The Victorian Villains Megapack by R. Austin Freeman, Arthur Morrison, John J. Pitcairn, Christopher B. Booth, Arthur Train

that. Oh, ’ere ’e is though—good evenin’, sir.”
    “I am Mr. Dorrington,” the inquiry agent said politely. “Can I do anything for you?”
    “Ah yes—it is important—at once! I am robbed!”
    “Just step upstairs, then, and tell me about it.”
    Dorrington had but begun to light the gas in his office when his visitor broke out, “I am robbed, M’sieu Dorrington, robbed by my cousin— coquin! Rrrobbed of everything! Rrrobbed I tell you!” He seemed astonished to find the other so little excited by the intelligence.
    “Let me take your coat,” Dorrington said, calmly. “You’ve had a downer in the mud, I see. Why, what’s this?” he smelt the collar as he went toward a hat-peg, “Chloroform!”
    “Ah yes—it is that rrrascal Jacques! I will tell you. This evening I go into the gateway next my house—Café des Bons Camarades—to enter by the side-door, and—paf!—a shawl is fling across my face from behind—it is pull tight—there is a knee in my back—I can catch nothing with my hand—it smell all hot in my throat—I choke and I fall over—there is no more. I wake up and I see my wife, and she take me into the house. I am all muddy and tired, but I feel—and I have lost my property—it is a diamond—and my cousin Jacques, he has done it!”
    “Are you sure of that?”
    “Sure? Oh yes—it is certain, I tell you—certain!”
    “Then why not inform the police?”
    The visitor was clearly taken aback by this question. He faltered, and looked searchingly in Dorrington’s face. “That is not always the convenient way,” he said. “I would rather that you do it. It is the diamond that I want—not to punish my cousin—thief that he is!”
    Dorrington mended a quill with ostentatious care, saying encouragingly as he did so, “I can quite understand that you may not wish to prosecute your cousin—only to recover the diamond you speak of. Also I can quite understand that there may be reasons—family reasons perhaps, perhaps others—which may render it inadvisable to make even the existence of the jewel known more than absolutely necessary. For instance, there may be other claimants, Monsieur Léon Bouvier.”
    The visitor started. “You know my name then?” he asked. “How is that?”
    Dorrington smiled the smile of a sphinx. “M. Bouvier,” he said, “it is my trade to know everything—everything.” He put the pen down and gazed whimsically at the other. “My agents are everywhere. You talk of the secret agent of the Russian police—they are nothing. It is my trade to know all things. For instance “—Dorrington unlocked a drawer and produced a book (it was but an office diary), and, turning its pages, went on. “Let me see—B. It is my trade, for instance, to know about the Café des Bons Camarades, established by the late Madame Bouvier, now unhappily deceased. It is my trade to know of Madame Bouvier at Bonneuil, where the charcoal was burnt, and where Madame Bouvier was unfortunately left a widow at the time of the siege of Paris, because of some lamentable misunderstanding of her husband’s with a file of Prussian soldiers by an orchard wall. It is my trade, moreover, to know something of the sad death of that husband’s brother—in a pit—and of the later death of his widow. Oh yes. More” (turning a page attentively, as though following detailed notes), “it is my trade to know of a little quarrel between those brothers—it might even have been about a diamond, just such a diamond as you have come about tonight—and of jewels missed from the Tuileries in the great Revolution a hundred years ago.” He shut the book with a bang and returned it to its place. “And there are other things—too many to talk about,” he said, crossing his legs and smiling calmly at the Frenchman.
    During this long pretence at reading, Bouvier had slid farther and farther forward on his chair, till he sat on the edge, his eyes staring wide, and his chin dropped. He had