_Having disposed of the pearls of the Princess Patricia at a price only eight per cent, below that at which you offered them to H. R. H. the Duke of Connaught, we beg to suggest that it is a waste of money for you to encourage the detectives and downright dishonesty for the detectives to encourage you. You have caused to be arrested unfortunate men suffering from chorea in Liverpool, Bremen, Genoa, Buenos Ayres, and Panama, as well as Mr. W. W. Lowry in Paris and W. W. Longman in the City of Mexico. For the last eleven months Whispering Willie has been in the Missouri State Penitentiary, where he is Number 317. Our Colonel Lowther has not St. Vitus's dance, is not an Englishman, and has not left New York! The Duke of Connaught, otherwise W. W. Lovell, of the Acme Vibrator Company, has a fine, strong barytone voice, has no scar on the back of his right hand, is too young to have gray hair, and his nose is not what it was when he was known as Mr. Lovell. We needed time to move about unwatched in New York, hence the elaborate false clues. We always plan our deals carefully and we are uniformly successful. We may inform you, in selfdefense, that we operate only on the rich enemies of society. Pearls and diamonds have ruined as many women as drink has ruined men or Wall Street has destroyed souls! We regard them as plunder to be recovered. You may be interested to know that we propose to induce one of our most famous high financiers to contribute a couple of millions to our surplus this month. At the proper time we shall supply the name and the particulars, in order that you may compare notes with the other patrons of_
The jewelers were inclined to regard the letter as a jest in very bad taste perpetrated by one of their number. But all denied it, and the communication was turned over to the police. The detective sergeant who was in charge of the case also thought the letter was a joke--until Mr. Boon told him he didn't see anything funny in the loss of a million dollars' worth of gems and a score of false arrests. He wondered, like the rest, whether there really was a syndicate, and presently found himself waiting for the news of the second exploit. "He fooled _me_" Boon confided to Donnelly. But what he really meant was that the man who impersonated the private secretary of the Duke of Connaught could fool anybody.