The veteran man of letters was an old acquaintance of Lady Maud's; and as she made no secret of her friendship with Rufus Van Torp, it was not surprising that Griggs should warn her of the latter's danger. As he had expected when he left New York, he had received a visit from a 'high-class' detective, who came to find out what he knew about Miss Bamberger's death. This is a bad world, as we all know, and it is made so by a good many varieties of bad people. As Mr. Van Torp had said to Logotheti, 'different kinds of cats have different kinds of ways,' and the various classes of criminals are pursued by various classes of detectives. Many are ex-policemen, and make up the pack that hunts the well-dressed lady shop-lifter, the gentle pickpocket, the agile burglar, the Paris Apache, and the common murderer of the Bill Sykes type; they are good dogs in their way, if you do not press them, though they are rather apt to give tongue. But when they are not ex-policemen, they are always ex-something else, since there is no college for detectives, and it is not probable that any young man ever deliberately began life with the intention of becoming one. Edgar Poe invented the amateur detective, and modern writers have developed him till he is a familiar and always striking figure in fiction and on the stage. Whether he really exists or not does not matter. I have heard a great living painter ask the question: What has art to do with truth? But as a matter of fact Paul Griggs, who had seen a vast deal, had never met an amateur detective; and my own impression is that if one existed he would instantly turn himself into a professional because it would be so very profitable.
The one who called on Griggs in his lodgings wrote 'barrister-at-law' after his name, and had the right to do so. He had languished in chambers, briefless and half starving, either because he had no talent for the bar, or because he had failed to marry a solicitor's daughter. He himself was inclined to attribute his want of success to the latter cause. But he had not wasted his time, though he was more than metaphorically threadbare, and his waist would have made a sensation at a staymaker's. He had watched and pondered on many curious cases for years; and one day, when a 'high-class' criminal had baffled the police and had well-nigh confounded the Attorney-General and proved himself a saint, the starving barrister had gone quietly to work in his own way, had discovered the truth, had taken his information to the prosecution, had been the means of sending the high-class one to penal servitude, and had covered himself with glory; since when he had grown sleek and well-liking, if not rich, as a professional detective.