ts, and was signed
by a fictitious male name, which shows how carefully she had covered her
tracks. Both went through without question, and then the steel bonds
came into play. Henriette applied for a loan of one million five hundred
thousand dollars, offering the trust certificate for security. The
president of the Ohoolihan National wished to see some of her other
securities, if she had any, to which Henriette cordially replied that if
he would come to New York she would gladly show them to him, and
intimated that if the loan went through she wouldn't mind paying the
bank a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars for the accommodation. The
response was immediate. Mr. Bolivar would come on at once, and he did.

[Illustration: "'AFTER WHICH HE WILL COME TO NEWPORT'"]

"Now, Bunny," said Mrs. Van Raffles on the morning of his arrival, "all
you have to do is to put the one hundred bonds first in the vault of the
Amalgamated Trust Company, of West Virginia, on Wall Street. Mr. Bolivar
and I will go there and I will show them to him. We will then depart.
Immediately after our departure you will get the bonds and take them to
the vaults of the Trans-Missouri and Continental Trust Company, of New
Jersey, on Broadway. You will go on foot, we in a hansom, so that you
will get there first. I will take Mr. Bolivar in and show him the bonds
again. Then you will take them to the vaults of the Riverside Coal Trust
Company, of Pennsylvania, on Broad Street, where five minutes later I
will show them for the third time to Mr. Bolivar--and so on. We will
repeat this operation eighteen times in New York so that our visitor
will fancy he has seen one million eight hundred thousand dollars' worth
of bonds in all, after which he will come to Newport, where I will show
them to him twice more--making a two-million-dollar show-down. See?"

I toppled back into a chair in sheer amazement.

"By Jingo! but you are a wonder," I cried. "If it only works."

* * * * *

[Illustration: "MR. BOLIVAR WAS DULY IMPRESSED WITH THE EXTENT OF
HENRIETTE'S FORTUNE'"]

It worked. Mr. Bolivar was duly impressed with the extent of Henriette's
fortune in tangible assets, not to mention her evident standing in the
community of her residence. He was charmingly entertained and never for
an instant guessed when at dinner where Henriette had no less personages
than the Rockerbilts, Mrs. Gaster, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, Tommy Dare,
and