Of course, of
course. Very crafty, very crafty indeed. A beautiful woman could do
anything in the world with such a worm as he. The stage-door Johnnie
will be best caught by a chorus girl. Yes, yes, just so. Get one who is
out of an engagement or in debt--anything that will make her willing
and eager to accept a bribe. She will do the introducing; the rest you
can do yourself. Easy enough with such an ass as that fellow. Lovely
women and jolly chaps for companionship; a lonely house, music, dancing,
champagne; a famous French variety star heels over head in love with
him, letters, photographs, nights of revelry, and quarts of wine; and
then--_voila_, the fish is hooked!

Sworn in, by heaven! sworn in in a drunken fit, to wake and find himself
not only an Apache, but to have his vanity tickled, his empty head
turned, and his love of being thought a regular ladies' man pampered to
the full by being told that he is in reality the _king_ of the Apaches,
and that hundreds and hundreds of just such jolly fellows and girls as
he sees about him are willing and eager to do the little worm homage and
to be ruled by him as though he were actually royal.

It is an old, old game of yours, that, isn't it, Margot? So you have
caught many a fool in your day, wiser fools than this one, and sillier,
too, in their way, but none of them ever held his kingship beyond the
space of a month; none at all but that bolder rascal, the Vanishing
Cracksman.

And this little maggot of a Harry Raynor is the latest dupe, eh? Hooked
in a drunken moment, the silly gudgeon, hooked that you may get at St.
Ulmer and--get even--with the chap called De Louvisan. It must have been
a shock when you found what a cowardly cur the fellow is at heart.
Still there must be an accomplice, and there must be a strong incentive
to command the services of this one.

How did you work it, then? How get him to assist in that thing, if he
did assist? How lead him up to this abominable act regarding his own
father? Yes! To be sure, to be sure. Help you and your crew to St.
Ulmer's money and you'd help him to _his_: to be rid of a father who
kept him upon a short allowance, who disapproved of all the things and
all the people he cared for, and who treated him as though he were a
little foolish boy instead of a great, noble, splendid man, who ought to
be free to live like the king he was.

Oh, it would be easy: just the mere turning of suspicion after the other
thing was