life running to earth men who are
waging war against Society, well, he must not grumble if he receives
some hard knocks in return.

After these preliminaries I will proceed to show how I came to be mixed
up in the most curious case it has ever been my good, or evil, fortune
to encounter. It showed me a side of human nature I had not met before,
and it brought me the greatest happiness a man can ever hope to find.

CHAPTER II

All business London, and a good many other people besides, must remember
the famous United Empire Bank Fraud. Bonds had been stolen and
negotiated, vast sums of money were discovered to be missing, and the
manager and one of the directors were absent also. So cleverly had the
affair been worked, and so flaring were the defalcations, that had it
not been for the public-spirited behaviour and generosity of two of the
directors, the position of the bank would have been most seriously
compromised, if not shattered altogether. How the culprits had managed
to slip through the fingers of the law in the first place no one could
say, but the fact remains that they were able to get out of England,
without, apparently, leaving a trace of their intentions or their
whereabouts behind them. Scotland Yard took the matter up with its usual
promptness, and at first were confident of success. They set their
cleverest detectives to work upon it, and it was not until more than a
month had elapsed that the men engaged were compelled most reluctantly
to admit their defeat. They had done their best: it was the system under
which they worked that was to blame. In the detection of crime, or in
the tracing of a criminal, it is best, as in every other walk of life,
to be original.

One morning on arriving at my office I found a letter awaiting me from
the remaining directors of the bank, in which they inquired if I could
make it convenient to call upon them at the head-office that day. To
tell the truth I had been expecting this summons for nearly a week, and
was far from being displeased when it came. The work I had expected them
to offer me was after my own heart, and if they would only trust the
business to me and give me a free hand, I was prepared on my part to
bring the missing gentlemen to justice.

Needless to say I called upon them at the hour specified, and after a
brief wait was conducted to the board room where the directors sat in
solemn conclave.

The chairman, Sir Walter Bracebridge, received me on