ly engaged in trimming his cigar ash on the edge of
the Limoges china saucer of his coffee set, looked up with an abrupt
laugh.

"No; I wouldn't care to go on record as being an advocate of crime," he
said whimsically; "that would never do. But I don't mind admitting quite
privately that it's been a positive regret to me that he has gone."

"Made too good 'copy' to lose, I suppose?" suggested Jimmie Dale
quizzically. "Too bad, too, after working up a theatrical name like that
for him--the Gray Seal--rather unique! Who stuck that on him--you?"

Carruthers laughed--then, grown serious, leaned toward Jimmie Dale.

"You don't mean to say, Jimmie, that you don't know about that, do you?"
he asked incredulously. "Why, up to a year ago the papers were full of
him."

"I never read your beastly agony columns," said Jimmie Dale, with a
cheery grin.

"Well," said Carruthers, "you must have skipped everything but the stock
reports then."

"Granted," said Jimmie Dale. "So go on, Carruthers, and tell me about
him--I dare say I may have heard of him, since you are so distressed
about it, but my memory isn't good enough to contradict anything you may
have to say about the estimable gentleman, so you're safe."

Carruthers reverted to the Limoges saucer and the tip of his cigar.

"He was the most puzzling, bewildering, delightful crook in the annals
of crime," said Carruthers reminiscently, after a moment's silence.
"Jimmie, he was the king-pin of them all. Clever isn't the word for him,
or dare-devil isn't either. I used to think sometimes his motive was
more than half for the pure deviltry of it, to laugh at the police and
pull the noses of the rest of us that were after him. I used to dream
nights about those confounded gray seals of his--that's where he got
his name; he left every job he ever did with a little gray paper affair,
fashioned diamond-shaped, stuck somewhere where it would be the first
thing your eyes would light upon when you reached the scene, and--"

"Don't go so fast," smiled Jimmie Dale. "I don't quite get the
connection. What did you have to do with this--er--Gray Seal fellow?
Where do you come in?"

"I? I had a good deal to do with him," said Carruthers grimly. "I was a
reporter when he first broke loose, and the ambition of my life, after
I began really to appreciate what he was, was to get him--and I nearly
did, half a dozen times, only--"

"Only you never quite did, eh?" cut in Jimmie Dale slyly. "