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in uniform is better off if he really looks the part, but a detective is far better off if he doesn’t look the part. The best detectives are those with no distinguishing features, those who look just like the members of an ordinary crowd in the city, the kind of people who make up the population and whom you pass every day without even a first glance, you know. If I looked like a detective, or spoke like one, my usefulness would be very limited. But as it is⸺”

She nodded. “But it wasn’t just that I meant. Of course I know all that. It was something else . . .” she paused for a word or phrase, and then thought better of it and was silent.

“Something else?” I asked, though, of course, I knew rather well what she meant. You will notice that there is no particular modesty in me. It is a quality I have never tried to cultivate for the very obvious reason that I think it is an utterly useless ingredient in anybody’s make-up. Most modesty, I have observed, is nothing but a subconscious consciousness of superiority. Freud, of course, has said this much better.

But I was avid of compliments from her. It was sweet to hear such words from her lips. So I pursued the subject.

“Something else?” I asked, then. “Just what do you mean by that?”

She blushed. “Oh, I don’t know . . . something.