continents, the only ones who
will not come here will be those whose faces are in every rogues'
gallery in the land,' I replied. 'It would be too much good luck to
find Bob and Delbras mixed up in this deal.'

'And yet,' declared he, 'I am willing to wager that it's the work of
Delbras _et al_. Who but he would have prepared himself with a full
assortment of paste jewels. Honestly, old man, don't you agree with
me?'

'Yesterday,' I replied, 'I was ready to swear that Greenback Bob and
his friend Delbras were circulating, perhaps issuing, those two-dollar
Government notes.'

'And what's to hinder you thinking so still, eh?'

'Only that it would be too much of a fairy story to find our work cut
out for us in such a way.'

Dave threw one sturdy leg across the chair nearest him, and settled
himself in his favourite attitude for an argumentative discourse.

'Young man,' he began, 'if you can find anything connected with this
White City that has sprung out of the lake and the prairie that has
not a touch of the Arabian Nights about it, I want to know where it
is. Can you show me anything more fairylike than this fairy city,
built, as it has been, in the teeth of time?'

'Oh----'

'I tell you it's all a miracle, a nineteenth-century miracle! To come
down to facts, now, you and I came here expecting to find Greenback
Bob, didn't we?'

'Yes, of course.'

'And we have good reason to believe that Delbras is also here. Not
much miracle about that, you'll admit.'

'No,' I assented, knowing that he must reach his climax in his own
way.

'No; I should say so! But here is a miracle, a regular White City
miracle. I wonder if Delbras and company know that--leaving a couple
of thousand of blue-coated Columbian guards out of the question, and
they're bright fellows, let me tell you--there are here three hundred
and odd picked detectives, a squad at every gate, and every gate and
every district connected by telephone with the main office here. Let a
suspicious character appear, click goes the nearest telephone, sending
the man's description to headquarters, and then, click, click, click,
to every district, every gate, every man, goes this same description.
Oh, the crooks whose faces are known will find a warm welcome here!
It's only the fine workers, who have been so successful that they are
not well known, who can make hay in this place.'

'All the same,' I here submitted, 'for such fellows as Delbras and his
ilk, who k