There's a divinity that shapes our ends. Consider the case of Henry
Pifield Rice, detective.
I must explain Henry early, to avoid disappointment. If I simply
said he was a detective, and let it go at that, I should be obtaining
the reader's interest under false pretences. He was really only a sort
of detective, a species of sleuth. At Stafford's International
Investigation Bureau, in the Strand, where he was employed, they did
not require him to solve mysteries which had baffled the police. He had
never measured a footprint in his life, and what he did not know about
bloodstains would have filled a library. The sort of job they gave
Henry was to stand outside a restaurant in the rain, and note what time
someone inside left it. In short, it is not 'Pifield Rice,
Investigator. No. 1.--The Adventure of the Maharajah's Ruby' that I
submit to your notice, but the unsensational doings of a quite
commonplace young man, variously known to his comrades at the Bureau as
'Fathead', 'That blighter what's-his-name', and 'Here, you!'
Henry lived in a boarding-house in Guildford Street. One day a new
girl came to the boarding-house, and sat next to Henry at meals. Her
name was Alice Weston. She was small and quiet, and rather pretty. They
got on splendidly. Their conversation, at first confined to the weather
and the moving-pictures, rapidly became more intimate. Henry was
surprised to find that she was on the stage, in the chorus. Previous
chorus-girls at the boarding-house had been of a more pronounced
type--good girls, but noisy, and apt to wear beauty-spots. Alice Weston
was different.
'I'm rehearsing at present,' she said. 'I'm going out on tour next
month in "The Girl From Brighton". What do you do, Mr Rice?'
Henry paused for a moment before replying. He knew how sensational
he was going to be.
'I'm a detective.'
Usually, when he told girls his profession, squeaks of amazed
admiration greeted him. Now he was chagrined to perceive in the brown
eyes that met his distinct disapproval.
'What's the matter?' he said, a little anxiously, for even at this
early stage in their acquaintance he was conscious of a strong desire
to win her approval. 'Don't you like detectives?'
'I don't know. Somehow I shouldn't have thought you were one.'
This restored Henry's equanimity somewhat. Naturally a detective
does not want to look like a detective and give the whole thing away
right at the start.
'I think--you won't be offended?'
'Go on.'
'I've always looked on it as rather a /sneaky/ job.'
'Sneaky!' moaned Henry.
'Well, creeping about, spying on people.'
Henry was appalled. She had defined his own trade to a nicety. There
might be detectives whose work was above this reproach, but he was a
confirmed creeper, and he knew it. It wasn't his fault. The boss told
him to creep, and he crept. If he declined to creep, he would be sacked
/instanter/. It was hard, and yet he felt the sting of her words, and
in his bosom the first seeds of dissatisfaction with his occupation
took root.
You might have thought that this frankness on the girl's part would
have kept Henry from falling in love with her. Certainly the dignified
thing would have been to change his seat at table, and take his meals
next to someone who appreciated the romance of detective work a little
more. But no, he remained where he was, and presently Cupid, who never
shoots with a surer aim than through the steam of boarding-house hash,
sniped him where he sat.
He proposed to Alice Weston. She refused him.
'It's not because I'm not fond of you. I think you're the nicest man
I ever met.' A good deal of assiduous attention had enabled Henry to
win this place in her affections. He had worked patiently and well
before actually putting his fortune to the test. 'I'd marry you
tomorrow if things were different. But I'm on the stage, and I mean to
stick there. Most of the girls want to get off it, but not me. And one
thing I'll never do is marry someone who isn't in the profession. My
sister Genevieve did, and look what happened to her. She married a
commercial traveller, and take it from me he travelled. She never saw
him for more than five minutes in the year, except when he was selling
gent's hosiery in the same town where she was doing her refined
speciality, and then he'd just wave his hand and whiz by, and start
travelling again. My husband has got to be close by, where I can see
him. I'm sorry, Henry, but I know I'm right.'
It seemed final, but Henry did not wholly despair. He was a resolute
young man. You have to be to wait outside restaurants in the rain for
any length of time.
He had an inspiration. He sought out a dramatic agent.
'I want to go on the stage, in musical comedy.'
'Let's see you dance.'
'I can't dance.'
'Sing,' said the agent. 'Stop singing,' added the agent, hastily.
'You go away and have a nice cup of hot tea,' said the agent,
soothingly, 'and you'll be as right as anything in the morning.'
Henry went away.
A few days later, at the Bureau, his fellow-detective Simmonds
hailed him.
'Here, you! The boss wants you. Buck up!'
Mr Stafford was talking into the telephone. He replaced the receiver
as Henry entered.
'Oh, Rice, here's a woman wants her husband shadowed while he's on
the road. He's an actor. I'm sending you. Go to this address, and get
photographs and all particulars. You'll have to catch the eleven
o'clock train on Friday.'
'Yes, sir.'
'He's in "The Girl From Brighton" company. They open at Bristol.'
It sometimes seemed to Henry as if Fate did it on purpose. If the
commission had had to do with any other company, it would have been
well enough, for, professionally speaking, it was the most important
with which he had ever been entrusted. If he had never met Alice
Weston, and heard her views upon detective work, he would have been
pleased and flattered. Things being as they were, it was Henry's
considered opinion that Fate had slipped one over on him.
In the first place, what torture to be always near her, unable to
reveal himself; to watch her while she disported herself in the company
of other men. He would be disguised, and she would not recognize him;
but he would recognize her, and his sufferings would be dreadful.
In the second place, to have to do his creeping about and spying
practically in her presence
-- Still, business was business.
At five minutes to eleven on the morning named he was at the
station, a false beard and spectacles shielding his identity from the
public eye. If you had asked him he would have said that he was a
Scotch business man. As a matter of fact, he looked far more like a
motor-car coming through a haystack.
The platform was crowded. Friends of the company had come to see the
company off. Henry looked on discreetly from behind a stout porter,
whose bulk formed a capital screen. In spite of himself, he was
impressed. The stage at close quarters always thrilled him. He
recognized celebrities. The fat man in the brown suit was Walter
Jelliffe, the comedian and star of the company. He stared keenly at him
through the spectacles. Others of the famous were scattered about. He
saw Alice. She was talking to a man with a face like a hatchet, and
smiling, too, as if she enjoyed it. Behind the matted foliage which he
had inflicted on his face, Henry's teeth came together with a snap.
In the weeks that followed, as he dogged 'The Girl From Brighton'
company from town to town, it would be difficult to say whether Henry
was happy or unhappy. On the one hand, to realize that Alice was so
near and yet so inaccessible was a constant source of misery; yet, on
the other, he could not but admit that he was having the very dickens
of a time, loafing round the country like this.
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