. But I do.»
Parker gave this speech his careful attention.
«I see what you mean,» he said.