The Closing Net by Henry C. Rowland Page1

My friend, it's my belief that when it rains every third drop lands on a crook. You've no idea what a lot there are, and the only wonder is how they make a living. But your most dangerous crook is the gentleman variety, and that was easy for me because my father's family was about the best in the United States, barring only my mother's. His stock was pure English and hers Dutch; you'll find both names in the school histories; both families had signers of the Declaration. They were both thoroughbreds, all right. The only trouble was that they were never married, and that made a lot of trouble for me, afterwards.

I spent the first six years of my life in a pretty little cottage down Boston way, and about the only person I saw was my old nursery governess, Ma'm'selle Durand, or Tante Fi-Fi, as I called her. Then, as far as I could make out, my father lost his fortune and his nerve at the same time, and they found him in his library—dead. That settled my mother, and a little later Tante Fi-Fi faded away, and I found myself bawling my lungs open in the state asylum for orphans.

Young as I was, I couldn't stand it very long, so one hot day in July I ambled out, slipped down to a pond that was near by, hid my clothes under some stones, and splashed around. Then I came out crying and went up naked to a farmhouse and told the folks that the other boys had swiped my clothes and I was due home three hours ago. They laughed at first; then a motherly woman went into the house and fetched me out some old duds one of her brood had outgrown. She said I needn't bother to bring them back, they weren't worth it. They were worth a lot to me, because, you see, they represented my whole capital for a start in life on my own.

Well, I drifted around for a few years, doing the things that most homeless kids do, I suppose, and finally I got a billet as cabin-boy on a yacht. That led to steward, and then the family took me into their town house as butler. It was a low-grade, flash crowd with barrels of money and all as crooked as a switch-back railway, men and women both, so that one fine night when a second-story worker handed me a proposition for opening the back door I said, "All right, matey, on one condition—that you share up even and then teach me the trade!"

That was how I started my professional career. Before that I'd only been an amateur, like a good many butlers and chauffeurs and the like. Ever feel any compunctions? Nary one! There are two emotions that never touched me; one is scruple and the other fear. Good workers go down under both sometimes, and if I had been with real swell people at the start it might have been different. But where the boss of the house buncoes his guests at bridge and brags of it afterward to his wife, before the butler, there ain't much of an example set to the service. More than that, everybody was always saying to me, just as you did a little while ago, "You look like a gentleman." And I did, and behaved a darn sight more like one than the people I waited on. The result was that I got to thinking of myself as a man that wasn't getting what by rights belonged to him, and I went to work to correct that with all the natural intelligence I had in me, which was considerable.

For some years I was mighty successful. Plain burglary was my specialty because I liked the excitement of it; but I was handy at the side lines, too, and when it came to con games or even such youthful pranks as nicking a pocketbook or wrist-bag I was right on the job, and here my looks helped me a lot. Once or twice I've bluffed out a sucker that as good as saw me take the goods. I knew how to dress and how to walk into a big ballroom and how to order a dinner in a swell restaurant and how to talk to a lady in the deck chair next to mine. Yes, my son, I have seen life.

The first time I got pinched, and I tell it to my shame, was right here in Paris, and all along of a piece of sheer, light-hearted foolishness. I'd come over from London with a running-mate, just for a spree. We were both flush and doing the swell act. It was the week of the Grand Prix de Steeplechase out at Auteuil, and we went to the races, not on business, mind you, but just for fun. While we were standing by the paying-booth watching the types cash in, along comes a big, whiskered Russian with a whole fistful of winning tickets. The guy handed him out a big wad of bank-notes, which Mr. Russian crams into the side pocket of his trousers, then saunters over to the betting-booths.

The betting was pretty brisk. You know how it is out there—a lot of different windows for different amounts and the bettors filing up between the rails. The Russian goes to the one-hundred-frank slip, and I shove in beside him. There was a crowd ahead of us, so for the moment he left his money where it was, waiting to get to the window before hauling it out. He had on a long, light overcoat with slash pockets, and watching my chance I slipped my hand through and felt for the wad. I peeled one or two bills off, and was just cuddling the whole bunch, winking over my shoulder at Jeff, when clip! something closed on my wrist like a bear-trap! Body o' me! You'd never have thought to find such strength in a human fist! His fingers closed around my wrist like a vise, so that I couldn't even begin to straighten em out. Of course I didn't know it at the time, but his nibs was Prince Kharkoff, and he was in the habit of amusing his friends by such little parlour stunts as bending up five-franc pieces and tearing two-sou pieces apart!

Well, there wasn't much for me to say. The cop pulled back the overcoat, and the Russian lugged out my fist, still full of bills! I couldn't open it, mind you! Jeff was laughing fit to bust, but it took three cops to keep the crowd from mauling me. "À l'eau;" said they; "à l'eau!" Meaning, I take it, to first give me a bath in the water-jump. That's the way with Frenchies; they love a crook, as long as he doesn't get nailed. But let him once get caught, and they want to tear him apart, like a shot wolf in the pack!

Well, sir, it was Cayenne for mine. Cayenne isn't in all ways like Palm Beach, and I didn't care for it much, but I perfected my French, the La Villette sort, and different from my early education in that tongue with Tante Fi-Fi. In the end I escaped and managed to get up to Demerara (George town, you know), where I joined the colony of peppers and became what they call a "Walla-baby." A Walla-baby is an escaped French convict who keeps alive by making a nasty mess of sorghum and chopped cocoanut and peddling it to the nigger piccaninnies at a total net profit of about five cents a day. "Voilà bébé Voilà, bébé!" says this merchant, and that's how he got the name.

It wasn't much of a job, even when business was brisk, for the son of R. F.—but there, never mind the name. My inherited financial talent kept me from being satisfied even when I made a coup and cleared as much as fifty cents a week, so I pulled out and stowed away on a Royal Mail ship for Trinidad, and landed there, black and blue. The following day I tried to get a billet on an American yacht. While the captain was calling me several different kinds of a beach-comber there came down the deck a crusty-looking old lobster, and the minute he laid eyes on me he brought up all standing.

A week or so later I got a billet on a boat bound for New York, and once there I was all right-o, as I had a grub-steak salted away where I could get it; and as soon as I was rested up a bit and some of the sugar-fields fever rinsed out of me I was back on my old job again. Butler? Not on your life! Thief—the oldest profession in the world and instituted by father Adam himself, or, to be more accurate, by mother Eve, Adam being only the fence, like.

Well, sir, as if to compensate for all I'd been through, everything ran my way for a while. Then they got to watching me pretty close, so I decided to take a European trip for my health. I went to London, but it was early spring, and the raw damp brought out my fever, so I lit out for Monte Carlo, and managed to drop the bulk of my wad, then went up to Paris, where the first man I ran into at the Moulin Rouge was my old pal, Jeff.

"The spread is being given by Léontine Petrovsky," says he. "She's a wonder; half French, half Polish. Nobody knows exactly what her lay is, but she's a good fellow and knows her little book. Some say she's a nihilist, others say she's the head of a French gang of thieves. Whatever her game may be it pays, all right. She's got a house over in Passy, near Ranelagh. Come on; you might meet somebody there that 'd be useful."

I agreed, so we piled into a taxi and sped over across the city. We were both in evening dress and might have passed anywhere for a couple of English swells—the real thing. Jeff stopped the motor on a corner, and we got out and walked down a quaint little street and rang the bell of a big iron gate which opened into a garden. A footman in uniform let us in, and we followed him down a path with beds of flowers on either side. The house was a pretty little stone cottage with ivy growing over the walls and a big studio window at the top. As we reached the door we heard a lot of talking and laughter, which stopped suddenly as the door opened, then went on again.

Four women and two men were in the room, but the only one I had any eyes for was a tall, dark girl in an orange-coloured chiffon gown that made her look like a nymph coming up out of some gorgeous lily. It was cut lower than you'd see anywhere except on the French stage, and she had a great rope of pearls, almost as deep as amber, and just matching her satin skin. I've seen some lovely women in my time, but this girl was superhuman when it came to body and face and the tone of her voice. Everybody was in evening dress, of course, and the first glimpse I got of the others made me think I was in a sure-enough swell crowd. The girls were pretty, and the men, one a Pole and the other a Frenchman, looked distinguished and high bred. The Frenchman wore the red ribbon and had a fine face with keen eyes and an iron-grey moustache and imperial.

She looked me straight in the eyes, and I felt the blood coming into my face, for never in my life had I seen such eyes before. In my business we get the habit of taking in any peculiarity about a person at one glance, and I saw that this girl's eyes were tawny yellow around the pupils, then deepened gradually into a dark jade-green. Her hair was thick, almost black, rather curly but cut a bit short and drawn snugly down over her head and held by a gold band just above her ears so that the curls clustered around her neck.

I had, of course, because my profession has its cracks as well as its cracksmen. The Pole I had never heard of, but they told me that his work was mostly executive, having an able gang under him to carry out his ideas. The girls were two of them "souris d'hôtel," literally "hotel mice," the French slang for second-story workers. Their game was to get a billet as governess or companion or something of the sort, locate jewels, money, or other valuables as well as the habits of the family, then give up the position and send some one to work the house.

Well, we chatted for a while and had a drink or two, and pretty soon another man came in. He was Italian and a sort of executive officer of the Pole. Then supper was served in a gem of a Louis XV dining-room with all the good things to eat you can think of and vintage champagne, but I noticed that nobody drank much. People at the head of any profession don't, I notice; the two things don't go together, perhaps in mine less than in any other, because with us defeat means not only failure but our finish.

The wine did take off the little edge of formality, however, and pretty soon we were having no end of fun, and from the stories going around you might have thought you were at a swell English house-party, or at some French château, or trailing with the smart set in Newport. Léontine drank more than anybody else, and pretty soon she had everybody on the go. Then Jeff started in and told them the story of how I had got pinched at Auteuil and deported to Cayenne. But when he told who had nailed me there was a moment of astonished silence and then a roar of laughter. Chu-Chu leaned behind the girl, who was sitting between us, and whispered to me that it was Prince Kharkoff himself who was paying for the hospitality we were enjoying, though of course he didn't know it!

Then somebody asked me about Cayenne, and I told them the tale and afterward about my candy business at Georgetown. The "Walla-baby" story tickled them almost to death, and Léontine laughed until she might have fallen out of her chair if I hadn't slipped my arm around her waist. She sort of caught her breath and gave me a look that made my head swim. From that moment she talked almost entirely to me, and I told her about my work. Con games and daylight second-story work didn't seem to appeal to her much, but she was clean fascinated by burglary. She listened to one of my yarns, and when I had finished she asked,

I shook my head. "No," I answered. "To my way of thinking, killing is a dirty business unworthy of a high-class workman. I carry a gun just for a bluff, if need be, but it is never loaded. I am a burglar, not an assassin, and if I can't carry off a job without killing somebody, then I'll get put away. To my mind," said I, "burglary is just as much an art as painting or music or literature or sculpture. I take pride in being a master-craftsman. It's the clumsy, awkward bungler, usually some ignorant tough, that goes charging around a house, waking everybody up, and relying on his gun to pull him through that brings discredit on the profession and makes it so hard for the rest of us when we get nipped. But we are all on the same footing where our lives are concerned, so life I will not take, except in a fair fight or to square an account."

Léontine looked at me. "Ivan," says she, in her low voice, "is the one who arranges most of this work here in Paris. He has the entrée to many good houses, and when he goes into society he is on the lookout for an opening. When he finds one he turns it over to some of his people, giving them all the necessary information. Listen."

The Pole was studying his note-book. Presently he looked up and smiled. "Here is something which ought to pay," says he, "and which should not greatly tax the skill of so distinguished an expert as our friend. It is a private house on the Boulevard des Invalides, standing back in a garden which surrounds it on all sides, the whole enclosed by a high wall. The occupants," he smiled, "are your compatriots, M. Clamart, an American gentleman and his wife. She has very fine jewels. When I dined there not long ag I estimated her pearls at fifty thousand francs, while her rings and tiara should double that amount in value. When I admired the pearls she told me that she was fond of jewels and had some very fine ones. No doubt these jewels, together with the gold and silver table-service, which is very good, are kept in an old-fashioned safe built into the wall of the dining-room and rather clumsily concealed by a portière. I have here a map of the house and grounds and a plan of the entresol. For the rings, it will be necessary to enter the room of madame. No doubt they will be found on the dressing-table; but they are of lesser importance. If you wish to undertake the work, then go ahead. Whatever you may be so fortunate as to find you may bring to my office, and we will settle the matter according to the usual terms."

It wasn't long before we heard the girls laughing in the antechamber and here was Léontine, standing in the doorway like some wonderful statue of a woman carved in coal. Her full-length black maillot began with a hood which covered all of her head but the face, encased her straight round neck, and swept in lovely curves right to the floor, clothing every inch of her but the white, gleaming face. She wore a little black silk mask, and her eyes blazed through the oval slits like two quivering jewels, while her red lips curled up in a sort of mocking smile.

We were all a little quiet as we got into the car, a big touring affair with a double row of seats. I told the chauffeur to go to my hotel, and presently we pulled up in front of the door. I ran up and filled the pockets of my overcoat with what I thought I might need, then ran down and out, wondering what the gold-laced concierge who opened the door of the car for me would think if he knew that the gay swell he was serving was a burglar on the way to a job!

It was then about a quarter to three, and a little drizzle of rain was falling. We sped across the Place de la Concorde, all gleaming and glistening with the lamplight on the wet pavement, then across the river by the Pont Alexandre III, and around the Invalides. A minute later we pulled up in front of a high stone wall, over the top of which rose the branches of big trees, black and dripping with the rain. The street was deserted, so far as I could see, so I jumped out and crossed the sidewalk to a small iron door which was beside the big gates of the driveway. The little door looked pretty solid, and I was afraid of an alarm, so I stepped to the big gates and was up and over like a cat. A quick examination of the door showed me that there were no wires and that it was locked and bolted on the inside, so I slid the bolt, and in two minutes had picked the lock and swung back the door. Then I walked out to the car.

"There's none to lose," said I, and shut the door gently and slid one of the bolts. Then we stepped into the wet shrubbery, and a moment later the grey walls of the house rose through the foliage ahead. I chose one of the long French windows of the dining-room and examined the shutters. They were iron and bolted on the inside, but a little scientific work with the hack-saw and I had them open and stood listening carefully for any alarm. Then I cut an armhole in the window, and holding the glass carefully with the adhesive wax, removed it and reached in and turned the knob. A moment later we were in the house.

We found it just where Ivan had said. It was a clumsy, old-fashioned box. Léontine held the light on it from my little pocket-lamp, and it needed only a few minutes work before I had it open. The gold and silver stuff was all there, every bit of it solid, and as soon as I had stowed it in the sack I forced the little drawers, and sure enough, here were the jewels—a splendid rope of pearls, a tiara of brilliants, and a lot of small pieces, rings, brooches, and the like. In no time we had the safe stripped of everything that we wanted.

Picking up the sack, I carried it to the window and dropped it softly on the ground, outside. We passed out through the drawing-room and into the antechamber, then stopped at the foot of the stairs to listen. There was not a sound. Up the stairs we stole, stepping close to the wall to lessen the chance of creaking planks, but there was no danger, for the stairway was of heavy oak. On a landing we stopped again. It was silent as the grave, and about as dark, but for some reason I did not like it. A burglar gets to have instincts, like a wild animal or a cat or any other prowler, and several times mine have warned me of danger and saved my pelt before there was actually anything that came within the range of the ordinary senses. It's an uncanny feeling, and the only one that has ever made me nervous. Danger that you have positive evidence of ain't hard to face or get around, but danger that you feel in the air without being able actually to sense is mighty unsettling.

I didn't answer, but started ahead. We reached the top of the stairs and passed softly down the hall, for I judged that madame's room would be in the front of the house and probably on the southeast corner. As we reached the end I could see that the dawn was coming, for there was a pale-grey light through the window. Then all at once I had the same nasty sensation of danger close at hand, this time even stronger, and I cursed myself for a fool to have listened to the girl. We stopped again, and I whispered:

That was as far as I got, for there came a sharp click from behind us, then a blaze of light, and there we were standing in the full glare of the electric lamps at the far end of the hall, while not ten feet away, between us and the stairs, stood a tall man in pajamas, with a big black revolver at half-arm, ready to cut down and shoot.

Léontine gave a choked little scream and lurched back against me. She was between the man and myself. But the girl was game, and suddenly she reached behind her and shoved a gun into my hand. I saw my chance, because the man balked at firing on a woman, and for the sake of Léontine I might have dropped him. But as I glanced at his face my heart seemed to stop beating. For there in front of me was my own living, breathing image! There were the same clean-cut features inherited from generations of aristocrats; the same flat cheeks and straight brows, with the same blue eyes shining out beneath; the same light, close-cropped moustache and short crisp hair and the ears set trim and close, high on the side of the narrow head. By George, if I'd stepped in front of a mirror the likeness couldn't have been cleaner! And I knew in that moment that the man was my closest blood kinsman, my half-brother. I knew that he had married a rich woman and lived in Paris, but I had never known where.

But the man had got himself together. I saw his face set and stiffen and knew that something was going to happen quick, so I shoved Léontine behind me and faced him, the gun in my hand. His keen eye caught the flash of it, then bang! and I felt a bullet tearing through my upper arm. Bang! and he fired again. But at the same moment I leaped forward, and though the powder scorched my face the bullet only creased the scalp. The next second I had both arms around him, and down the stairs we fell, over and over, to the landing. His head struck something, and he went limp in my grip.

"Here's a sacrifice play," said I to myself. You see, the cop could have caught the car before it got under way, and it seemed better for one to get nabbed than for all. So as he came I tackled him, football fashion, and down we went in a heap. As we were struggling there in the street I saw Jeff jump out and haul Léontine into the limousine; then the car shot ahead and disappeared in the grey dawn across the Place Vauban.

Well, I lay there in the middle of the street hugging my French cop as if I loved him until I was sure that the car was well clear. One arm was out of action but even then I could have wrenched loose and handed him a jolt on the side of the jaw that would have kept him quiet while I did my getaway if it hadn't been for a bunch of soldier boys who had been out on leave from the garrison at the Invalides and happened to come along at just that moment. Seeing the agent struggling with a man in the street, they hopped in to help and a moment later I was stretched out with a big dragoon sitting on my chest and the horse's tail in his helmet tickling my face while the agent whistled for help. It doesn't take long to draw a crowd at any moment of the day or night in Paris and while I was waiting there in the hands of four or five cops in the middle of a gang that wanted to lynch me, the iron door opened and out came the master of the house. He pushed through the crowd and took a look at my face under the glare of the street lamp.

"Oh, come around in the morning if you're so interested," I answered, and not very steadily for my arm was giving me the devil, particularly as one of the cops was swinging to it. Besides, I had lost a good bit of blood. Then, things began to spin and I heard him asking questions of the agents and that's the last that I knew until I came around a little later and found myself in a cell with a young chap who seemed to be a surgeon bending over me.

The jailer closed the door behind him and for a moment we stood looking at each other without a word said. Seen in the light of day I wondered why it had seemed like looking into a mirror when I had first sighted him at the head of the stairs. Perhaps it was the nervous tension that he had been under at that moment which had made the resemblance between us so strong, for as I saw him now he was a big, good-natured looking fellow, twenty pounds heavier than I and his face showed signs of high living.

Now what do you think of that? Only three weeks before Léontine Petrovski and I had broken into this man's house—not knowing who he was, of course—to steal his wife's jewels. He had surprised us, like I told you, and to save Léontine I would have shot him dead only that his resemblance to me told me who he was. In spite of this, here was the man that I'd gone to rob going my bond, getting me out of a life sentence perhaps, and then, insisting on my living at his house until I got a fresh start on the level!

But I shook my head. You see, I had thought all the time that John was a rich man in his own right; that he might have saved something from the wreck when the old man went broke and blew his brains out; then made good investments and pulled out well off. Looking at it that way, it was all right if he wanted to pay up a score for the father of us both. But to be an object of charity to a woman who owed me nothing but the good chance of losing her jewels—that wouldn't do.

"They will never know it," he answered. "I've taken care of that. These people at the Santé think it was a domestic scandal; an effort to get possession of some family jewels that you laid claim to. The prefecture knows, but that bureau knows lots of things that would set Society by the ears if they ever got out. You are under bond and under observation to some extent, but what does that matter, since you've chucked the old game? I've got something in view for you now, but we'll discuss that later."

Before many minutes the car drew up in front of the same big gate that I had scaled that night while Ivan and Chu-Chu and Jeff and the girls waited in the motor to see a demonstration of snappy American methods—and came so near getting pinched, doing it. We crossed the garden, and let me tell you, sir, my heart was beating a lot faster than it did the night I first laid eyes on that old, Renaissance house.

"Madame is in the studio," said the maître d'hôtel as he opened the door. He gave me a quick, curious look, for at first glance the resemblance between John and myself is almost that of twins. I was dressed like a swell, for John had brought me down some of his own things, I having been in evening clothes when pinched the night of Léontine's supper party.

My friend, I shall never forget that picture; not the one on the easel, but Edith as she turned to greet us. You know her, of course, and appreciate what a lovely creature she is, with her tall, queenly figure and wonderful great eyes. They are not woman's eyes; they are more the eyes of some splendid archangel guarding the gates of Paradise; clear and steadfast and deep as Heaven itself. She was in her paint-blouse, standing in front of a big canvas, a portrait, and posing in the middle of the studio was an uncommonly beautiful girl in evening dress and a great rope of gorgeous pearls.

"Miss Dalghren is one of our family, Frank," she said. "She was here that night and knows the whole story. You are with your own people, Frank, so you are not to feel uncomfortable. Do you know what a Bishop of London is said to have once remarked when he watched a man being led to the gallows? 'There, but for the grace of God, goes myself.' The grace of God has brought you to us, Frank, and all of the old dead past has got to bury its dead." Her lovely, sensitive mouth curved in the sweetest little smile, which drew one corner lower than the other, and her big eyes grew dark and deep, suddenly, and seemed to look through mine to see what was behind them. "The interment is already going on, Frank—but I don't see any mourners. Now, you men must run out and let me make the most of my light. My picture is 'way behind." She looked at John. "Show Frank his room," she said, "and see that he has everything that he needs. You may come back for tea, at five, if you like."

He led the way to the house and I followed, still rather dazed. You see, the reception I'd had was so different from what I expected. It was so cordial and natural, even while not ignoring the real state of affairs. There was none of the fuss I'd dreaded being made over the reformed criminal—especially when it was a case of reform or pencil servitude; and on the other hand there was no silly pretence that I was just like the rest of their sort. The sentimental mush that is served out to the ex-thief by a certain class of people is almost enough to keep the self-respecting crook from turning honest, unless he's hard up against it; but there was nothing of that sort here. Some folks seem to think that a criminal is an entirely different sort of human being, but my experience in the Under-World had shown that there's a lot of honesty in most crooks, just the same as there's a lot of crookedness in many honest folk, and that the difference is principally in circumstance. But even then, you do find once in a great while what seems to be the unmixed bad, just as there is the unmixed good. This yarn is a story of both, and a few between.

"She is a Miss Dalghren," said John. "Her father was a promoter and made a big fortune in different schemes; mines principally. Then he took to stock gambling and lost it all and died bankrupt—just as our father did. All that she got after the smash were those pearls she was wearing, a magnificent string that she had from her mother. She gives music lessons here in Paris."

We talked for a while and then John took me to see his library. I noticed that he helped him self to another drink before leaving the room. There was nothing in this, of course, but his manner of doing it was queer; quick and furtive, as if he wanted to gulp it down before anybody came in. We spent the rest of the hour looking at his old volumes, and he was surprised to see that I knew books, too. Then, says John:

Her deep grey eyes looked into mine as if she was trying to see all that was inside. Usually, when a person goes prospecting in my thoughts this way I pull the dead-light over my "lanterns of the soul." But there was something here that went through the shutter like radium. Perhaps it was because everybody else had always looked me in the eyes hunting for something bad, while Edith seemed to be looking not for, but at, something that was good. It must have been that, for her sweet mouth seemed to soften and she smiled again.

I told them the story of how Jeff had taken me to Léontine's swell supper party—leaving out names and places, of course—and how I had offered to rob John's house more to show off than anything else, and as a demonstration of American methods for Chu-Chu le Tondeur and Ivan, the head of the mob. When I told them how Léontine had insisted on coming with me for the sheer excitement of the thing, although not a professional thief herself, Miss Dalghren's blue eyes sparkled.

I was out for both," I answered. "Mind you, I don't pose for a kid-glove burglar. Once or twice when I've been interrupted I've bluffed out the householder by the roughest sort of treatment. But I must say the game has always appealed to me as much as the loot. I might be compared to a big-game hunter: I liked the stalk and I liked the bag. Most men have got a plundering instinct—and some women, too. Soldiers loot when they get the chance."

"Bravo!" said John. His hand went out to the decanter in a careless sort of way, but I noticed again that worried, furtive look in his eyes. Edith saw it, too, though she pretended not to, and a shadow rested on her lovely face. It passed quickly, but it struck me suddenly that here, perhaps, was the explanation for the note of sadness that showed in all of her work.

"A good deal," I answered, "but you can't always bank on it; any more than you can on honour amongst politicians or high financiers. Still, there's a certain amount. There is a man in this city who arranges for the theft of such jewels as these. He supplies the cracksman with the necessary information and details one of his mob to do the job. Very often the chief is not dead sure himself as to what other jewels there may be, and which are real and which are imitations. Yet when the burglar has made his haul he takes the lot straight to headquarters, where they are assayed in the laboratory and then turned over to a third party to dispose of. There's little doubt but that these transactions are practically always carried on strictly on the level. Moreover, there's a sinking fund for protecting members of the gang that get nabbed and tiding over others that are in a run of bad luck. Paris is a great town for organised crime."

When we reached the Opera the house was already filled. Edith and Miss Dalghren sat in the front of the box, of course, John behind his wife and I behind the girl, and you may believe it or not, but those two magnificent pearl necklaces within the reach of my hand never gave me so much as a quiver. Tristan was being sung and my eyes and ears were all for the stage, for I love music.

It was this same Prince Kharkoff, you remember, who got me shipped off to Cayenne. But that was three years before, and when I had been fool enough to get caught in his bear-trap grip, that day at the races, I was wearing a Vandyk beard and moustache. But now I was smooth shaven, and, considering my surroundings and resemblance to John, there was no danger of his recognising me, especially as he and the Cuttynges had frequently met at dinner and receptions. Being with Léontine he did not bow.

Léontine had not seen us, and as she swung slowly in her chair to see who her neighbors were, I turned as if to speak to John. There were a good many people looking, and I was not sure that the girl would be able to hide her feelings. You see, my play in getting myself collared to save the rest of the crowd had hit her pretty hard, especially as she knew that I would have pulled the job off all right except for her wilfulness. As she saw it she had cost me my liberty for life, so that when I tackled the agent, and held him while the others got away in the car, she was horribly broken up. You see, we were already pretty well started on one of those swift, savage affairs that sometimes happen in the Under-World, where people don't know at what moment they may find iron bars between them. Every day that I was in the Santé I had got a love message from her.

I glanced carelessly about. Kharkoff and the girl had seated themselves. The Prince was staring around the house, but Léontine was straight in her chair, her face pale and her eyes fixed on the stage, while her bosom was heaving like that of a runner at the end of a race. Suddenly Kharkoff turned to say something and noticed the rigid expression of her face. His bushy brows came down and he leaned over so that his beard brushed her gleaming shoulder.

When I glanced at her again a few minutes later she was looking at the stage. Her cheeks were still pale, but there was a crimson spot in each. She felt my eyes on her and flashed me a quick look, which passed to Edith, then Miss Dalghren. I was watching her closely and saw her gaze fasten on both sets of pearls and there was an unholy gleam in her tawny eyes. She took a deep breath, then turned to the Prince and whispered a few words.

Léontine was wearing a pale green chiffon gown and her black hair was drawn down under a gold band set with emeralds. Her neck and shoulders glowed like old ivory. Edith and Miss Dalghren were stealing sidelong glances at her. Then the latter turned to me, and her blue eyes held a sort of inquiry which made me wonder if she had noticed Léontine's expression when she first looked into our box.

When the show was over and we went out into the crush a woman attendant brushed past me and slipped a piece of paper into my hand. I guessed what it was and shoved it into my pocket, fiercely angry for the second that Léontine should have taken a chance like that. But the attendant had glanced at the lapel of my coat, and I saw that Léontine had probably noticed John's decoration and told the woman to give the note to the one of us who did not wear the red ribbon. John had been decorated for some silly thing or other; assisting at the unveiling of a statue, I believe.

Let me tell you, my friend, that I was not pleased with this note. Léontine was not for me. She belonged to the Under-World—or at best the Half-World—and I had put all thought of her away from me with the criminal life which I had passed my word to give up. Whether she was an anarchiste, a spy, or one of Ivan's organised mob, I did not know, and had no wish to find out.

At first I thought that I would send her a line to say that my past and everything included in it was blotted out. Mind you, I had known Léontine for only about five hours, and then, except for the few minutes when we were in John's house, in the company of a gay crowd of high-rolling thieves. So it seemed a little thick that she should bother me now when I had escaped a life sentence by a miracle—or as Edith said, "the grace of God." I owed her nothing, but she owed me a lot and I thought that the best way would be to write and claim that she pay me the debt by leaving me alone.

Thinking it over, however, I decided that this very payment was probably the only one that a woman like Léontine would refuse to meet, unless absolutely convinced that it was the only one which I would ever accept. Besides, I had a feeling that down underneath there was a lot of heart to Léontine and a little good sense. So I decided to meet her and make things plain, when I thought that I could count on her to do her part and make no trouble.

"Good," says he, then went on to tell me how for some time past he had been considering a new motor-car proposition. A few days before he came to see me in the Santé he had decided to take it up, backing it with quite a lot of capital. The concern had rented a place on the Avenue de la Grande Armée, but was at a standstill for lack of funds.

So out I went and hailed a motor-taxi and spun through the Bois to Bagatelle. I told my driver to let me out at the main gate on the side of the Bois, when I walked across to the rose garden. There was nobody in sight, so I strolled up to the little summer-house, looking over the gardens, and waited, for I was a bit ahead of time. The day was perfect; cloudless and the air soft and fragrant. Nobody was in the gardens, so far as I could see, and pretty soon I got tired of waiting and started to stroll down one of the narrow paths, banked on either side with perfumed laurel.

It was at the first abrupt bend of the little path that I came face to face with Léontine. She was in a dark blue riding-habit with a little tricorne hat of Loden felt cocked a bit on her wavy black hair. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were sparkling, and as we came together she flung back her head and threw out both arms.

My friend, a man can't stand being fondled by as lovely a woman as Léontine and never lift a hand. This man couldn't, at that time, so I caught her in my arms and gave her a squeeze that made her gasp, big strong woman that she was. But she must have felt the lack of fire in it and as I loosed my grip she laid one of her gauntleted hands on my chest and pushed herself away, while her clear, curious eyes looked searchingly into mine.

"Ah, that was splendid," says she, "—that was glorious. Oh, Frank, nobody will ever know what I suffered that night. If Ivan and Chu-Chu had not held me fast I would have leaped out of the car and shot that policeman. When they got me home I was like a mad woman. They locked me in my room and the girls never left me for two days. Because I knew that it was all my fault. I spoiled everything. But," she gave me a burning look, "I never imagined that it could be as bad as this."

"You told me that night that you loved me," she whispered, "and my heart leaped to meet yours. I have never loved a man before, Frank. The minute that our hands touched and I looked into your cold, grey eyes I knew that I had found my mate and my master. You belong to me, Frank, and to my world. Society is our enemy. Why should you go hat in hand and ask to be taken back? Listen, Frank. Find out how much your half-brother paid to get you clear. Then we will pay it back. I am rich, just now. Afterwards, if you like, we will go away——"

That afternoon John took me up to see the new car that he was promoting. The company planned to make only big fellows. One of their six-cylinders was in the garage and we took her out for a spin over the road. We made the run to Chartres in about fifty minutes, John driving. The chief mécanicien was with us and his son, a bright youngster of eighteen, named Gustave.

On the way home we stopped at the Automobile Club for a business talk with three members of the company with whom John had made a rendezvous: a Swiss engineer, the General Director and the General Superintendent. It was arranged that I should take charge of the Paris office, my principal duty being to show the car to clients. After the others had gone John and I remained to talk, and I noticed that in the course of our conversation he took several drinks of whisky and soda. He was in that state of buoyancy about the new venture that you find so often in the rich amateur whose only knowledge of business comes from buying things instead of trying to sell them. He told me that he had always been very sore at his dependence on his wife for every cent he spent and that he soon hoped to be a rich man on his own account. He hinted to me that he had several things in hand from which he expected big results, and that if all went as it should he would be able to back his automobile venture with a couple of million francs. But he didn't tell me what there was to warrant these expectations, and I rather suspected that he was playing the stock market. I noticed that with every drink he got a little more sanguine, and as his spirit went up my own went down. To tell the truth, I began to fear that a good many of John's big ideas came out of the whisky bottle.

She began by telling me that since our meeting at Bagatelle she had been thinking constantly of the step which I had taken, and had decided to write and tell me the result of her reflections. She had also, she said, been analysing the state of her sentiments toward me (I could imagine her doing that as much as I could imagine a small boy analysing the effect of a match held to a heap of loose powder), and she had found that she loved me enough to give me up and to help me in my new resolutions, provided she could manage to persuade herself, or be persuaded, that such an act on my part was rational. So far, however, my reform under the existing conditions impressed her as fore-doomed to failure, and could result only in unhappiness to me and social injury to those who had befriended me. At present, said she, they were enthusiastic over my redemption, while I, for my part, was full of gratitude and good resolutions. But, said Léontine, the leopard cannot change his spots. Once a thief, always a thief. Sooner or later the old instincts are bound to awaken. "As long as all goes smoothly with you," said she, "all right and good. But if ever you should be pressed; if you were to get in any sort of financial difficulty, as happens to all business people at times, you would find the temptation to take the easy way out irresistible. No, Frank," she wrote, "once a thief, always a thief."

Then she went on to say how, in time, my past was bound to become known, and that there would always surround me an atmosphere of spectacular notoriety, which was bound to hurt my friends and make me, myself, uncomfortable. If I married into the class of society where I now found myself the stain would always stick to wife and children, said Léontine. A reformed burglar, said she, might do for a very quiet or else a Bohemian Society, but was bound to be utterly out of his element in the aristocratic circles of my half-brother and his wife. My duty to them, said Léontine, was to tell them that I could never be of their world and to go away. "Do that before they begin to be conscious of their mistake," she wrote.

About here I stopped and did some solid thinking. There was no doubt but that the girl was dead right; absolutely right. I had felt it myself in a vague sort of way. It struck me suddenly, and I tell you the thought was a mighty bitter one, that all of this must, of course, have occurred to Edith, but because she was such an angel of a woman, she had decided on her line of duty and meant to follow it at any cost. I wondered if John had seen it in the same way, and decided that, for his part, he was probably so pleased with himself for the fine thing that he was doing as not to reckon in the cost. You see, I was losing my respect for my half-brother, as a man, just as I was gaining it for his wife, as a woman. You didn't need an X-ray machine to see smack through John. He was a good, kind, easy-going sort of chap, with artistic tastes, athletic, physically brave, but morally weak. No doubt if he had ever had to work for his living it might have stiffened his back. But he had been an idler from childhood, with all of his wants provided for, and had always been too lazy to use his opportunities to employ what energy he had. He was the typical dilettante, dabbling at art and sports and science, and never making himself the master of anything, least of all himself. No man with any real stuff in him who was care-free, in robust health, with a fine position, and, most of all—and here something blazed up inside me—such a woman as Edith for his wife, would be sitting, as no doubt he was that moment, guzzling whisky in his smoking-room, to go reeling up a little later to snore drunkenly at his wife's side for the rest of the night. Augh!

I took up Léontine's letter again. "As far as your half-brother is concerned," she went on, "it does not so much matter. After all, there is a blood tie between you, and blood is thicker than water. Besides, Frank, I have learned a good deal about him from Kharkoff and another man. He is not a very wonderful person. But, for his wife's sake, do you yourself think that you ought to remain one of the household? From what you have told me, I can see that your ransom was all her doing—and why should she have done it?"

From this point the letter jumped into another key. "Frank," wrote Léontine, "don't think that I am urging you to remain in the Under-World. I love your firmness and I adore your strength of purpose. You are too good for a thief; too strong and fine. Oh, my dear, do you think that I have never felt as you do? Do you think that I have never wished to get out of this slough? To look the whole world in the face without fear and without reproach? I am sick of this atmosphere of doubt and defiance. Let us go away together and begin our lives afresh. We are both young and strong and talented. Let us go far away to some new country and begin our lives anew, and on a clean and wholesome footing. Let us pay your money debt, Frank—for all that I have is yours. You told me to-day that Society's debt to you had been paid in full. My dear, Society owes me a debt also; a debt far greater than yours. But if Society will give me you, I will consider the obligation as cancelled"; and then there was a whole lot which would make me feel even more a fool to repeat.

I dropped the letter on the desk and ran my hands through my hair. The room felt hot, the night was hot, my head was hot. Up I jumped and opened the window on the other side, and a fresh breeze swept in. For several minutes I stood in the window, facing it, my head in a whirl. Léontine was right, I thought. Such a past as mine could never be kept a secret. It was bound to become known, and then what would be said of Edith for harbouring a criminal—a low grade of criminal: burglar, sneak-thief, pickpocket? No doubt the story would reach Kharkoff. Léontine herself might tell him, and he would remember how I had tried to relieve him of his winnings that day at the races, when he had caught me and got me deported to Cayenne. I was a marked man. My picture was in the French Rogue's Gallery and my head measurements in the Bertillon records.

To think that Edith should fall heiress to all this! Edith, that angel of a woman. The very thought of her sent a glow through me. Angel she might be, and as such far above all earthly shame and suffering. But she was a woman, too—and such a woman. My heart was full of her, and my mind too; and as I stood there in the long window, staring into the dark shadows of the trees, I saw the sweet, thoughtful face with the clear, steady eyes and sensitive mouth. Such a woman was meant for love and happiness and peace of soul in which to accomplish the work of her rich gifts; not to suffer the sneers and evil criticisms of an evil world.

Such a woman as Edith was not for me. Léontine and I were well mated; creatures of the same clay. We were of the earth, earthy. Heaven was not for my kind, and it seemed to me that if I were to go clawing after it worse things might happen, not only to me but to this sweet woman who was ready to sacrifice her own position, if need be, to help me. The Polish girl and I were of, and belonged to, the Under-World. We were destroyers; tearers down of the established order of affairs.

So I told her of my letter from Léontine, holding back, of course, the name and identity of the writer. Edith listened with her smooth brows knit. I did not mention what Léontine had said about a thief being always a thief, because I knew in my heart that this did not apply to me. I had been a criminal, but not a weak man. Whenever I have committed a crime it has always been of my own deliberate intention and not the result of temptation. To my way of thinking the man who wants to be honest and then falls, in spite of himself, is not a thief. He is not worthy of the name of a thief. He is merely a weakling. To that class belong pilfering valets de chambre and absconding cashiers and the like. A professional thief would be ashamed to associate with that sort. He steals because he wants to, not because he can't help it. What I dwelt upon to Edith was the harm that might come to her husband and herself from receiving me into their household—and I put this even stronger than Léontine had done.

"How long do you think you would keep your word to remain honest if you were with her, Frank?" Her eyes looked steadily into mine. "No; if you go back to her, I would prefer to absolve you from your promise. It is better to be dishonest to the world, I think, than untrue to yourself. That is why I am so sure of you; because, whatever you may have done, I know that you have always been right with yourself. But you could not be so if you were to slip now. And with such a woman it would be almost inevitable. Listen to me, Frank. I thought of all of this when I told John to bring you here. I weighed the pros and cons for all of us. If I had found you a different sort of person I might have lost my courage; but I feel instinctively your resolution and your strength. Since you are what you are I have no fear of the result to any of us. John and I are not dependent on the dictates of Society. If such friends as we have cannot accept our decision we do not want to keep them."

What was I to say? She was stronger than I—ten thousand million times. I mumbled back the same old argument, and she listened with her twisted smile, saying a warm word here and there, for which I found no answer. It was like a chunk of ice trying to argue the point with the sun. Finally I gave it up and raised her hand to my lips.

"Oh, well," said he, "I understand, of course, how you feel about it all. Why can't we make some sort of a compromise? You needn't stop here at the house if you're afraid that it might reflect on Edith, but there's no need for you to go away. Give this crook lady to understand that she's got to leave you alone, then find yourself diggings up near the office and pitch into our motor business. There's a lot to be done in the way of introducing the car—advertising and all that. Besides, I've got quite a list of possible clients, and you will be busy taking them out over the road. Let's go ahead with our business and let the social part slide."

I found myself quarters on a side street near the office and started in to work. Rather to my surprise, John proved himself a mighty good hustler for trade. He had a big acquaintance, both resident and amongst visiting Americans, and in the course of the first six weeks we booked quite a number of orders. Our car was a good one, silent as a watch, easy to handle, and constructed a bit on the American plan with a high clearance and light for the size and power, which made it easy on tires. I joined the Automobile Club and made quite a lot of useful acquaintances.

Now and again I saw Edith, but I kept away from the house. She was herself a very good driver and duly certificated in Paris. Then one day John told me that Miss Dalghren was anxious to learn to drive, and asked me to give her a few early-morning lessons in a little voiturette which we had taken in trade and used for knocking about on our business. So I took the girl out in the Bois before business hours in the morning, and twice we met Léontine riding with Kharkoff. The face of the Polish girl was not as amiable as I would have liked to see it, and knowing something of the wild nature of women of her sort, I told Miss Dalghren that, if she didn't mind, we would continue our lessons late in the afternoon, as I had missed one or two early clients, and later in the day I could get John to relieve me at the office while I was gone. She agreed, and the very next day we ran into Léontine and Kharkoff again at about six in the evening.

We were rounding the corner of a narrow little route and we couldn't have been in a worse position, for I was leaning over with my face so close to hers that a few tendrils of her yellow hair were against my cheek, the car being old and a noisy little beast. Miss Dalghren turned to me with a smile, just as Léontine and Kharkoff, walking their horses, came upon us. As I looked up I caught a glimpse of Léontine's face. It had gone as black as a thunder-cloud. She raised her crop and brought it down with a vicious cut on the ribs of her hunter, which sprang ahead, almost striking the car.

My friend, I have had some hard jolts at different times in my busy life. But never did I get such a knock-out blow as that. I could feel the blood sucking out of my face and the pit of my stomach seemed to melt. John's expression was pretty bad, but my own must have been worse, for he said, sharply: "What's the matter with you?"

"There ain't much to tell," he answered. "Mary went to a big dinner at the Billings' last night. They are Americans—barrels of money, and mighty little else. Mary teaches the daughters music. She wore her pearls. After your visit showed me how easy it was for a cracksman to walk in and out of the house, I bought a small, new-model American safe, which is in my room. Both Mary and Edith keep their jewels in it. But last night I was playing a little baccarat at the Automobile Club and didn't get in till three. Edith has the combination, but she was asleep when Mary got home, and not wishing to disturb her, Mary locked up her pearls in her bureau de toilette. When she looked for them this morning they were gone. That's all."

She smiled. "They were all titled, I think. Barons and counts and princes and a general or two. Naturally, the one I remember the best is the man who took me out. He was Italian, I think, or possibly a Pole. Just before we went in Mrs. Billings took me aside and said: 'You have made a conquest, my dear. Captain Schlossberg was to have taken you out, but a man has just begged so hard for you that I must give you to him,' and she pointed out a handsome man who looked like an Italian. He was tall and slender, with thick black hair and a black moustache, waxed at the tips."

"There was a girl who sang. Then my dinner partner played some Hungarian folk-songs and sang one or two. He had rather a nice voice. At the end I played the harp. When I had finished, my dinner partner brought me some orangeade. There was some sort of liqueur in it, I think, and I did not like the taste, but the room was hot and I was thirsty and drank it all. Shortly after that I came home. Thérèse, Edith's maid, was waiting for me in the motor."

"Edith had gone to bed and John had not come in. I did not want to disturb Edith, as she has been sleeping poorly, so I put the pearls in the drawer of my toilet table and dropped the key in one of my stockings. I don't think that I was ever so sleepy in my life, and when I woke up I had a splitting headache, which I put down to that nasty sweet orangeade and the stuff in it."

So I went out and jumped into the little car and started back up town alone. The whole business was pretty plain to me, but there were a few details I wanted to study out. Ivan, as you may remember, was the man who had given me the job of stealing Edith's jewels. He was the chief executive of the Paris mob of thieves, some of whom I had met that night at Léontine's house in Passy. Ivan never did any of the active work. He was a clubman and diner-out, and when he was asked to some rich house he looked things over, and if the proposition seemed a good one, assigned it to some worker who robbed the house and turned over the swag to Ivan who disposed of it, deducting his percentage. If the job went wrong and the burglar got caught, there was a fund to defend him. Ivan kept his hands clean and was always in some conspicuous place on the night of the theft.

So far, all was clear as spring-water. The next thing was to find out who had the pearls at the present moment. The more I thought of this, the more I became convinced that the disposition of jewels stolen by the mob was Léontine's work. Léontine was undoubtedly the fence. Being under the protectorship of Kharkoff, who was fabulously rich, she might be expected to have valuable jewels, and these she might also be expected to dispose of, for various reasons common to women of her position. Her words to me at Bagatelle crossed my mind: "I am a thief on a bigger scale than you ever dreamed of." There was little doubt in my mind that at the present moment Léontine had Miss Dalghren's pearls.

The next thing was to get them, and I had no great fear of my ability to do that. I would go to Léontine and give it to her straight that unless she handed them over I would call on the Prefect of Police, and lay information for the rounding up of the whole mob: Ivan, Maxeville, or Chu-Chu le Tondeur, as he was known, the women souris d'hôtel and herself. I would tell her in strong terms that they had played it rotten low on me. Here was I, who a few weeks before had got myself pinched to save their hides, being used as a shield for them to crawl behind when they stole pearls from the house of the people who had saved me a life sentence. This would be a dangerous game for me, I knew, but I never scared worth a cent, and by the time I got to the office I was so tearing mad that I asked nothing better than to take on the whole slimy gang.

So I sent Léontine a pneumatique to say that she could take her choice between meeting me at Bagatelle the next morning at eleven or later in the day at the Prefecture of Police. I knew that she might not be able to get away from Kharkoff in the afternoon or evening, but as he was A.D.C. to one of the Grand Dukes and supposed to report every morning before mid-day, the chances were that the girl could manage a morning rendezvous.

That night, at about eleven, I went into the Automobile Club. There was a baccarat game already going, and meeting an acquaintance, who was manager of a motor concern near our office, the pair of us strolled in to watch the play. Almost the first person my eyes rested on was John. His back was turned to us, but my acquaintance had recognised him also and said to me:

I assented, and we turned our attention to the game. But my mind was not on the table. I was thinking of John and his loss of the night before; a loss that he could ill afford, as we needed every cent that could be scraped together for our business. But what interested me even more was Kharkoff's journey to London. I had little doubt that Léontine would take the pearls with her, to dispose of in England. If the Prince were to make an early start for the run to Boulogne, Léontine might not be able to meet me at Bagatelle—or at least, this would be so difficult that she might prefer to run the risk of my fulfilling my threat.

If possible, then, I must manage to see her that very night. It seemed likely that Kharkoff would want to follow up his luck at the tables, and, having once started to play, he might be counted on as a fixture until the game closed. This would give me a chance to see Léontine; and, for that matter, the sooner I had it out with her over the pearls the better.

So I found an inconspicuous corner near the door and waited. As the game proceeded it appeared that John was winning, and I decided to have a straight talk with him the next day and try to persuade him to leave baccarat alone. The chances were, I thought, that if he managed to recoup to any extent he would listen to reason, being a good-natured sort of chap and not hard to influence.

With the inside knowledge that I had it was not difficult to reconstruct the theft of Mary Dalghren's pearls. Léontine, I thought, was behind the whole dirty business. She was playing a double game, or possibly a triple one; the pearls themselves, an act of revenge and spite against a girl she no doubt considered to be her successful rival, and, finally, the chance of driving me back to the Under-World. Jealousy had probably induced her to do what she would never for a moment have thought of doing otherwise. She had leaped to the conclusion that I was in love with Miss Dalghren, and had decided that it was this, more than gratitude, which had led me to stick to my good resolutions.

Therefore she had made up her mind to get the pearls, thinking that, even if the actual suspicion did not fall upon me, I would, nevertheless, be held in a measure to blame, and that this might lead to a rupture with my benefactors which would drive me back to my old life. So she had seen Ivan and persuaded him to undertake the job. This, I thought, had not been very easy for her to do. I had read Ivan's character as that of a man of soul and sentiment. He was an enemy to Society, like the rest of them, but his Slavic nature was warm and emotional, and I knew that he had deeply appreciated the sacrifice that I had made when I surrendered my liberty in order to save himself and the others. During the time that I was in the Santé he had sent one of his gang, disguised as a priest, to tell me that if money could help me to get my freedom I might rest assured that none would be spared in the attempt.

But Léontine's persuasion had overcome his scruples. The girl was an indispensable ally to him in his work, and I more than half-suspected that he was himself in love with her. I remembered how his lustrous eyes had glowed as they rested on her the night of the dinner-party at Léontine's house. He had accordingly undertaken the theft, and the opportunity to carry it off had come sooner and more easily, no doubt, than he had hoped for. On meeting Miss Dalghren by chance at the Billings dinner he had sent a word to Chu-Chu to get on the job. It was even possible that Chu-Chu himself had been at the dinner, for as M. de Maxeville, clubman and officier de la légion d'honneur, he went a good deal in Society. Chu-Chu might have left early, and have been in or about the Cuttynge's house when Miss Dalghren got home. Miss Dalghren had said that after playing the harp Ivan had brought her a glass of orangeade which had a queer taste, as if from some liqueur. It was possible that Ivan had drugged the beverage with an opiate not strong enough to take immediate effect but which would ensure of her not waking once she fell asleep. Miss Dalghren had remarked that she had never felt so sleepy in her life and had awakened with a splitting headache.

The chance of Edith being asleep, and John at the club, had made Chu-Chu's work only too easy. Knowing the ruthless character of the man, the only thing that surprised me was that he had not continued his efforts and gone upstairs to crack the safe, either gagging or strangling Edith, for Chu-Chu was a killer. But no doubt Ivan's instructions had strictly forbidden anything of this sort and Chu-Chu had not dared to disobey.

This was the way I reasoned it out; and whether the details were accurate or not, I had no doubt that the main features were correct. I was firmly convinced that Ivan would never have played me such a trick but for Léontine's influence. There is a professional etiquette observed between thieves of the highest class, just as there is between swell members of other professions; and although it is not always strictly adhered to, there was in this case a strong obligation to me. As to the location of the pearls, I was sure that they were now in Léontine's posses sion, having been first turned over to Ivan by Chu-Chu and then delivered to Léontine by Ivan, that she might dispose of them in England or elsewhere.

I had not long to wait. There was a rustle in the corridor, a light step, and Léontine entered. She wore the evening gown of orange-coloured chiffon which I remembered, and for a moment the inhuman beauty of her almost took away my breath, just as it had at our first meeting. There was a warm flush on her cheeks and her eyes shone like yellow diamonds.

"Horribly," she threw back her head and laughed. My word, but the pearls which she had stolen were no more perfect than her teeth, nor of a purer quality than her round throat. There was nothing artificial about the laugh either. It was low and gurgling and as full of real mirth as though what she had done were the funniest thing that ever happened.

Her eyes danced. "There were two reasons," said she. "First, I wanted to get you back to your own again. The other was because I hate that lump of a girl you are always with. The last time we met it was all that I could do to keep from slashing her across the face with my crop. You don't really care for her, do you, Frank? Such a lump of a flaxen-headed doll."

"I do know," I answered. "They are here. Hand them over, Léontine. Your plot has failed. My friends believe in me as much as ever, but they think that my old pals have played it on me mighty low. So do I. Why don't you tell the truth and say that you wanted the money and knew that you ran no risk because, owing to what they did for me, the hands of the victims were tied?"

"I came to get the pearls," I said, "and something tells me that I am going to succeed. If you stole them for the reason that you say, you might as well give them back. Your plan has absolutely failed. I have always played fair myself, and was fool enough to have a little sentiment about honour amongst thieves. But I know better now. This experience alone would be enough to sicken me with graft and start me on the level, even if there were no other reasons. But then, I was an American crook, and that makes a difference."

"You are a fool, Frank," she said, breathing hard. "You may think that your friends still believe in you, but they don't. Of course, they would pretend to, to save their own self-respect. Have they said anything to you about your handkerchief found in that girl's room and your monogram cigarette—and the prints of your tennis shoes on the path outside——?"

"Yes," I snarled, "I. What's the matter with you, girl? Haven't you got good sense? You make me sick! Why, just look at it; the other night I had a good-enough job all done down there at the Cuttynge s house. I'd done all that I set out to do. And because you made me lose my head with your hugs and kisses, we smashed around like a brace of drunken dagoes and roused up the house and had to do a quick get-away. Then when I saw the agent about to nab the car I tackled him, broken arm and all, and held him while the rest of you quit it. Don't you suppose that I could have saved my bacon if I'd had a mind to? Broken arm or not, I'd have been over the wall opposite and away from there like a scared cat. Do I look like the sort of goop to get collared by a French cop? And the rest of you would have got nailed. Now what do I get in return? You send that animal, Chu-Chu, to rob the house of the people who saved me a life sentence, and get away with a rope of pearls and stick the blame on me, knowing well that my friends have got to sit tight and take it on account of what they did for me. And now you have the cast-iron nerve to tell me that I'm to sit tight and take it, too. No! You don't know me girl. Hand over those pearls, and be quick about it, or by the Power that made us both wrong I'll have you and your whole filthy mob in the dock. I've seen some dirty tricks in my life, but never such a skunk game as this."

Leontine had drawn back and was staring at me with a white face and flaming eyes. For a moment she raised her hands to her temples, standing rigid and erect, and with a curious expression as of a person who thinks deeply and with strong intensity. Then suddenly her face seemed to stiffen. She dropped her arms, and, turning, rushed to a little writing desk in the corner of the room.

"I'll wring Ivan's snipe neck, you cat!" I growled, "and I'll skin Chu-Chu with his own knife. Do you think you can scare me with your mob o' yellow crooks? Scare 'Tide-water Clam'? Do you think there's an ounce of scare in 'The Swell'? Did you think so when I stepped in front of you and took the bullet you would have got? You're up against an American, you slut, and, crook or no crook, he's good for you and your dago bunch." And with that, my friend, and perhaps I should shame to tell it, but I don't, I loosed her two wrists, shifted my grip like lightning to her soft, round shoulders, and shook her so savagely that her hair came tumbling over her face.

"There, Frank," said she, rising and turning to me, as smooth and sleek and unruffled as though she had never been mauled about like a mutinous school boy. She had pushed back her short, wavy hair, and jammed down over it the gold band which she usually wore to keep it in place and which had flown off when I gave her the shaking; and to look at her, no one would ever have guessed that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Such rows, after all, are food and drink to women of the Léontine sort; they love the excitement, and like to rouse the dominant male in the man on whom their fancy happens to rest. But I thought she would have some blue fingermarks on her shoulders the following day.

"There's a lot of bad, too. When you threw me over there on the divan I wanted to murder you. I meant to call up Ivan after you had left and tell him what had happened. You would never have lived to go to the prefecture, Frank. But when you reminded me that the pistol was right beside me and I found that I could not shoot—then I knew."

So out I went and walked across to the Chausée de la Muette, where there is a cab-stand. It was a good hour to find Ivan, I thought, for people of the Under-World don't waste the night in sleeping. His address was on the note and my taxi pulled up in front of a charming little house over by the Parc Monceau. A sharp-eyed manservant opened the door and took my card, saying that he would see if M. le Comte was at home; for Ivan sported a title. The man returned at once and asked me to follow him. We went up a flight of stairs and I was shown into a very handsome and practical-looking office, where Ivan himself, in a velvet costume d'intérieur was seated at a fine mahogany desk.

"I cannot tell you how delighted I was to learn of your release," said he. "The whole situation was most dramatic; such a chain of circumstance as one might expect to find in a book or a play, but seldom finds in real life, even in a profession so full of startling incident as my own. Fancy being confronted by your own half-brother while working a strange house, and calmly receiving his bullet rather than to fire upon your own flesh and blood."

"Monsieur," said I, leaning forward and fastening his brilliant eyes with mine, "I have been a successful thief for a good many years. The profession interested me not only from its money profit and excitement but also from the purely artistic point of view. I enjoyed exercising my wit and skill against the difficult problems presented, and have always been fascinated by the interest of the stalk. A big, dark, silent house which I knew to contain treasure appealed to me in much the same way that a dangerous gold country might appeal to the prospector. I never stole from poor people, and there has never been a time when I would not have filled a position of trust, such as that of cashier in a savings bank, with scrupulous honesty. This was not because of any conscientous principle, but merely a sportsman-like instinct. My purse has always been open to the needy and I have never let a just debt go unpaid."

"If what you say is true," I went on, "how was it that you could bring yourself to take advantage of a pal whose hands were tied by his given word and use him as a scapegoat for your own gain? Monsieur, theft is theft, of course, and in this wicked world of ours every man is for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost. That seems to be the motto that most people live by—from the pickpocket to the high financier. But as I see it, monsieur, it is a d——d poor motto for people who pretend to have any code of honour of their own, even though that code is one not generally recognised."

"I believe you," I answered. "Nor are you accustomed to the sort of act that causes it. I'd be willing to stake my life that this is the first time in yours that you ever paid a man for saving you and your gang by shoving a job on him as you have on me. You are a master-criminal and you couldn't be unless you were a big man. Big men don't do petty things. I know my human nature, monsieur, and I place you as gentleman born, like myself, who, for reasons of his own, has taken up crime as a profession. But in your world you are known to be square and generous and laid out on large lines. When I was in the Santé you offered to back me with your fund and you would have done it, too. And then, when I get out, by a miracle, you turn around and steal from me something that I value a lot more than my liberty. Are you proud of that job, monsieur?"

"I can't tell. But they consider the loss to have come as the result of what they did for me, and that very act of theirs ties their hands. Worst of all, those pearls were the entire fortune of a poor girl, a penniless music-teacher. Her father died bankrupt, and these pearls that she had from her mother was all that she saved. I am telling you the truth. Of course, a consistent thief doesn't consider the sentimental side. But there were other things to be considered in this job, principally myself."

His face cleared, then clouded again. "I'll have a bad time with Léontine," he said, "and worse with Chu-Chu. But Chu-Chu can go to the devil. I've had nearly enough of Chu-Chu. He wanted to go after the other string—Mrs. Cuttynge's. But I flatly forbade that. I knew that Chu-Chu would never go out of the house without killing somebody. An unusual man, Mr. Clamart. He is purely criminal, with absolutely no saving grace of soul. He would rather kill than not. It is a pity, because he is the most able operator that I have ever known. But between. you and me, I distrust Chu-Chu. There was a job I worked up some time ago and Chu-Chu carried it off brilliantly, but I have since had reason to suspect that he held back some of the loot. If I could be sure of this, Chu-Chu would never get an other piece of work from me. Look here, Mr. Clamart, have you absolutely decided to quit the field? I've got a big thing for next week. Is it true that you are no longer one of us?"

As soon as I got back to my rooms I wrote a pneumatique to Léontine telling her of my success with Ivan and asking her to say nothing about our interview, as I wished Ivan to believe that I had counted entirely on his sense of fairness. This would suit Léontine, I thought, as she would not care to have Ivan know, if it could be helped, that after persuading him to steal the pearls she would turn around and give them back again.

I slept well that night and went to the office the next morning with a light heart. John was coming in at eleven to go with me to take out a prospective client. But at ten, as I was busy writing in the private office, the door burst suddenly open and in came John. His face was pale and pasty and there were heavy puffs under his eyes. He looked like a man half-drunk, and for that matter there was a reek of liquor in his breath.