a scoundrel!" Sir Richard assented.

"He is not fit to live," Peter Ruff repeated.

"He contaminates the world with every breath he draws!" Sir Richard
assented.

"Perhaps," Peter Ruff said, "you had better give me his address, and the
name he goes under."

"He lives at a boarding-house in Russell Street, Bloomsbury," Sir
Richard said. "It is Mrs. Bognor's boarding-house. She calls it, I
believe, the 'American Home from Home.' The number is 17."

"A boarding-house," Peter Ruff repeated, thoughtfully. "Makes it a
little hard to get at him privately, doesn't it?"

"Fling him a bait and he will come to you," Sir Richard answered. "He is
an adventurer pure and simple, though perhaps you wouldn't believe it to
look at him now. He has grown fat on the money he has wrung from me."

"You had better leave the matter in my hands for a few days," Peter
Ruff said. "I will have a talk with this gentleman and see whether he is
really so unmanageable. If he is, there is, of course, only one way, and
for that way, Sir Richard, you would have to pay a little high."

"If I were to hear to-morrow," Sir Richard said quietly, "that Teddy
Jones was dead, I would give five thousand pounds to the man who brought
me the information!"

Peter Ruff nodded.

"It would be worth that," he said--"quite! I will drop you a line in the
course of the next few days."

Sir Richard took up his hat, lit another of Peter Ruff's cigarettes, and
departed. They heard the rattle of the lift as it descended. Then Miss
Brown turned round in her chair.

"Don't you do it, Peter!" she said solemnly. "The time has gone by for
that sort of thing. The man may be unfit to live, but you don't need to
risk as much as that for a matter of five thousand pounds."

Peter Ruff nodded.

"Quite right," he said; "quite right, Violet. At the same time, five
thousand pounds is an excellent sum. We must see what can be done."

Peter Ruff's method of seeing what could be done was at first the very
obvious one of seeking to discover any incidents in the past of the
person known as Teddy Jones likely to reflect present discredit upon him
if brought to light. From the first, it was quite clear that the career
of this gentleman had been far from immaculate. His researches proved,
beyond a doubt, that the gentleman in question had resorted, during
the last ten or fifteen years, to many and very questionable methods of
obtaining a living. At the same time, there was nothing