ive at Liverpool Street station at ten
o'clock, and ten minutes after that hour I stepped from a cab at the
door of the great bank in Lombard Street.

"The manager," I said, hurriedly, to an individual in brass buttons
and greased hair, whose presence in the building was evidently for a
purely ornamental purpose. I was shown into a small glass room like a
green-house, where sat two managers, as under a microscope--a living
example of frock-coated respectability and industry to half a hundred
clerks who were ever peeping that way as they turned the pages of
their ledgers and circulated in an undertone the latest chop-house
tale.

"Mr. Howard," said the manager, with his watch in his hand. "I was
waiting for you."

"Have you cashed the draft?"

"Yes--at ten o'clock. The payee was waiting on the doorstep for us to
open. The clerk delayed as long as possible, but we could not refuse
payment. Hundred-pound notes as usual. Never trust a man who takes it
in hundred-pound notes. Here are the numbers. As hard as you can to
the Bank of England and stop them! You may catch him there."

He pushed me out of the room, sending with me the impression that
inside the frock-coat, behind the bland gold-rimmed spectacles, there
was yet something left of manhood and that vague quality called fight,
which is surely hard put to live long between four glass walls.

The cabman, who perhaps scented sport, was waiting for me though I had
paid him, and as I drove along Lombard Street I thought affectionately
of Miste's long thin neck, and wondered whether there would be room
for the two of us in the Bank of England.

The high-born reader doubtless has money in the Funds, and knows
without the advice of a penniless country squire that the approach to
the Bank of England consists of a porch through which may be discerned
a small courtyard. Opening on this yard are three doors, and that
immediately opposite to the porch gives entrance to the department
where gold and silver are exchanged for notes.

As I descended from the cab I looked through the porch, and there,
across the courtyard, I saw the back of a man who was pushing his way
through the swing doors. Charles Miste again! I paid the cabman, and
noting the inches of the two porters in their gorgeous livery,
reflected with some satisfaction that Monsieur Miste would have to
reckon with three fairly heavy men before he got out of the courtyard.

There are two swing doors leading into t