ity as your careful preservation of these
proofs of identity," came in ironic tones, "that all rogues are bowled
out, Jacobsen! I will admit that you had them well hidden. It was good
of you to find them. I had despaired of doing so myself!" With that the
speaker backed towards the open door.

"Inspector Pepys!" gasped Bernard Megger, swallowing between the words,
"I shall remember you!"

"You will be wasting grey matter!" replied the man addressed, and was
gone.

Megger, dropping heavily into the chair, saw that the departing visitor
had thrown a slip of pasteboard upon the carpet.

As the key turned in the lock, and the dim footsteps sounded upon the
stair, he lurched unsteadily to his feet, and, stooping, picked up the
card.

Simons, his man, returned half an hour later, having been detained in
his favourite saloon by a chance acquaintance who had conceived a
delirious passion for his society. He found his master locked in the
study--with the key on the wrong side--and, furthermore, in the grip of
apoplexy, with a crumpled visiting-card crushed in his clenched right
hand.

CHAPTER XI

MR. SANRACK VISITS THE HOTEL ASTORIA

Mr. J. J. Oppner and his daughter sat at breakfast the next morning at
the Astoria. Oppner was deeply interested in the _Gleaner_.

"Zoe," he said suddenly. "This is junk--joss--ponk!"

His voice had a tone quality which suggested that it had passed through
hot sand.

Zoe looked up. Zoe Oppner was said to be the prettiest girl in the
United States. Allowing that discount necessary in the case of John
Jacob Oppner's daughter, Zoe still was undeniably very pretty indeed.
She looked charming this morning in a loose wrap from Paris, which had
cost rather more than an ordinary, fairly well-to-do young lady,
residing, say, at Hampstead, expends upon her entire toilette in twelve
months.

"What's that, Pa?" she inquired.

"What but this Severac Bablon business!"

Assisted by her father, she had diligently searched that morning through
stacks of daily papers for news of the robbery in Victoria Street. But
in vain.

"Guess it's a false alarm, Zoe!" Mr. Oppner had drawled, in his dusty
fashion. "Some humorist got a big hustle on him last night. Like enough
Mr. Megger was guyed by the same comic that sent _me_ on a pie-chase!"

Zoe thought otherwise, preferring to believe that Inspector Pepys had
suppressed the news; now she wondered if, after all, they had overlooked
it.

"Is