brought
home dead, for he had been detained by an important meeting at which
he presided, and knowing that she was dining out to go to the theatre
he had telephoned that he would dine at his club. He himself had tried
to telephone to Van Torp later in the evening but had not been able to
find him, and had not seen him till Friday.

This was the substance of the evidence which Bamberger's lawyer and
the detective would lay before the District Attorney-General on
receiving the cable.

CHAPTER XV

When Lady Maud stopped at Margaret's house on her way to the theatre
she had been dining at Princes' with a small party of people, amongst
whom Paul Griggs had found himself, and as there was no formality to
hinder her from choosing her own place she had sat down next to him.
The table was large and round, the sixty or seventy other diners in
the room made a certain amount of noise, so that it was easy to talk
in undertones while the conversation of the others was general.

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