Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/138

 the house from cellar to attic; had been through the papers in the desk and safe, and had taken away a number of scraps from the former.

"He didn't get the writing-pad, though," he said.

"No; that disturbed him; especially when I told him you had it."

"The—deuce you did!" he exclaimed. "I wish—you hadn't!"

"I had no right to conceal so important a fact," she said.

Trafford bit his lip over this turn of his own argument, but made no retort. He recognised in this second detective a graver impediment than the cunning of the criminal—if, indeed, it was not the cunning of the criminal that had interjected the second detective into the affair. Working independently, it was scarcely possible that they could do otherwise than thwart each other. He had the feeling that the case was his and that no other had a professional right to throw himself into it. If he had been on the verge of success, he would have withdrawn from the case. As it was, the same pro