his hotel bill.

Since the day when he had stolen those notes from the coat pocket of his
accomplice, and locked him in the trap so that the police should arrest
him, and thus give him time to escape--for Silas P. Hoggan and Ralph
Ansell were one and the same person--things had prospered with him, and
he had cultivated an air of prosperous refinement, in order to move in
the circle of high finance.

After his escape across the Seine, he had sought refuge in the house of
a friend in the Montmartre, where he had dried the soddened bank-notes
and turned them into cash. Then, after a week, he had taken the night
_rapide_ to Switzerland, and thence to Germany, where in Berlin he had
entered upon financial undertakings in partnership with a "crook" from
Chicago. Their first venture was the exploiting of a new motor tyre, out
of which they made a huge profit, although the patent was afterwards
found to be worthless. Then they moved to Russia, and successively to
Austria, to Denmark, and then across to the States.

Losses, followed by gains, had compelled him of late to adopt a more
certain mode of living, until now he found himself in London, staying at
one of its best hotels--for like all his class he always patronised the
best hotel and ate the best that money could buy--and earning a
precarious living by finding "pigeons to pluck," namely, scraping up
acquaintanceship with young men about town and playing with them games
of chance.

As a card-sharper, Silas P. Hoggan was an expert. Among the fraternity
"The American" was known as a clever crook, a man who was a past-master
in the art of bluff.

Yet his friend's warning had thoroughly alarmed him.

The circumstance which had been recalled was certainly an ugly one.

He had found his victims there, in a swell bar, as he had often found
them. About many of the London hotels and luxuriously appointed
restaurants and fashionable meeting places are always to be seen young
men of wealth and leisure who are easy prey to the swindler, the
blackmailer, or the sharper--the vultures of society.

A chance acquaintanceship, the suggestion of an evening at cards, a
visit to a theatre, with a bit of supper afterwards at an hotel, was, as
might be expected, followed by a friendly game at the rooms of the elder
of the two lads at Knightsbridge.

Hoggan left at three o'clock that morning with one hundred and two
pounds in his pocket in cash and notes, and four acceptances of one
hu