Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/105

 makes me crawl to think of their having anything to do with me."

"Then you mustn't be a murderer or permit any one to murder you. It's the only way I know to steer clear of the gang."

"Come, Charles," interposed his mother. "Aren't you a little hard? As long as we have criminals, we must have criminal catchers. We can't spare them."

"But we needn't make them our heroes, as some people do," he replied, wondering in secret why his mother was chiming into his mood so completely. "I object to having them dragged into my company—almost as much as I'd object to being dragged into theirs."

It would have troubled Mrs. Matthewson to say why she felt a savage pleasure in thus baiting the detective, but she did feel it, and was too proud to deny the fact, even as she was too proud to deny that the fact was unworthy her own measure of herself.

An hour later Charles had handed her into her carriage and gone back to the hall, as she bade him,