card sharps, agents for fake mining stocks, passers of
worthless checks, and confidence men of that sort. But it is not so
simple to thwart the vultures who prey on the gullibility and passions
of the so-called idle rich."

"There must be something you can do to get it on this fellow, though,"
persisted Craig.

"Well," considered the house man, "we have what might be called our
hotel secret service--several men and women operating entirely apart
from the hotel force of detectives who, like myself, are too well known
to clever crooks. Nobody knows them, except myself. There's one--that
girl over there dancing with that middle-aged man who has mail sent here
but doesn't live here. Could they be of use?"

"Just the thing," exclaimed Craig enthusiastically. "Can't you have her
get acquainted--just as a precaution--with that man? His name, by the
way, I understand is Sherburne."

"I'll do it," agreed Dunn, rising unostentatiously.

Just then I happened to glance across the floor and over the heads of
those seated at the tables at a door opposite us. It was my turn hastily
to seize Kennedy's elbow.

"Good God!" I exclaimed involuntarily.

There, in the further doorway of the tea room, stood Judson Seabury
himself!

Without a word, Craig rose and quickly crossed the dancing floor,
stopping before Mrs. Seabury's table. Instead of waiting to be
introduced, he sat down deliberately, as though he had been there all
the time and had just gone out of the room and come back. He did it all
so quickly that he was able in a perfectly natural way to turn and see
that Seabury himself had been watching and now was advancing slowly,
picking his way among the crowded tables.

From around my corner I saw Craig whisper a word or two to Mrs. Seabury,
then rise and meet Seabury less than halfway from the door by which he
had been standing.

The tension of the situation was too much for Mrs. Seabury. Confounded
and bewildered, she fled precipitately, passing within a few feet of my
table. Her face was positively ghastly.

As for Sherburne, he merely sat a moment and surveyed the irate husband
with calm and studied insolence at a safe distance. Then he, too, rose
and turned deliberately on his heel.

Curious to know how Craig would meet the dilemma, I watched eagerly and
was surprised to see Seabury, after a moment's whispered talk, turn and
leave the tea room by the same door through which he had entered.

"What did you do?" I as