we hesitated to
sell them at their present market price. However, your instructions in
regard to these securities were definite and we have obeyed them.
Hoping this will meet with your satisfaction, we remain,

"Yours obediently,

"BERNSTEIN & DEUTSCH."

A draft on Drexel, Morgan's bank, for $1,000 dropped from Von Barwig's
hand; he picked it up mechanically and looked at it.

"The last, the very last, barely one-tenth the price I paid for them,"
he thought; and sighing, put the draft into a pocketbook and deposited
it in an inner pocket.

The other letter was from a detective agency in Eighth Street, and read
as follows:

"DEAR SIR: Call on us at your earliest convenience. We have news.

"HATCH & BUCKLEY."

That was all, but it was enough to cause Von Barwig to change hastily
from his slippers and dressing-gown to his shoes and hat; and to be out
in the street in less than one minute after reading the letter.

"News, news, news! Good God, is it possible? No, no! I mustn't
believe it; I dare not. Helene, Helene, my little girl! No, no, I
won't; I won't!" and he read the letter again. "After all," he mused,
"it may be news of a thousand little girls and yet not of mine. I beg
your pardon, madam!" In turning from Houston Street into the Bowery,
still reading the letter, he had bumped suddenly into a middle-aged
lady, who retaliated by deliberately pushing him back, at the same time
asking him a somewhat unnecessary question as to where he was going.
Then she had gone on her way without waiting to hear his apology.

Hatch & Buckley's private detective agency, situated just off Broadway
and Eighth Street, had a large office divided into several small
offices. For some occult reason only one person could get in or out at
a time, and this made confidential conversation a necessity rather than
a matter of choice. The senior member of the firm was in when Von
Barwig called. Be it understood at the beginning that this large,
stout personage, who invariably spoke in a whisper, and referred so
often to his partner, had no partner but a number of detectives on his
staff, to whom he was wont to speak or whisper of as partner when
discussing what they had ferreted out or left undiscovered. This man,
fat, florid, and fifty, had been a central office detective for many
years. After a time, being exceedingly useful in a political sense, he
had been admitted to the inner circle at Tammany Hall and was a