take a house
in the same street as their intended victim, make friends with him,
accomplish one or two creditable but very small business transactions,
always drawing on the reserve funds, which might even have amounted to a
few hundreds--and a bit of credit.

"Then the Brazilian diamonds, and the Parisians--which, remember, were
so perfect that they required chemical testing to be detected. The
Parisian stones are sold--not in business, of course--in the evening,
after dinner and a good deal of wine. Mr. Knopf's Brazilians were
beautiful; perfect! Mr. Knopf was a well-known diamond merchant.

"Mr. Shipman bought--but with the morning would have come sober sense,
the cheque stopped before it could have been presented, the swindler
caught. No! those exquisite Parisians were never intended to rest in Mr.
Shipman's safe until the morning. That last bottle of '48 port, with the
aid of a powerful soporific, ensured that Mr. Shipman would sleep
undisturbed during the night.

"Ah! remember all the details, they were so admirable! the letter posted
in Brighton by the cunning rogue to himself, the smashed desk, the
broken pane of glass in his own house. The man Robertson on the watch,
while Knopf himself in ragged clothing found his way into No. 26. If
Constable D 21 had not appeared upon the scene that exciting comedy in
the early morning would not have been enacted. As it was, in the
supposed fight, Mr. Shipman's diamonds passed from the hands of the
tramp into those of his accomplice.

"Then, later on, Robertson, ill in bed, while his master was supposed to
have returned--by the way, it never struck anybody that no one saw Mr.
Knopf come home, though he surely would have driven up in a cab. Then
the double part played by one man for the next two days. It certainly
never struck either the police or the inspector. Remember they only saw
Robertson when in bed with a streaming cold. But Knopf had to be got out
of gaol as soon as possible; the dual _role_ could not have been kept up
for long. Hence the story of the diamonds found in the garden of No. 22.
The cunning rogues guessed that the usual plan would be acted upon, and
the suspected thief allowed to visit the scene where his hoard lay
hidden.

"It had all been foreseen, and Robertson must have been constantly on
the watch. The tramp stopped, mind you, in Phillimore Terrace for some
moments, lighting a pipe. The accomplice, then, was fully on the alert;
he slipped the