born to the purple.

On leaving college, despite an ample patrimony, he had curiously
enough entered the lists as a newspaper man. From the sporting
page he was graduated to police news, then the city desk, at last
closing his career as the genius who invented the weekly Sunday
thriller, in many colors of illustration and vivacious Gallic
style which interpreted into heart throbs and goose-flesh the
real life romances and tragedies of the preceding six days! He
had conquered the paper-and-ink world--then deep within there
stirred the call for participation in the game itself.

So, dropping quietly into the apparently indolent routine of club
existence, he had devoted his experience and genius to analytical
criminology--a line of endeavor known only to five men in the
world.

He maintained no offices. He wore no glittering badges: a police
card, a fire badge, and a revolver license, renewed year after
year, were the only instruments of his trade ever in evidence.
Shirley took assignments only from the heads of certain agencies,
by personal arrangement as informal as this from Captain Cronin.
His real clients never knew of his participation, and his prey
never understood that he had been the real head-hunter!

His fees--Montague Shirley, as a master craftsman deemed his
artistry worthy of the hire. His every case meant a modest
fortune to the detective agency and Shirley's bills were never
rendered, but always paid!