For the first time his own face showed
some signs of interest. His voice dropped a little. He himself was
impressed.
"You're in luck, Alfred," he declared. "That's the most interesting man in
New York--one of the most interesting in the world. That's Sanford Quest."
"Who's he?"
"You haven't heard of Sanford Quest?"
"Never in my life."
The young man whose privilege it was to have been born and lived all his
days in New York, drank half a glassful of wine and leaned back in his
chair. Words, for a few moments, were an impossibility.
"Sanford Quest," he pronounced at last, "is the greatest master in
criminology the world has ever known. He is a magician, a scientist, the
Pierpont Morgan of his profession."
"Say, do you mean that he is a detective?"
The New Yorker steadied himself with an effort. Such ignorance was hard to
realise--harder still to deal with.
"Yes," he said simply, "you could call him that--just in the same way you
could call Napoleon a soldier or Lincoln a statesman. He is a detective,
if you like to call him that, the master detective of the world. He has a
great house in one of the backwater squares of New York, for his office.
He has wireless telegraphy, private chemists, a little troop of spies,
private telegraph and cable, and agents in every city of the world. If he
moves against any gang, they break up. No one can really understand him.
Sometimes he seems to be on the side of the law, sometimes on the side of
the criminal.
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