icle was a photograph of him standing smiling beside the Lord
Mayor as guest of the City of London. Oswald De Gex seldom allowed
himself to be photographed, but some enterprising Press photographer
had no doubt snapped him unawares.

His hesitation to be photographed--public man that he was--was but
natural. Wherever you hear of people in the public eye, male or
female, who will not allow their pictures to appear in the papers, you
may always suspect in that hesitation a dread of the raking up of some
hidden scandal. Many a face which has looked out upon us from a
pictorial newspaper or a "back-page" of one's daily journal, has
caused its owner much terror, and in more than one instance a rush
into obscurity to avoid the police.

Scotland Yard and the Paris Surete have many albums of photographs,
and it is not generally known that each day their counterparts are
searched for in the daily journals.

Oswald De Gex had on that memorable day become, against his will no
doubt, a lion of London. One heard nothing of Mrs. De Gex. She was
still at the Villa Clementini no doubt. Her name was never mentioned
in the very eulogistic articles which innocent men of Fleet Street
penned concerning the man of colossal finance. One can never blame
Fleet Street for "booming" any man or woman. A couple of thousand
pounds to a Press agent will secure for a burglar an invitation to
dine at a peer's table. Plainly speaking, in Europe since the war,
real merit has become almost a back number. Money buys anything and
anybody.

I fear that, young man as I still am, I am a fierce critic of the
manners of our times. I learned my, perhaps, old-fashioned ideas from
my father, an honest, upright, country parson, who loved to ride with
the hounds, who called a spade a spade, and openly denounced a liar
as such. He never minced matters, and stuck to his opinion, yet he was
a pious, generous, open-hearted Englishman, who had no use for the
"international financier," who has lately become the pseudonym for a
foreign adventurer.

The autumn days shortened and winter was approaching, for the east
winds blew chill across the Thames into my room as I shaved before my
window each morning. Mrs. Tennison was still in Lyons, and Harry
Hambledon went each morning to his sordid work at the Hammersmith
Police Court, either prosecuting or defending in small cases. His
eloquence and shrewdness as an advocate had more than once been
commented upon by the stipen