CLOWNS AND CRIMINALS - Complete Series (Thriller Classics). E. Phillips Oppenheim

his easy-chair, and took up a bundle of papers which lay upon his desk. There was a sharp tap at the door.

      “Come in!” he said.

      Sir Richard Dyson entered. He was dressed quietly, but with the perfect taste which was obviously an instinct with him, and he wore a big bunch of violets in his buttonhole. Nevertheless, the spring sunshine seemed to find out the lines in his face. His eyes were baggy—he had aged even within the last few months.

      “Well, Mr. Ruff,” he said, shaking hands, “how goes it?”

      “I am very well, Sir Richard,” Peter Ruff answered. “Please take a chair.”

      Sir Richard took the easy-chair, and discovering a box of cigarettes upon the table, helped himself. Then his eyes fell upon Miss Brown.

      “Can’t do without your secretary?” he remarked.

      “Impossible!” Peter Ruff answered. “As I told you before, I am her guarantee that what you say to me, or before her, is spoken as though to the dead.”

      Sir Richard nodded.

      “Just as well,” he remarked, “for I am going to talk about a man who I wish were dead!”

      “There are few of us,” Peter Ruff said, “who have not our enemies.”

      “Have you any experience of blackmailers?” Sir Richard asked.

      “In my profession,” Peter Ruff answered, “I have come across such persons.”

      “I have come to see you about one,” Sir Richard proceeded. “Many years ago, there was a fellow in my regiment who went to the bad—never mind his name. He passes to-day as Ted Jones—that name will do as well as another. I am not,” Sir Richard continued, “a good-natured man, but some devilish impulse prompted me to help that fellow. I gave him money three or four times. Somehow, I don’t think it’s a very good thing to give a man money. He doesn’t value it—it comes too easily. He spends it and wants more.”

      “There’s a good deal of truth in what you say, Sir Richard,” Peter Ruff admitted.

      “Our friend, for instance, wanted more,” Sir Richard continued. “He came to me for it almost as a matter of course. I refused. He came again; I lost my temper and punched his head. Then his little game began.”

      Peter Ruff nodded.

      “He had something to work upon, I suppose?” he remarked.

      “Most certainly he had,” Sir Richard admitted. “If ever I achieved sufficient distinction in any branch of life to make it necessary that my biography should be written, I promise you that you would find it in many places a little highly colored. In other words, Mr. Ruff, I have not always adhered to the paths of righteousness.”

      A faint smile flickered across Peter Ruff’s face.

      “Sir Richard,” he said, “your candor is admirable.”

      “There was one time,” Sir Richard continued, “when I was really on my last legs. It was just before I came into the baronetcy. I had borrowed every penny I could borrow. I was even hard put to it for a meal. I went to Paris, and I called myself by another man’s name. I got introduced to a somewhat exclusive club there. My assumed name was a good one—it was the name, in fact, of a relative whom I somewhat resembled. I was accepted without question. I played cards, and I lost somewhere about eighteen thousand francs.”

      “A sum,” Peter Ruff remarked, “which you probably found it inconvenient to pay.”

      “There was only one course,” Sir Richard continued, “and I took it. I went back the next night and gave checks for the amount of my indebtedness—checks which had no more chance of being met than if I were to draw to-night upon the Bank of England for a million pounds. I went back, however, with another resolve. I was considered to have discharged my liabilities, and we played again. I rose a winner of something like sixty thousand francs. But I played to win, Mr. Ruff! Do you know what that means?”

      “You cheated!” Peter Ruff said, in an undertone.

      “Quite true,” Sir Richard admitted. “I cheated! There was a scandal, and I disappeared. I had the money, and though my checks for the eighteen thousand francs were met, there was a considerable balance in my pocket when I escaped out of France. There was enough to take me out to America—big game shooting in the far West. No one ever associated me with the impostor who had robbed these young French noblemen—no one, that is to say, except the person who passes by the name of Teddy Jones.”

      “How did he get to know?” Peter Ruff asked.

      “The story wouldn’t interest you,” Sir Richard answered. “He was in Paris at the time—we came across one another twice. He heard the scandal, and put two and two together. I shipped him off to Australia when I came into the title. He has come back. Lately, I can tell you, he has pretty well drained me dry. He has become a regular parasite a cold-blooded leech. He doesn’t get drunk now. He looks after his health. I believe he even saves his, money. There’s scarcely a week I don’t hear from him. He keeps me a pauper. He has brought me at last to that state when I feel that there must be an ending!”

      “You have come to seek my help,” Peter Ruff said, slowly. “From what you say about this man, I presume that he is not to be frightened?”

      “Not for a single moment,” Sir Richard answered. “The law has no terrors for him. He is as slippery as an eel. He has his story pat. He even has his witnesses ready. I can assure you that Mr. Teddy Jones isn’t by any means an ordinary sort of person.”

      “He is not to be bluffed,” Peter Ruff said, slowly; “he is not to be bribed. What remains?”

      “I have come here,” Sir Richard said, “for your advice, Mr. Ruff.”

      “The blackmailer,” Peter Ruff said, “is a criminal.”

      “He is a scoundrel!” Sir Richard assented.

      “He is not fit to live,” Peter Ruff repeated.

      “He contaminates the world with every breath he draws!” Sir Richard assented.

      “Perhaps,” Peter Ruff said, “you had better give me his address, and the name he goes under.”

      “He lives at a boarding-house in Russell Street, Bloomsbury,” Sir Richard said. “It is Mrs. Bognor’s boarding-house. She calls it, I believe, the ‘American Home from Home.’ The number is 17.”

      “A boarding-house,” Peter Ruff repeated, thoughtfully. “Makes it a little hard to get at him privately, doesn’t it?”

      “Fling him a bait and he will come to you,” Sir Richard answered. “He is an adventurer pure and simple, though perhaps you wouldn’t believe it to look at him now. He has grown fat on the money he has wrung from me.”

      “You had better leave the matter in my hands for a few days,” Peter Ruff said. “I will have a talk with this gentleman and see whether he is really so unmanageable. If he is, there is, of course, only one way, and for that way, Sir Richard, you would have to pay a little high.”

      “If I were to hear to-morrow,” Sir Richard said quietly, “that Teddy Jones was dead, I would give five thousand pounds to the man who brought me the information!”

      Peter Ruff nodded.

      “It would be worth that,” he said—“quite! I will drop you a line in the course of the next few days.”

      Sir Richard took up his hat, lit another of Peter Ruff’s cigarettes, and departed. They heard the rattle of the lift as it descended. Then Miss Brown turned round in her chair.

      “Don’t you do it, Peter!” she said solemnly. “The time has gone by for that sort of thing. The man may be unfit to live, but you don’t need to risk as much as that for a matter of five thousand pounds.”

      Peter