s party, there to receive
nearly $200,000 in bonds, and to set out with Mike Hurley for the
steamer.

After hurried parting injunctions from the Headquarters men, the two
travelers, accompanied by Conroy, to see them off, were rapidly driven
to the steamer. Punctually to the hour the hawsers were cast off, and
with barely time to say good-bye the cronies parted. A moment after the
screw began to turn, and the Cunarder's bow pointed toward England.

Arrived in Liverpool, the pair proceeded at once to London. Hurley, who
was as ignorant of foreign travel as of everything else, was easily
tricked by some tale of no evening trains for the Continent. Shinburne
plied him well with liquor, taking care to mix the bottles, and when he
had got him helplessly drunk he took the bonds and with his little
luggage slipped quietly off to the Continent, never to see his dupe or
his New York friends again.

He went to Germany, called himself "Count" Shinburne, bought an estate
and began to exercise large hospitality toward his neighbors.

No man on all the length of the Rhine was so popular as he. No man's
house and table, horses and gardens were so praised as his. In the eyes
of the beggar nobles of the Fatherland the man who could give such
dinners and in such succession, must belong to the choice members of the
human race. Day by day Max's position grew more solid. No breath was
ever whispered against him, and with a little prudence he might have
kept up his state and died in the odor of sanctity. But the taste of
grandeur was too sweet, the incense of his little world's flattery too
precious to run the smallest risk of losing it. His display exceeded his
means, but for nothing in the world would he have curtailed it.

Matters were in this way until he awoke one day to find his account
overdrawn on his bankers. Then it was that he began to remember his
operation in Greenwich street, and he seems to have thought that if he
succeeded in New York, surely nothing could stand in his way in some
sleepy town in Europe.

[Illustration: "WITH HORROR THE SISTERS SAW THE COUNTESS AIRING THE
HISTORIC BRACELET."--Page 68.]

He went to Brussels prospecting, and soon pitched upon an establishment
which he thought likely to reward his industry. But the result showed
that to walk into a bank when the way was left open, with the
authorities anxious to see him there, and to force his way in when the
entrance was jealously barred with the guardia