The millionaire had been at the house on Riverside
Drive early in the afternoon to see Miss Bamberger,
as he had told Margaret on board the steamer, but
Bamberger had not seen his daughter after that till
she was 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.
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 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.
