with a knife scraped away the
porous white paper. Instantly there gleamed up at us the baleful
yellow of the gold. I shrugged my shoulders and spread out my hands.
The Earl of Chizelrigg laughed aloud and very heartily.

'You see how it is,' I cried. 'The old man first covered the entire
wall with this whitish paper. He heated his sovereigns at the forge
and beat them out on the anvil, then completed the process rudely
between the sheets of this paper from France. Probably he pasted the
gold to the wall as soon as he shut himself in for the night, and
covered it over with the more expensive paper before Higgins entered
in the morning.'

We found afterwards, however, that he had actually fastened the thick
sheets of gold to the wall with carpet tacks.

His lordship netted a trifle over a hundred and twenty-three thousand
pounds through my discovery, and I am pleased to pay tribute to the
young man's generosity by saying that his voluntary settlement made my
bank account swell stout as a City alderman.

5. _The Absent-Minded Coterie_

Some years ago I enjoyed the unique experience of pursuing a man for
one crime, and getting evidence against him of another. He was
innocent of the misdemeanour, the proof of which I sought, but was
guilty of another most serious offence, yet he and his confederates
escaped scot-free in circumstances which I now purpose to relate.

You may remember that in Rudyard Kipling's story, _Bedalia
Herodsfoot_, the unfortunate woman's husband ran the risk of being
arrested as a simple drunkard, at a moment when the blood of murder
was upon his boots. The case of Ralph Summertrees was rather the
reverse of this. The English authorities were trying to fasten upon
him a crime almost as important as murder, while I was collecting
evidence which proved him guilty of an action much more momentous than
that of drunkenness.

The English authorities have always been good enough, when they
recognise my existence at all, to look down upon me with amused
condescension. If today you ask Spenser Hale, of Scotland Yard, what
he thinks of Eugene Valmont, that complacent man will put on the
superior smile which so well becomes him, and if you are a very
intimate friend of his, he may draw down the lid of his right eye, as
he replies,--

'Oh, yes, a very decent fellow, Valmont, but he's a Frenchman,' as if,
that said, there was no need of further inquiry.

Myself, I like the English detective very