d
for the part he played so acceptably. And when the Reception Committee
arrived they assumed that he was a friend of Madame Patti's. Upon his
arm it was, therefore, that she leaned when disembarking. All this was
done with a view to carry out a huge fraud, the detection of which
eventually brought him to ruin. The man was capable of filling any
position; but the life of adventure and ease which a criminal career
provided had a fascination for him.

Facts like these failed to convince Dr. Max Nordau when he called upon
me years ago. At his last visit I put his "type" theory to a test. I had
two photographs so covered that nothing showed but the face, and telling
him that the one was an eminent public man and the other a notorious
criminal, I challenged him to say which was the "type." He shirked my
challenge. For as a matter of fact the criminal's face looked more
benevolent than the other, and it was certainly as "strong." The one was
Raymond _alias_ Wirth--the most eminent of the criminal fraternity of my
time--and the other was Archbishop Temple. Need I add that my story is
intended to discredit--not His Grace of Canterbury, but--the Lombroso
"type" theory.

Raymond, like Benson, had a respectable parentage. In early manhood he
was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for a big crime committed
in New York. But he escaped and came to England. His schemes were
Napoleonic. His most famous _coup_ was a great diamond robbery. His
cupidity was excited by the accounts of the Kimberley mines. He sailed
for South Africa, visited the mines, accompanied a convoy of diamonds to
the coast, and investigated the whole problem on the spot. Dick Turpin
would have recruited a body of bushrangers and seized one of the
convoys. But the methods of the sportsmanlike criminal of our day are
very different. The arrival of the diamonds at the coast was timed to
catch the mail steamer for England; and if a convoy were accidentally
delayed _en route_, the treasure had to lie in the post office till the
next mail left. Raymond's plan of campaign was soon settled. He was a
man who could make his way in any company, and he had no difficulty in
obtaining wax impressions of the postmaster's keys. The postmaster,
indeed, was one of a group of admiring friends whom he entertained at
dinner the evening before he sailed for England.

Some months later he returned to South Africa under a clever disguise
and an assumed name, and made his way up co