Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/282

 of my instinct. It has served me more than one good turn in the street when the markets were wobbling. Now I have been a good deal chaffed about a resemblance to Sherlock Holmes, the great detective of fiction, but I acknowledge and am proud of that resemblance. I venture to think that it is not wholly confined to externals. A certain detective instinct was born in me. It began to show itself when I was a little boy at school, and since then I have trained and cultivated it, as a kind of higher education of the brain. In several instances I have been able to expose frauds, which, but for the purely impersonal, scientific interest I took in the affairs, might have remained undetected. In these experiments I have made enemies of course; but what matter?

The interest I feel in the case I am about to lay bare to you is not, I confess, purely impersonal. But I hope under the circumstances you will think none the less of me for that.

My first distant glimpse of the man Brown created, as I have said, an unfavourable impression upon my mind. I thought that he had a swaggering air of conceit and self-importance extremely unbecoming in a man of his class. He had the air of thinking himself equal to his betters, which is a dangerous thing in a person entrusted with the care of ladies. My impression was confirmed by some of the tales which Molly told me of her automobile experiences, not only quite unconscious that they militated against her chauffeur, but apparently believing them to his credit. I began to fear that the fellow was one