d a card, so to
speak. If he couldn't do that I guess he would be a pretty poor
conjurer. He had a lady of his own--his wife, let us say, or his
sister--stopping here at this hotel; a certain Madame Picardet.
Through her he induced several ladies of your circle to attend his
seances. She and they spoke to you about him, and aroused your
curiosity. You may bet your bottom dollar that when he came to
this room he came ready primed and prepared with endless facts
about both of you."

"What fools we have been, Sey," my brother-in-law exclaimed. "I see
it all now. That designing woman sent round before dinner to say I
wanted to meet him; and by the time you got there he was ready
for bamboozling me."

"That's so," the Commissary answered. "He had your name ready
painted on both his arms; and he had made other preparations of
still greater importance."

"You mean the cheque. Well, how did he get it?"

The Commissary opened the door. "Come in," he said. And a young man
entered whom we recognised at once as the chief clerk in the Foreign
Department of the Credit Marseillais, the principal bank all along
the Riviera.

"State what you know of this cheque," the Commissary said, showing
it to him, for we had handed it over to the police as a piece of
evidence.

"About four weeks since--" the clerk began.

"Say ten days before your seance," the Commissary interposed.

"A gentleman with very long hair and an aquiline nose, dark,
strange, and handsome, called in at my department and asked if I
could tell him the name of Sir Charles Vandrift's London banker.
He said he had a sum to pay in to your credit, and asked if we
would forward it for him. I told him it was irregular for us to
receive the money, as you had no account with us, but that your
London bankers were Darby, Drummond, and Rothenberg, Limited."

"Quite right," Sir Charles murmured.

"Two days later a lady, Madame Picardet, who was a customer of ours,
brought in a good cheque for three hundred pounds, signed by a
first-rate name, and asked us to pay it in on her behalf to Darby,
Drummond, and Rothenberg's, and to open a London account with them
for her. We did so, and received in reply a cheque-book."

"From which this cheque was taken, as I learn from the number,
by telegram from London," the Commissary put in. "Also, that on
the same day on which your cheque was cashed, Madame Picardet,
in London, withdrew her balance."

"But how did the fellow get me to