d laid before him. The words were few enough and simple
enough, yet they constituted for him a message written in the very ink
of tragedy. The notepaper was the notepaper of the Hotel de Paris, the
date the night before, the words few and unmistakable:

To the Manager of the English Bank. Please hand my letters to
bearer.

HENRY HUNTERLEYS.

He read it over, letter by letter, word by word. Then at last he looked
up. His voice sounded, even to himself, unnatural.

"You were quite right," he said. "This order is a forgery."

The manager was greatly disturbed. He threw open the door of his private
office.

"Come and sit down for a moment, will you, Sir Henry?" he invited. "This
is a very serious matter, and I should like to discuss it with you."

They passed behind into the comfortable little sitting-room, smelling of
morocco leather and roses, with its single high window, its broad
writing-table, its carefully placed easy-chairs. Men had pleaded in here
with all the eloquence at their command, men of every rank and walk in
life, thieves, nobles, ruined men and pseudo-millionaires, always with
the same cry--money; money for the great pleasure-mill which day and
night drew in its own. Hunterleys sank heavily into a chair. The manager
seated himself in an official attitude before his desk.

"I am sorry to have distressed you with this letter, Sir Henry," he
said. "However, you must admit that things might have been worse. It is
fortunately our invariable custom, when letters are addressed to one of
our clients in our care, to deliver them to no one else under any
circumstances. If you had been ill, for instance, I should have brought
you your correspondence across to the hotel, but I should not have
delivered it to your own secretary. That, as I say, is our invariable
rule, and we find that it has saved many of our clients from
inconvenience. In your case," the manager concluded impressively, "your
communications being, in a sense, official, any such attempt as has been
made would not stand the slightest chance of success. We should be even
more particular than in any ordinary case to see that by no possible
chance could any correspondence addressed to you, fall into other
hands."

Hunterleys began to recover himself a little. He drew towards himself
the heap of letters which the manager had laid by his side.

"Please make yourself quite comfortable here," the latter begged. "Read
your letters and