"is the great wastage in value which invariably results. For jewels
which cost - say five thousand pounds, and to procure which the
artist has to risk his life as well as his liberty, he has to
consider himself lucky if he clears eight hundred. For the Hermitage
rubies, for instance, where I nearly had to shoot a man dead, I
realized rather less than four hundred pounds. It doesn't pay."

"Go on," she begged.

"I am not clear," he continued, "how far this class of business will
attract me at all, but I do not propose, in any case, to enter into
any transactions on my own account. I shall work for other people,
and for cash down. Your experience of life, Violet, has been fairly
large. Have you not sometimes come into contact with people driven
into a situation from which they would willingly commit any crime to
escape if they dared? It is not with them a question of money at
all - it is simply a matter of ignorance. They do not know how to
commit a crime. They have had no experience, and if they attempt it,
they know perfectly well that they are likely to blunder. A person
thoroughly experienced in the ways of criminals - a person of genius
like myself - would have, without a doubt, an immense clientele, if
only he dared put up his signboard. Literally, I cannot do that.
Actually, I mean to do so! I shall be willing to accept contracts
either to help nervous people out of an undesirable crisis; or, on
the other hand, to measure my wits against the wits of Scotland Yard,
and to discover the criminals whom they have failed to secure. I
shall make my own bargains, and I shall be paid in cash. I shall
take on nothing that I am not certain about."

"But your clients?" she asked, curiously. "How will you come into