to investigating Mrs. Stone and Nellie Mason, and I know the result
will be read with interest. There was no record at Peekskill that
showed that either of the ladies ever resided there. There was no
record in Lewiston of Nellie Mason's father or Nellie Mason. She had
never lived at Mrs. Gilbert's in East Thirteenth Street, but Miss
Frances West had, and, by the loquacious landlady, who knew about all
there was in this world worth knowing, and who had not kept a boarding
house all these years for nothing, I was advised to investigate Miss
West very sharply indeed. When I asked Mrs. Gilbert if she had not
heard of Miss West's marriage, she said: "Tut, tut, I do not believe
one word of it."

I was not long in determining beyond a doubt that Mrs. Stone sent the
telegram to herself, announcing her husband's death. She had
ingeniously sent it to her own number in West Twenty-seventh Street,
knowing that the messenger, when he found no such person on the west
side, would surely cross to East Twenty-seventh, and would not reach
the last number till after she had arrived home. While I was looking
up the telegram I heard that a detective was looking up a Miss Nellie
Mason from Peekskill, who, it was supposed, had purloined a beautiful
stem-winding, full jeweled Elgin, No. 10,427 from a gentleman from
Boston, who had been spending a short vacation in New York. It is
needless to add that there was no such person as Nellie Mason, and that
the money-order was not repaid.

When the first returns were in from London it was quite evident that
Mr. Stone had been elected by an unusually large majority. The highly
perfumed letters of recommendation that he brought over with him were
all false, the supposed writers never having heard of such a person.
He had been compelled to leave England because of a few slight slips of
the pen, which, at this time, it is not worth while to mention and that
at Lowestoft, where his parents resided, he was looked upon as a "very
slippery gentleman," whose true name was not Stone, but Hartley.

Not long afterward, and quite recently, Stone attempted by
misrepresentations to procure a large amount of money from certain Wall
Street brokers, which would enable him, he said, "to return to England
and live in splendor." But the scheme failed after he had procured a
few hundred dollars, and, instead of being permitted to enjoy the
magnificence of the old world, he suddenly found himself enjoying the
s