r your future good behaviour.
If ever you recognise me, and betray me to that solemn old ass, your
employer, remember, I expose it, and you with it to him. So now we
understand each other. I had not thought of this little dodge; it
was you who suggested it. However, I jumped at it. Was it not well
worth my while paying you that slight commission in return for a
guarantee of your future silence? Your mouth is now closed. And
cheap too at the price.--Yours, dear Comrade, in the great
confraternity of rogues,

"CUTHBERT CLAY, Colonel."

Charles laid his note down, and grizzled. "What's yours, Sey?"
he asked.

"From a lady," I answered.

He gazed at me suspiciously. "Oh, I thought it was the same hand,"
he said. His eye looked through me.

"No," I answered. "Mrs. Mortimer's." But I confess I trembled.

He paused a moment. "You made all inquiries at this fellow's bank?"
he went on, after a deep sigh.

"Oh, yes," I put in quickly. (I had taken good care about that,
you may be sure, lest he should spot the commission.) "They say
the self-styled Count von Lebenstein was introduced to them by
the Southampton Row folks, and drew, as usual, on the Lebenstein
account: so they were quite unsuspicious. A rascal who goes about
the world on that scale, you know, and arrives with such credentials
as theirs and yours, naturally imposes on anybody. The bank didn't
even require to have him formally identified. The firm was enough.
He came to pay money in, not to draw it out. And he withdrew his
balance just two days later, saying he was in a hurry to get back
to Vienna."

Would he ask for items? I confess I felt it was an awkward moment.
Charles, however, was too full of regrets to bother about the
account. He leaned back in his easy chair, stuck his hands in his
pockets, held his legs straight out on the fender before him, and
looked the very picture of hopeless despondency.

"Sey," he began, after a minute or two, poking the fire,
reflectively, "what a genius that man has! 'Pon my soul, I
admire him. I sometimes wish--" He broke off and hesitated.

"Yes, Charles?" I answered.

"I sometimes wish ... we had got him on the Board of the Cloetedorp
Golcondas. Mag--nificent combinations he would make in the City!"

I rose from my seat and stared solemnly at my misguided
brother-in-law.

"Charles," I said, "you are beside yourself. Too much Colonel Clay
has told upon your clear and splendid intellect. There are certain
rem