ent as well as the points in his
favour; if a secret agent is to solve a mystery all the cards should
be put on the table. Those who half trust a professional man need not
be disappointed when results prove unsatisfactory.

A partial confidence reposed in me led to the liberation of a
dangerous criminal, caused me to associate with a robber much against
my own inclination, and brought me within danger of the law. Of
course, I never pretend to possess that absolute confidence in the law
which seems to be the birthright of every Englishman. I have lived too
intimately among the machinery of the law, and have seen too many of
its ghastly mistakes, to hold it in that blind esteem which appears to
be prevalent in the British Isles.

There is a doggerel couplet which typifies this spirit better than
anything I can write, and it runs:--

No rogue e'er felt the halter draw,
With a good opinion of the law.

Those lines exemplify the trend of British thought in this direction.
If you question a verdict of their courts you are a rogue, and that
ends the matter. And yet when an Englishman undertakes to circumvent
the law, there is no other man on earth who will go to greater
lengths. An amazing people! Never understandable by the sane of other
countries.

It was entirely my own fault that I became involved in affairs which
were almost indefensible and wholly illegal.

My client first tried to bribe me into compliance with his wishes,
which bribe I sternly refused. Then he partially broke down and, quite
unconsciously as I take it, made an appeal to the heart--a strange
thing for an Englishman to do. My kind heart has ever been my most
vulnerable point. We French are sentimentalists. France has before now
staked its very existence for an ideal, while other countries fight
for continents, cash, or commerce. You cannot pierce me with a lance
of gold, but wave a wand of sympathy, and I am yours.

There waited upon me in my flat a man who gave his name as Douglas
Sanderson, which may or may not have been his legitimate title. This
was a question into which I never probed, and at the moment of writing
am as ignorant of his true cognomen, if that was not it, as on the
morning he first met me. He was an elderly man of natural dignity and
sobriety, slow in speech, almost sombre in dress. His costume was not
quite that of a professional man, and not quite that of a gentleman. I
at once recognised the order to which he belong