Fitz. Hunting down a thief? Oh, yes. To enable me to assist you in blighting the character of the best and loveliest woman that ever shed a light upon a private detective’s thorny path, I am to have the free run of your house and papers; I am to accompany you wherever you go, and you are to introduce me everywhere as your solicitor.
Mr. S. Sir, you are not in the least like a solicitor. You are a ridiculously dressed person. You are like nothing in the world but what you are—a private detective. I desire to press hardly on no fellow-creature, but you are a spy! that base and utterably abject thing—a spy!
Fitz. Mr. Smailey, when you complain that you find my society irksome, you have my profoundest sympathy; I find it so myself. When you revile my profession, my sentiments are entirely in accord, for I have the very poorest opinion of it. But when you imply that I don’t look the character I undertake to represent, why then, sir, you touch the private detective on the most sensitive part of his moral anatomy. I’m not a blameless character, but if I undertook to personate the Archbishop of Canterbury I believe I should look the part, and my conversation would be found to be in keeping with the character.
Mr. S. Pray, silence; oh, pray, pray, silence. You shock me inexpressibly. It is most painful to me to have to resort to your assistance. My son, my dear son, has engaged himself to marry Mrs. Van Brugh’s daughter. I have lately had reason to believe that there is something discreditable in Mrs. Van Brugh’s marriage relations, though I do not know its precise nature. You tell me that you have a certain clew to this flaw, though you decline to tell me what it is until your proofs are matured. Well, sir, the Smaileys are a very old and very famous family. Caius Smaileius came over with Julius Cæsar; his descendants have borne an untarnished scutcheon for eighteen hundred years. In its interest I am bound to employ you, and upon your own most exacting terms, though I can not think of your contemptible calling without a feeling of the most profound abhorrence.
Fitz. Sir, I am heartily ashamed of it.
Mr. S. You are a professional impostor; a hired lie.
Fitz. It is too true. I not only lie myself, but I am the cause of lying in others.
Mr. S. For the lies that have to be told in accounting for you I hold you entirely responsible. I wish that to be understood. I wash my hands of them altogether, and, when I think of the deep, deliberate, and utterly indefensible falsehoods that I have had to utter on your behalf, I tremble for your future—I tremble for your future.
Fitz. Unselfish man.
Mr. S. As for the preposterous terms you have dictated——