lliant creature
said. And after that I lost all interest in these bedside proceedings.
I referred the man to the _Chronicle_ office, the bank, and the
shipping-office, and requested as a special favour that Mr. Smith
should be sent for; also, on a journalistic afterthought, a reporter
from the _Chronicle_. The numbers of the bank-notes had been written
down. Oh yes, on the advice of the bank clerk, I had done this
carefully at the bank counter, and preserved the record scrupulously--in
the missing pocket-book.

The police--marvellous men--ascertained next morning that the notes
had been cashed at the Bank of New South Wales, in George Street,
within half an hour of the time at which I obtained them from the
savings bank. And that was the last I ever heard of them.

Twenty-four hours later I was called upon to identify an arrested
suspect who had been seen in the vestibule of the bank at the time of
my call. I did identify the poor wretch. He was the American reporter
who had been discharged from the _Chronicle_ staff. But nobody at the
Bank of New South Wales remembered ever having seen the man, and I
said at once that I could not possibly identify my assailant, not even
having known that any one had attacked me until I was told of it in
hospital.

The police appeared to regard me as a most unsatisfactory kind of
person, as I doubtless was from their point of view. But they had to
release the American, although, when arrested, he had two shining new
sovereigns in his ragged pockets, and was full of assorted alcoholic
liquors. Their theory was that in some way or another the American had
known of my movements and plans, and communicated these to a
professional 'strong arm' thief; that I had been shadowed to and from
the bank, and that I might possibly have escaped attack altogether but
for my addiction to byways.

Their theory did not greatly interest me. For the time the central
fact was all my mind seemed able to accommodate. My savings were gone,
my passage to England forfeited, my bank account closed, and--so my
hot eyes saw it--my career at an end.

XXII

From the medical standpoint there were no complications whatever in my
case; it was just as simple as a cut finger. Regarded from this point
of view, a broken head is a small matter indeed, in a youth of
abstemious habits and healthy life. Well, he was a very thoroughly
chastened youth who accepted the cheery physician's congratulations
upon his early