t remember you drew a quarter's
dividend from myself--last week--at this very counter."

Charles stared at him fixedly. "Show me the signature," he said at
last, in a slow, dazed fashion. I suspected mischief.

The clerk pushed the book across to him. Charles examined the name
close.

"Colonel Clay again!" he cried, turning to me with a despondent air.
"He must have dressed the part. I shall die in the workhouse, Sey!
That man has stolen away even my nest-egg from me."

I saw it at a glance. "Mrs. Quackenboss!" I put in. "Those portraits
on the Etruria! It was to help him in his make-up! You recollect,
she sketched your face and figure at all possible angles."

"And last quarter's?" Charles inquired, staggering.

The clerk turned up the entry. "Drawn on the 10th of July,"
he answered, carelessly, as if it mattered nothing.

Then I knew why the Colonel had run across to England.

Charles positively reeled. "Take me home, Sey," he cried. "I am
ruined, ruined! He will leave me with not half a million in the
world. My poor, poor boys will beg their bread, unheeded, through
the streets of London!"

(As Amelia has landed estate settled upon her worth a hundred and
fifty thousand pounds, this last contingency affected me less to
tears than Charles seemed to think necessary.)

We made all needful inquiries, and put the police upon the quest at
once, as always. But no redress was forthcoming. The money, once
paid, could not be recovered. It is a playful little privilege of
Consols that the Government declines under any circumstances to pay
twice over. Charles drove back to Mayfair a crushed and broken man.
I think if Colonel Clay himself could have seen him just then, he
would have pitied that vast intellect in its grief and bewilderment.

After lunch, however, my brother-in-law's natural buoyancy
reasserted itself by degrees. He rallied a little. "Seymour," he
said to me, "you've heard, of course, of the Bertillon system of
measuring and registering criminals."

"I have," I answered. "And it's excellent as far as it goes. But,
like Mrs. Glasse's jugged hare, it all depends upon the initial
step. 'First catch your criminal.' Now, we have never caught
Colonel Clay--"

"Or, rather," Charles interposed unkindly, "when you _did_ catch him,
you didn't hold him."

I ignored the unkindly suggestion, and continued in the same voice,
"We have never secured Colonel Clay; and until we secure him, we
cannot register him b