thousand different crooks from Maine to California, the report of whose
every operation had reached him in the natural course of business,
and every one of which he had studied in minutest detail. It had begun
through that--but at the bottom of it was his own restless, adventurous
spirit.

He had meant to set the police by the ears, using his gray-seal device
both as an added barb and that no innocent bystander of the underworld,
innocent for once, might be involved--he had meant to laugh at them and
puzzle them to the verge of madness, for in the last analysis they would
find only an abortive attempt at crime--and he had succeeded. And then
he had gone too far--and he had been caught--by HER. That string of
pearls, which, to study whose effect facetiously, he had so idiotically
wrapped around his wrist, and which, so ironically, he had been unable
to loosen in time and had been forced to carry with him in his sudden,
desperate dash to escape from Marx's the big jeweler's, in Maiden Lane,
whose strong room he had toyed with one night, had been the lever which,
AT FIRST, she had held over him.

The bus was on Fifth Avenue now, and speeding rapidly down the deserted
thoroughfare. Jimmie Dale looked up at the lighted windows of the St.
James Club as they went by, smiled whimsically, and shifted in his seat,
seeking a more comfortable position.

She had caught him--how he did not know--he had never seen her--did not
know who she was, though time and again he had devoted all his energies
for months at a stretch to a solution of the mystery. The morning
following the Maiden Lane affair, indeed, before he had breakfasted,
Jason had brought him the first letter from her. It had started by
detailing his every move of the night before--and it had ended with an