oncerning
the man whose dramatic and sudden arrest had, on that memorable
afternoon, so startled me.

"When I saw your face just now," he said, "I recognized you as being
at the Grand Hotel with Bell. Do you know," he laughed, "you were such
a close friend of the accused that you were suspected of being a
member of the dangerous association! Indeed, you very narrowly escaped
arrest on suspicion. It was only because the reception clerk in the
hotel knew you well, and vouched for your respectability and that
Biddulph was your real name. Yet, for a full week, you were watched
closely by the _surete_."

"And I was all unconscious of it!" I cried, realizing how narrowly I
had escaped a very unpleasant time. "How do you know all this?" I
asked.

But the Frenchman with the gold glasses and the big amethyst ring upon
his finger merely laughed, and refused to satisfy me.

From him, however, I learned that the depredations of the formidable
gang had been unequalled in the annals of crime. Many of the greatest
jewel robberies in the European capitals in recent years had, it was
now proved, been effected by them, as well as the theft of the
Marchioness of Mottisfont's jewels at Victoria Station, which were
valued at eighteen thousand pounds, and were never recovered; the
breaking open of the safe of Levi & Andrews, the well-known
diamond-merchants of Hatton Garden, and the theft of a whole vanload
of furs before a shop in New Bond Street, all of which are, no doubt,
fresh within the memory of the reader of the daily newspapers.

Every single member of that remarkable association of thieves was an
expert in his or her branch of dishonesty, while the common fund was a
large one, hence members could disguise themselves as wealthy persons,
if need be. One, when arrested, was found occupying a fine old castle
in the Tyrol, he told me; another--an expert burglar--was a doctor in
good practice at Hampstead; another kept a fine jeweller's shop in
Marseilles, while another, a lady, lived in style in a great chateau
near Nevers.

"And who exposed them?" I asked, much interested. "Somebody must have
betrayed them."

"Somebody did betray them--by anonymous letters to the police--letters
which were received at intervals at the Prefecture in Paris, and led
to the arrest of one after another of the chief members of the gang.
It seemed to have been done by some one irritated by Bell's arrest.
But the identity of the informant has never b