z, with his suite, left Liverpool, and he who had
attempted to blacken his character, and had succeeded in robbing Messrs.
Winslow and Vassall of L10,500, had completely disappeared."

The man in the corner readjusted his collar and necktie, which, during
the narrative of this interesting mystery, had worked its way up his
long, crane-like neck under his large flappy ears. His costume of
checked tweed of a peculiarly loud pattern had tickled the fancy of some
of the waitresses, who were standing gazing at him and giggling in one
corner. This evidently made him nervous. He gazed up very meekly at
Polly, looking for all the world like a bald-headed adjutant dressed for
a holiday.

"Of course, all sorts of theories of the theft got about at first. One
of the most popular, and at the same time most quickly exploded, being
that young Schwarz had told a cock-and-bull story, and was the actual
thief himself.

"However, as I said before, that was very quickly exploded, as Mr.
Schwarz senior, a very wealthy merchant, never allowed his son's
carelessness to be a serious loss to his kind employers. As soon as he
thoroughly grasped all the circumstances of the extraordinary case, he
drew a cheque for L10,500 and remitted it to Messrs. Winslow and
Vassall. It was just, but it was also high-minded.

"All Liverpool knew of the generous action, as Mr. Winslow took care
that it should; and any evil suspicion regarding young Mr. Schwarz
vanished as quickly as it had come.

"Then, of course, there was the theory about the Prince and his suite,
and to this day I fancy there are plenty of people in Liverpool, and
also in London, who declare that the so-called Russian police officer
was a confederate. No doubt that theory was very plausible, and Messrs.
Winslow and Vassall spent a good deal of money in trying to prove a case
against the Russian Prince.

"Very soon, however, that theory was also bound to collapse. Mr.
Fairburn, whose reputation as an investigator of crime waxes in direct
inverted ratio to his capacities, did hit upon the obvious course of
interviewing the managers of the larger London and Liverpool _agents de
change_. He soon found that Prince Semionicz had converted a great deal
of Russian and French money into English bank-notes since his arrival in
this country. More than L30,000 in good solid, honest money was traced
to the pockets of the gentleman with the sixteen quarterings. It seemed,
therefore, more than impro