manner is clumsy; _he_ knows that, bless you,
but it's the only manner he can manage, and she is so adroit she can
sugar-coat even such a pill as that and coax people to swallow it. I
don't know anything about the Italian who is working with them down
here. But a gang of the Welch-Vaurigard-Sneyd type has tentacles all
over the Continent; such people are in touch with sharpers everywhere,
you see."

"Yes," Cooley interpolated, "and with woolly little lambkins, too."

"Well," chuckled Cornish, "that's the way they make their living, you
know."

"Go on and tell him the rest of it," urged Cooley.

"About Lady Mount-Rhyswicke," said Cornish, "it seems strange enough,
but she has a perfect right to her name. She is a good deal older than
she looks, and I've heard she used to be remarkably beautiful. Her third
husband was Lord George Mount-Rhyswicke, a man who'd been dropped from
his clubs, and he deserted her in 1903, but she has not divorced him. It
is said that he is somewhere in South America; however, as to that I do
not know."

Mr. Cornish put the very slightest possible emphasis on the word "know,"
and proceeded:

"I've heard that she is sincerely attached to him and sends him money
from time to time, when she has it--though that, too, is third-hand
information. She has been _declasse_ ever since her first divorce. That
was a 'celebrated case,' and she's dropped down pretty far in the world,
though I judge she's a good deal the best of this crowd. Exactly what
her relations to the others are I don't know, but I imagine that she's
pretty thick with 'em."

"Just a little!" exclaimed Cooley. "She sits behind one of the lambkins
and Helene behind the other while they get their woolly wool clipped. I
suppose the two of 'em signaled what was in every hand we held, though
I'm sure they needn't have gone to the trouble! Fact is, I don't see why
they bothered about goin' through the form of playin' cards with us
at all. They could have taken it away without that! Whee!" Mr. Cooley
whistled loud and long. "And there's loads of wise young men on the
ocean now, hurryin' over to take our places in the pens. Well, they can
have _mine_! Funny, Mellin: nobody would come up to you or me in the
Grand Central in New York and try to sell us greenbacks just as good
as real. But we come over to Europe with our pockets full o' money and
start in to see the Big City with Jesse James in a false mustache on one
arm, and Lucresha Borgy,