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   "THE EPISODE OF THE JAPANNED DISPATCH-BOX"

(Chapter nine of _An African Millionaire: Episodes in
                 the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay_,
                             published in book form in 1897)

             by Grant Allen  (1848 - 1899)


'SEY,' my brother-in-law said next spring, 'I'm sick and
tired of London!  Let's shoulder our wallets at once, and I
will to some distant land, where no man doth me know.'

  'Mars or Mercury?' I inquired; 'for, in our own particular
planet, I'm afraid you'll find it just a trifle difficult
for Sir Charles Vandrift to hide his light under a bushel.'

  'Oh, I'll manage it,' Charles answered.  'What's the good
of being a millionaire, I should like to know, if you're
always obliged to "behave as sich"?  I shall travel *incog.* 
I'm dog-tired of being dogged by these endless impostors.'

  And, indeed, we had passed through a most painful winter. 
Colonel Clay had stopped away for some months, it is true,
and for my own part, I will confess, since it wasn't *my*
place to pay the piper, I rather missed the wonted
excitement than otherwise.  But Charles had grown horribly
and morbidly suspicious.  He carried out his principle of
'distrusting everybody and disbelieving everything,' till
life was a burden to him.  He spotted impossible Colonel
Clays under a thousand disguises; he was quite convinced he
had frightened his enemy away at least a dozen times over,
beneath the varying garb of a fat club waiter, a tall
policeman, a washerwoman's boy, a solicitor's clerk, the
Bank of England beadle, and the collector of water-rates. 
He saw him as constantly, and in as changeful forms, as
mediaeval saints used to see the devil.  Amelia and I
really began to fear for the stability of that splendid
intellect; we foresaw that unless the Colonel Clay nuisance
could be abated somehow, Charles might sink by degrees to
the mental level of a common or ordinary Stock-Exchange
plunger.

  So, when my brother-in-law announced his intention of
going away *incog.* to parts unknown, on the succeeding
Saturday, Amelia and I felt a flush of relief from
long-continued tension.  Especially Amelia--who was not
going with him.

  'For rest and quiet,' he said to us at breakfast, laying
down the _Morning Post_, 'give *me* the deck of an Atlantic
liner!  No letters; no telegrams.  No stocks; no shares.  No
_Times_; no _Saturday_.  I'm sick of these papers!'

  'The _World_ is too much with us,' I assented cheerfully. 
I regret to say, nobody appreciated the point of my
quotation.

  Charles took infinite pains, I must admit, to ensure
perfect secrecy.  He made me write and secure the best
state-rooms--main deck, amidships--under my own name,
without mentioning his, in the Etruria, for New York, on
her very next voyage.  He spoke of his destination to nobody
but Amelia; and Amelia warned Cesarine, under pains and
penalties, on no account to betray it to the other servants. 
Further to secure his *incog.*, Charles assumed the style
and title of Mr. Peter Porter, and booked as such in the
Etruria at Liverpool.

  The day before starting, however, he went down with me to
the City for an interview with his brokers in Adam's Court,
Old Broad Street.  Finglemore, the senior partner, hastened,
of course, to receive us.  As we entered his private room a
good-looking young man rose and lounged out.  'Halloa,
Finglemore,' Charles said, 'that's that scamp of a brother
of yours!  I thought you had shipped him off years and years
ago to China?'

  'So I did, Sir Charles,' Finglemore answered, rubbing his
hands somewhat nervously.  'But he never went there.  Being
an idle young dog, with a taste for amusement, he got for
the time no further than Paris.  Since then, he's hung about
a bit, here, there, and everywhere, and done no particular
good for himself or his family.  But about three or four
years ago he somehow "struck ile": he went to South Africa,
poaching on your preserves; and now he's back again--rich,
married, and respectable.  His wife, a nice little woman,
has reformed him.  Well, what can I do for you this
morning?'

  Charles has large interests in America, in Santa Fe and
Topekas, and other big concerns; and he insisted on taking
out several documents and vouchers connected in various ways
with his widespread ventures there.  He meant to go, he
said, for complete rest and change, on a general tour of
private inquiry--New York, Chicago, Colorado, the mining
districts.  It was a millionaire's holiday.  So he took all
these valuables in a black japanned dispatch-box, which he
guarded like a child with absurd precautions.  He never
allowed that box out of his sight one moment; and he gave me
no peace as to its safety and integrity.  It was a perfect
fetish.  'We must be cautious,' he said, 'Sey, cautious! 
Especially in travelling.  Recollect how that little curate
spirited the diamonds out of Amelia's jewel-case!  I shall
not let this box out of my sight.  I shall stick to it
myself, if we go to the bottom.'

  We did not go to the bottom.  It is the proud boast of the
Cunard Company that it has 'never lost a passenger's life';
and the captain would not consent to send the Etruria to
Davy Jones's locker, merely in order to give Charles a
chance of sticking to his dispatch-box under trying
circumstances.  On the contrary, we had a delightful and
uneventful passage; and we found our fellow-passengers most
agreeable people.  Charles, as Mr. Peter Porter, being freed
for the moment from his terror of Colonel Clay, would have
felt really happy, I believe--had it not been for the
dispatch-box.  He made friends from the first hour (quite
after the fearless old fashion of the days before Colonel
Clay had begun to embitter life for him) with a nice
American doctor and his charming wife, on their way back to
Kentucky.  Dr. Elihu Quackenboss--that was his
characteristically American name--had been studying medicine
for a year in Vienna, and was now returning to his native
State with a brain close crammed with all the latest
bacteriological and antiseptic discoveries.  His wife, a
pretty and piquant little American, with a tip-tilted nose
and the quaint sharpness of her countrywomen, amused Charles
not a little.  The funny way in which she would make room
for him by her side on the bench on deck, and say, with a
sweet smile, 'You sit right here, Mr. Porter; the sun's just
elegant,' delighted and flattered him.  He was proud to find
out that female attention was not always due to his wealth
and title; and that plain Mr. Porter could command on his
merits the same amount of blandishments as Sir Charles
Vandrift, the famous millionaire, on his South African
celebrity.

  During the whole of that voyage, it was Mrs. Quackenboss
here, and Mrs. Quackenboss there, and Mrs. Quackenboss the
other place, till, for Amelia's sake, I was glad she was not
on board to witness it.  Long before we sighted Sandy Hook,
I will admit, I was fairly sick of Charles's two-stringed
harp--Mrs. Quackenboss and the dispatch-box.

  Mrs. Quackenboss, it turned out, was an amateur artist,
and she painted Sir Charles, on calm days on deck, in all
possible attitudes.  She seemed to find him a most
attractive model.

  The doctor, too, was a precious clever fellow.  He knew
something of chemistry--and of most other subjects,
including, as I gathered, the human character.  For he
talked to Charles about various ideas of his, with which he
wished to 'liven up folks in Kentucky a bit,' on his return,
till Charles conceived the highest possible regard for his
intelligence and enterprise.  'That's a go-ahead fellow,
Sey!' he remarked to me one day.  'Has the right sort of
grit in him!  Those Americans are the men.  Wish I had a
round hundred of them on my works in South Africa!'

  That idea seemed to grow upon him.  He was immensely taken
with it.  He had lately dismissed one of his chief
superintendents at the Cloetedorp mine, and he seriously
debated whether or not he should offer the post to the smart
Kentuckian.  For my own part, I am inclined to connect this
fact with his expressed determination to visit his South
African undertakings for three months yearly in future; and
I am driven to suspect he felt life at Cloetedorp would be
rendered much more tolerable by the agreeable society of a
quaint and amusing American lady.

  'If you offer it to him,' I said, ' remember, you must
disclose your personality.'

  'Not at all,' Charles answered.  'I can keep it dark for
the present, till all is arranged for.  I need only say I
have interests in South Africa.'

  So, one morning on deck, as we were approaching the Banks,
he broached his scheme gently to the doctor and Mrs.
Quackenboss.  He remarked that he was connected with one of
the biggest financial concerns in the Southern hemisphere;
and that he would pay Elihu fifteen hundred a year to
represent him at the diggings.

  'What, dollars?' the lady said, smiling and accentuating
the tip-tilted nose a little more.  'Oh, Mr. Porter, it
ain't good enough!'

  'No, pounds, my dear madam,' Charles responded.  'Pounds
sterling, you know.  In United States currency, seven
thousand five hundred.'

  'I guess Elihu would just jump at it,' Mrs. Quackenboss
replied, looking at him quizzically.

  The doctor laughed.  'You make a good bid, sir,' he said,
in his slow American way, emphasising all the most
unimportant words: '*but* you overlook one element.  I *am*
a man of science, not a speculator.  I *have* trained myself
for medical work, at considerable cost, *in* the best
schools of Europe, and I do not propose *to* fling away the
results of much arduous labour *by* throwing myself out
elastically into a new line of work *for* which my faculties
*may* not perhaps equally adapt me.'

  ('How thoroughly American!' I murmured, in the
background.)

  Charles insisted; all in vain.  Mrs. Quackenboss was
impressed; but the doctor smiled always a sphinx-like smile,
and reiterated his belief in the unfitness of mid-stream as
an ideal place for swopping horses.  The more he declined,
and the better he talked, the more eager Charles became each
day to secure him.  And, as if on purpose to draw him on,
the doctor each day gave more and more surprising proofs of
his practical abilities.  'I *am* not a specialist,' he
said.  'I just ketch the drift, appropriate the kernel,
*and* let the rest slide.'

  He could do anything, it really seemed, from shoeing a
mule to conducting a camp-meeting; he was a capital chemist,
a very sound surgeon, a fair judge of horseflesh, a first
class euchre player, and a pleasing baritone.  When occasion
demanded he could occupy a pulpit.  He had invented a
cork-screw which brought him in a small revenue; and he was
now engaged in the translation of a Polish work on the
'Application of Hydrocyanic Acid to the Cure of Leprosy.'

  Still, we reached New York without having got any nearer
our goal, as regarded Dr. Quackenboss.  He came to bid us
good-bye at the quay, with that sphinx-like smile still
playing upon his features.  Charles clutched the
dispatch-box with one hand, and Mrs. Quackenboss's little
palm with the other.

  '*Don't* tell us,' he said, 'this is good-bye--for ever!' 
And his voice quite faltered.

  'I guess so, Mr. Porter,' the pretty American replied,
with a telling glance.  'What hotel do you patronise?'

  'The Murray Hill,' Charles responded.

  'Oh my, ain't that odd?' Mrs. Quackenboss echoed.  'The
Murray Hill!  Why, that's just where we're going too,
Elihu!'

  The upshot of which was that Charles persuaded them,
before returning to Kentucky, to diverge for a few days with
us to Lake George and Lake Champlain, where he hoped to
over-persuade the recalcitrant doctor.

  To Lake George therefore we went, and stopped at the
excellent hotel at the terminus of the railway.  We spent a
good deal of our time on the light little steamers that ply
between that point and the road to Ticonderoga.  Somehow,
the mountains mirrored in the deep green water reminded me
of Lucerne; and Lucerne reminded me of the little curate. 
For the first time since we left England a vague terror
seized me.  *Could* Elihu Quackenboss be Colonel Clay again,
still dogging our steps through the opposite continent? 

  I could not help mentioning my suspicion to Charles--who,
strange to say, pooh-poohed it.  He had been paying great
court to Mrs. Quackenboss that day, and was absurdly elated
because the little American had rapped his knuckles with her
fan and called him 'a real silly.'

  Next day, however, an odd thing occurred.  We strolled out
together, all four of us, along the banks of the lake, among
woods just carpeted with strange, triangular
flowers--trilliums, Mrs. Quackenboss called them--and lined
with delicate ferns in the first green of springtide.

  I began to grow poetical.  (I wrote verses in my youth
before I went to South Africa.)  We threw ourselves on the
grass, near a small mountain stream that descended among
moss-clad boulders from the steep woods above us.  The
Kentuckian flung himself at full length on the sward, just
in front of Charles.  He had a strange head of hair, very
thick and shaggy.  I don't know why, but, of a sudden, it
reminded me of the Mexican Seer, whom we had learned to
remember as Colonel Clay's first embodiment.  At the same
moment the same thought seemed to run through Charles's
head; for, strange to say, with a quick impulse he leant
forward and examined it.  I saw Mrs. Quackenboss draw back
in wonder.  The hair looked too thick and close for nature. 
It ended abruptly, I now remembered, with a sharp line on
the forehead.  Could this, too, be a wig?  It seemed very
probable.

  Even as I thought that thought, Charles appeared to form a
sudden and resolute determination.  With one lightning swoop
he seized the doctor's hair in his powerful hand, and tried
to lift it off bodily.  He had made a bad guess.  Next
instant the doctor uttered a loud and terrified howl of
pain, while several of his hairs, root and all, came out of
his scalp in Charles's hand, leaving a few drops of blood on
the skin of the head in the place they were torn from. 
There was no doubt at all it was not a wig, but the
Kentuckian's natural hirsute covering.

  The scene that ensued I am powerless to describe.  My pen
is unequal to it.  The doctor arose, not so much angry as
astonished, white and incredulous.  'What did you do that
for, any way?' he asked, glaring fiercely at my
brother-in-law.  Charles was all abject apology.  He began
by profusely expressing his regret, and offering to make any
suitable reparation, monetary or otherwise.  Then he
revealed his whole hand.  He admitted that he was Sir
Charles Vandrift, the famous millionaire, and that he had
suffered egregiously from the endless machinations of a
certain Colonel Clay, a machiavellian rogue, who had hounded
him relentlessly round the capitals of Europe.  He described
in graphic detail how the impostor got himself up with wigs
and wax, so as to deceive even those who knew him
intimately; and then he threw himself on Dr. Quackenboss's
mercy, as a man who had been cruelly taken in so often that
he could not help suspecting the best of men falsely.  Mrs.
Quackenboss admitted it was natural to have
suspicions--'Especially,' she said, with candour, 'as you're
not the first to observe the notable way Elihu's hair seems
to originate from his forehead,' and she pulled it up to
show us.  But Elihu himself sulked on in the dumps: his
dignity was offended.  '*If* you wanted to know,' he said,
'you might as well have asked me.  Assault and battery is
not the right way to test whether citizen's hair is
primitive or acquired.' 

  'It was an impulse,' Charles pleaded; 'an instinctive
impulse!'

  'Civilised man restrains his impulses,' the doctor
answered.  'You have lived too long in South Africa, Mr.
Porter--I mean, Sir Charles Vandrift, if that's the right
way *to* address such a gentleman.  You appear to *have*
imbibed the habits *and* manners of the Kaffirs you lived
among.'

  For the next two days, I will really admit, Charles seemed
more wretched than I could have believed it possible for him
to be on somebody else's account.  He positively grovelled. 
The fact was, he saw he had hurt Dr. Quackenboss's feelings,
and--much to my surprise--he seemed truly grieved at it.  If
the doctor would have accepted a thousand pounds down to
shake hands at once and forget the incident--in my opinion
Charles would have gladly paid it.  Indeed, he said as much
in other words to the pretty American--for he could not
insult her by offering her money.  Mrs. Quackenboss did her
best to make it up, for she was a kindly little creature, in
spite of her roguishness; but Elihu stood aloof.  Charles
urged him still to go out to South Africa, increasing his
bait to two thousand a year; yet the doctor was immovable. 
'No, no,' he said; 'I had half decided *to* accept your
offer--*till* that unfortunate impulse; but that settled the
question.  *As* an American citizen, I decline *to* become
the representative *of* a British nobleman who takes such
means *of* investigating questions which affect the hair and
happiness *of* his fellow-creatures.'

  I don't know whether Charles was most disappointed at
missing the chance of so clever a superintendent for the
mine at Cloetedorp, or elated at the novel description of
himself as 'a British nobleman;' which is not precisely our
English idea of a colonial knighthood.

  Three days later, accordingly, the Quackenbosses left the
Lakeside Hotel.  We were bound on an expedition up the lake
ourselves, when the pretty little woman burst in with a dash
to tell us they were leaving.  She was charmingly got up in
the neatest and completest of American travelling-dresses. 
Charles held her hand affectionately.  'I'm sorry it's
good-bye,' he said.  'I have done my best to secure your
husband.'

  'You couldn't have tried harder than I did,' the little
woman answered, and the tip-tilted nose looked quite
pathetic; 'for I just hate to be buried right down there in
Kentucky!  However, Elihu is the sort of man a woman can
neither drive nor lead; so we've got to put up with him.' 
And she smiled upon us sweetly, and disappeared for ever.

  Charles was disconsolate all that day.  Next morning he
rose, and announced his intention of setting out for the
West on his tour of inspection.  He would recreate by
revelling in Colorado silver lodes.

  We packed our own portmanteaus, for Charles had not
brought even Simpson with him, and then we prepared to set
out by the morning train for Saratoga.

  Up till almost the last moment Charles nursed his
dispatch-box.  But as the 'baggage-smashers' were taking
down our luggage, and a chambermaid was lounging officiously
about in search of a tip, he laid it down for a second or
two on the centre table while he collected his other
immediate impedimenta.  He couldn't find his cigarette-case,
and went back to the bedroom for it.  I helped him hunt, but
it had disappeared mysteriously.  That moment lost him. 
When we had found the cigarette-case, and returned to the
sitting-room--lo, and behold! the dispatch-box was missing! 
Charles questioned the servants, but none of them had
noticed it.  He searched round the room--not a trace of it
anywhere.

  'Why, I laid it down here just two minutes ago!'
he cried.  But it was not forthcoming.

  'It'll turn up in time,' I said.  'Everything turns up in
the end--including Mrs. Quackenboss's nose.'

  'Seymour,' said my brother-in-law, 'your hilarity is
inopportune.'

  To say the truth, Charles was beside himself with anger. 
He took the elevator down to the 'Bureau,' as they call it,
and complained to the manager.  The manager, a sharp-faced
New Yorker, smiled as he remarked in a nonchalant way that
guests with valuables were required to leave them in charge
of the management, in which case they were locked up in the
safe and duly returned to the depositor on leaving.  Charles
declared somewhat excitedly that he had been robbed, and
demanded that nobody should be allowed to leave the hotel
till the dispatch-box was discovered.  The manager, quite
cool, and obtrusively picking his teeth, responded that such
tactics might be possible in an hotel of the European size,
putting up a couple of hundred guests or so; but that an
American house, with over a thousand visitors--many of whom
came and went daily--could not undertake such a quixotic
quest on behalf of a single foreign complainant. 

  That epithet, 'foreign,' stung Charles to the quick.  No
Englishman can admit that he is anywhere a foreigner.  'Do
you know who I am, sir?' he asked, angrily.  'I am Sir
Charles Vandrift, of London--a member of the English
Parliament.'

  'You may be the Prince of Wales,' the man answered, 'for
all I care.  You'll get the same treatment as anyone else,
in America.  But if you're Sir Charles Vandrift,' he went
on, examining his books, 'how does it come you've registered
as Mr. Peter Porter?'

  Charles grew red with embarrassment.  The difficulty
deepened.

  The dispatch-box, always covered with a leather case, bore
on its inner lid the name 'Sir Charles Vandrift, K.C.M.G.,'
distinctly painted in the orthodox white letters.  This was
a painful contretemps: he had lost his precious documents;
he had given a false name; and he had rendered the manager
supremely careless whether or not he recovered his stolen
property.  Indeed, seeing he had registered as Porter, and
now 'claimed' as Vandrift, the manager hinted in pretty
plain language he very much doubted whether there had ever
been a dispatch-box in the matter at all, or whether, if
there were one, it had ever contained any valuable
documents.

  We spent a wretched morning.  Charles went round the
hotel, questioning everybody as to whether they had seen his
dispatch-box.  Most of the visitors resented the question as
a personal imputation; one fiery Virginian, indeed, wanted
to settle the point then and there with a six-shooter. 
Charles telegraphed to New York to prevent the shares and
coupons from being negotiated; but his brokers telegraphed
back that, though they had stopped the numbers as far as
possible, they did so with reluctance, as they were not
aware of Sir Charles Vandrift being now in the country. 
Charles declared he wouldn't leave the hotel till he
recovered his property; and for myself, I was inclined to
suppose we would have to remain there accordingly for the
term of our natural lives--and longer.

  That night again we spent at the Lakeside Hotel.  In the
small hours of the morning, as I lay awake and meditated, a
thought broke across me.  I was so excited by it that I rose
and rushed into my brother-in-law's bedroom.  'Charles,
Charles!' I exclaimed, 'we have taken too much for granted
once more.  Perhaps Elihu Quackenboss carried off your
dispatch-box!'

  'You fool,' Charles answered, in his most unamiable manner
(he applies that word to me with increasing frequency); 'is
*that* what you've waked me up for?  Why, the Quackenbosses
left Lake George on Tuesday morning, and I had the
dispatch-box in my own hands on Wednesday.'

  'We have only their word for it,' I cried.  'Perhaps they
stopped on---and walked off with it afterwards!'

  'We will inquire to-morrow,' Charles answered.  'But I
confess I don't think it was worth waking me up for.  I
could stake my life on that little woman's integrity.'

  We *did* inquire next morning--with this curious result:
it turned out that, though the Quackenbosses had left the
Lakeside Hotel on Tuesday, it was only for the neighbouring
Washington House, which they quitted on Wednesday morning,
taking the same train for Saratoga which Charles and I had
intended to go by.  Mrs. Quackenboss carried a small brown
paper parcel in her hands--in which, under the
circumstances, we had little difficulty in recognising
Charles's dispatch-box, loosely enveloped.

  Then I knew how it was done.  The chambermaid, loitering
about the room for a tip, was--Mrs. Quackenboss!  It needed
but an apron to transform her pretty travelling-dress into a
chambermaid's costume; and in any of those huge American
hotels one chambermaid more or less would pass in the crowd
without fear of challenge. 

  'We will follow them on to Saratoga,' Charles cried.  'Pay
the bill at once, Seymour.'

  'Certainly,' I answered.  'Will you give me some money?'

  Charles clapped his hand to his pockets.  ' All, all in
the dispatch-box,' he murmured.

  That tied us up another day, till we could get some ready
cash from our agents in New York; for the manager, already
most suspicious at the change of name and the accusation of
theft, peremptorily refused to accept Charles's cheque, or
anything else, as he phrased it, except 'hard money.'  So we
lingered on perforce at Lake George in ignoble inaction.

  'Of course,' I observed to my brother-in-law that evening,
'Elihu Quackenboss was Colonel Clay.' 
 
  'I suppose so,' Charles murmured resignedly.  'Everybody I
meet seems to be Colonel Clay nowadays--except when I
believe they *are*, in which case they turn out to be
harmless nobodies.  But who would have thought it was he
after I pulled his hair out?  Or after he persisted in his
trick, even when I suspected him--which, he told us at
Seldon, was against his first principles?'

  A light dawned upon me again.  But, warned by previous
ebullitions, I expressed myself this time with becoming
timidity.  'Charles,' I suggested, 'may we not here again
have been the slaves of a preconception?  We thought
Forbes-Gaskell was Colonel Clay--for no better reason than
because he wore a wig.  We thought Elihu Quackenboss wasn't
Colonel Clay--for no better reason than because he didn't
wear one.  But how do we know he *ever* wears wigs?  Isn't
it possible, after all, that those hints he gave us about
make-up, when he was Medhurst the detective, were framed on
purpose, so as to mislead and deceive us?  And isn't it
possible what he said of his methods at the Seamew's island
that day was similarly designed in order to hoodwink us?'

  'That is so obvious, Sey,' my brother-in-law observed, in
a most aggrieved tone, 'that I should have thought any
secretary worth his salt would have arrived at it
instantly.'

  I abstained from remarking that Charles himself had not
arrived at it even now, until I told him.  I thought that to
say so would serve no good purpose.  So I merely went on: '
Well, it seems to me likely that when he came as Medhurst,
with his hair cut short, he was really wearing his own
natural crop, in its simplest form and of its native hue. 
By now it has had time to grow long and bushy.  When he
was David Granton, no doubt, he clipped it to an
intermediate length, trimmed his beard and moustache, and
dyed them all red, to a fine Scotch colour.  As the Seer,
again, he wore his hair much the same as Elihu's; only, to
suit the character, more combed and fluffy.  As the little
curate, he darkened it and plastered it down.  As Von
Lebenstein, he shaved close, but cultivated his moustache to
its utmost dimensions, and dyed it black after the Tyrolese
fashion.  He need never have had a wig; his own natural hair
would throughout have been sufficient, allowing for
intervals.' 

  'You're right, Sey,' my brother-in-law said, growing
almost friendly.  'I will do you the justice to admit that's
the nearest thing we have yet struck out to an idea for
tracking him.'

  On the Saturday morning a letter arrived which relieved us
a little from our momentary tension.  It was from our enemy
himself--but most different in tone from his previous
bantering communications:--

       'Saratoga, Friday.

       'SIR CHARLES VANDRIFT--Herewith I return your
     dispatch-box, intact, with the papers untouched.  As
     you will readily observe, it has not even been opened.

       'You will ask me the reason for this strange conduct. 
     Let me be serious for once, and tell you truthfully.

       'White Heather and I (for I will stick to Mr.
     Wentworth's judicious sobriquet) came over on the
     Etruria with you, intending, as usual, to make
     something out of you.  We followed you to Lake
     George--for I had "forced a card," after my habitual
     plan, by inducing you to invite us, with the fixed
     intention of playing a particular trick upon you.  It
     formed no part of our original game to steal your
     dispatch-box; that I consider a simple and elementary
     trick unworthy the skill of a practised operator.  We
     persisted in the preparations for our coup, till you
     pulled my hair out.  Then, to my great surprise, I saw
     you exhibited a degree of regret and genuine
     compunction with which, till that moment, I could never
     have credited you.  You thought you had hurt my
     feelings; and you behaved more like a gentleman than I
     had previously known you to do.  You not only
     apologised, but you also endeavoured voluntarily to
     make reparation.  That produced an effect upon me.  You
     may not believe it, but I desisted accordingly from the
     trick I had prepared for you.

       'I might also have accepted your offer to go to South
     Africa, where I could soon have cleared out, having
     embezzled thousands.  But, then, I should have been in
     a position of trust and responsibility--and I am not
     *quite* rogue enough to rob you under those conditions.

       'Whatever else I am, however, I am not a hypocrite. 
     I do not pretend to be anything more than a common
     swindler.  If I return you your papers intact, it is
     only on the same principle as that of the Australian
     bushranger, who made a lady *a present* of her own
     watch because she had sung to him and reminded him of
     England.  In other words, he did not take it from her. 
     In like manner, when I found you had behaved, for once,
     like a gentleman, contrary to my expectation, I
     declined to go on with the trick I then meditated. 
     Which does not mean to say I may not hereafter play you
     some other.  *That* will depend upon your future good
     behaviour.

       'Why, then, did I get White Heather to purloin your
     dispatch-box, with intent to return it?  Out of pure
     lightness of heart? Not so; but in order to let you see
     I really meant it.  If I had gone off with no swag, and
     then written you this letter, you would not have
     believed me.  You would have thought it was merely
     another of my failures.  But when I have actually got
     all your papers into my hands, and give them up again
     of my own free will, you must see that I mean it.

       'I will end, as I began, seriously.  My trade has not
     quite crushed out of me all germs or relics of better
     feeling; and when I see a millionaire behave like a
     man, I feel ashamed to take advantage of that gleam of
     manliness.

       'Yours, with a tinge of penitence, but still a rogue,

                                       CUTHBERT CLAY.'


  The first thing Charles did on receiving this strange
communication was to bolt downstairs and inquire for the
dispatch-box.  It had just arrived by Eagle Express Company. 
Charles rushed up to our rooms again, opened it feverishly,
and counted his documents.  When he found them all safe, he
turned to me with a hard smile.  'This letter,' he said,
with quivering lips, 'I consider still more insulting than
all his previous ones.'

  But, for myself, I really thought there was a ring of
truth about it.  Colonel Clay was a rogue, no doubt--a most
unblushing rogue; but even a rogue, I believe, has his
better moments.

  And the phrase about the 'position of trust and
responsibility' touched Charles to the quick, I suppose,
in re the Slump in Cloetedorp Golcondas.  Though, to be
sure, it was a hit at me as well, over the ten per cent
commission.

(End.)