Why He Failed.
E threw away a great chance of success, and has been a happier man ever since.
There is no one but myself in England now, who knows exactly how it happened, and as I was thinking over it to-night (something in the papers about a clever detective in New York brought it all fresh back to my mind) it seemed to me such a queer story altogether that I think it will interest others to know it.
I must just alter one or two of the names, that's all, because it is not so very long ago since it happened, and it came out in one or two papers at the time, but all more or less wide of the mark. None of them had just the rights of it.
You see, no one could make out how Allan got away so easily—no one knows except my friend and I, and one man over the seas, and not even the cutest Yankee could ever guess the truth.
It is stranger than fiction, as you will find. But this is the story.
I put it short enough, for writing is not in my line. I can think things out in my head, and turn them over and over, till there is not much left of them that has not been put through the sieve, so to speak, but when it comes to pen and ink I'm a poor hand. It means sitting down indoors for hours, and that I am not used to. No, thank Heaven, I can earn my bread by something else, or very little bread would come to me, and no chance of butter or cheese.
This is not my story at all; I mean, not about my own life. It is about a friend of mine, George Markson.
If I told you his real name, you would probably remember at once; he was one of the best known detectives of that time. Talk about five senses, George had ten at least. He could see round a case, and through a man, and into your mind almost, and tell you what you were thinking of, better than you knew yourself.
And all so quiet—you would not think he saw much, but he had seen everything at a glance, and forgotten nothing. I have known him look into a room that he had never seen before, and in the evening, when we were sitting together, he would describe that room, down to the maker's name on the clock, as minutely as if he were holding a picture of it in his hand at the time.
He worked on his own account, and he had constant and well paid employment, since the day he tracked the man who robbed the bank of Westminster; you may remember the case—a daring daylight robbery.
"A good disguise too."
He traced him after a long search to Paris, and spotted him there as a garçon in a café—a good disguise too. George was in Spain after that for a long time, and then went to Cairo, so I did not see him for more than a year. He came back with a reputation more brilliant than ever, and settled down into the same rooms he had shared with me before he left.
He was a middle-aged man when I knew him, and the severe mental strain of his employment, together with home troubles, made him seem older than he was.
