The Closing Net. Henry Cottrell Rowland

betting was pretty brisk. You know how it is out there—a lot of different windows for different amounts and the bettors filing up between the rails. The Russian goes to the one-hundred-frank slip, and I shove in beside him. There was a crowd ahead of us, so for the moment he left his money where it was, waiting to get to the window before hauling it out. He had on a long, light overcoat with slash pockets, and watching my chance I slipped my hand through and felt for the wad. I peeled one or two bills off, and was just cuddling the whole bunch, winking over my shoulder at Jeff, when clip! something closed on my wrist like a bear-trap! Body o' me! You'd never have thought to find such strength in a human fist! His fingers closed around my wrist like a vise, so that I couldn't even begin to straighten em out. Of course I didn't know it at the time, but his nibs was Prince Kharkoff, and he was in the habit of amusing his friends by such little parlour stunts as bending up five-franc pieces and tearing two-sou pieces apart!

      "Umph!" says he, blowing a mouthful of cigar-smoke in my face, and I could see his big white teeth shining through his beard.

      Everybody looked around, and the gendarme who was on duty at the booths steps up.

      Well, there wasn't much for me to say. The cop pulled back the overcoat, and the Russian lugged ​out my fist, still full of bills! I couldn't open it, mind you! Jeff was laughing fit to bust, but it took three cops to keep the crowd from mauling me. "À l'eau;" said they; "à l'eau!" Meaning, I take it, to first give me a bath in the water-jump. That's the way with Frenchies; they love a crook, as long as he doesn't get nailed. But let him once get caught, and they want to tear him apart, like a shot wolf in the pack!

      Well, sir, it was Cayenne for mine. Cayenne isn't in all ways like Palm Beach, and I didn't care for it much, but I perfected my French, the La Villette sort, and different from my early education in that tongue with Tante Fi-Fi. In the end I escaped and managed to get up to Demerara (George town, you know), where I joined the colony of peppers and became what they call a "Walla-baby." A Walla-baby is an escaped French convict who keeps alive by making a nasty mess of sorghum and chopped cocoanut and peddling it to the nigger piccaninnies at a total net profit of about five cents a day. "Voilà bébé Voilà, bébé!" says this merchant, and that's how he got the name.

      It wasn't much of a job, even when business was brisk, for the son of R. F.—but there, never mind the name. My inherited financial talent kept me from being satisfied even when I made a coup and cleared as much as fifty cents a week, so I pulled out and stowed away on a Royal Mail ship for Trinidad, and landed there, black and blue. The following day I tried to get a billet on an American yacht. While the captain was calling me several different kinds of a beach-comber there came down the deck ​a crusty-looking old lobster, and the minute he laid eyes on me he brought up all standing.

      "I've seen this man before," says he. "What's your name?"

      I told him one of those I'd traded under.

      "Huh," says he. "Don't know it." But he kept on staring at me, and I thought that maybe he had known my father and saw the likeness. So I pipes out, "Maybe you knew my father, sir." And I told him his name.

      He scowled at me for a moment, then his face got purple. You are a liar and a scoundrel!" says he. "I know the son of that man! You are not he, though you do look alike, and no doubt you have found out the resemblance and tried to work a relationship."

      I stared him straight in the eye. "Could you account for all of your own children—legitimate and illegitimate?" I asked. Then I turned to the gangway. While I was beckoning to my nigger the old fellow sings out:

      "Hold on a minute. Captain, give that man twenty dollars and let him go!"

      But I didn't wait for the twenty. Somehow, charity has always been out of my line. I don't mind taking it by force or stealth, but as a gift—nit!

      A week or so later I got a billet on a boat bound for New York, and once there I was all right-o, as I had a grub-steak salted away where I could get it; and as soon as I was rested up a bit and some of the sugar-fields fever rinsed out of me I was back on my old job again. Butler? Not on your life! ​Thief—the oldest profession in the world and instituted by father Adam himself, or, to be more accurate, by mother Eve, Adam being only the fence, like.

      Well, sir, as if to compensate for all I'd been through, everything ran my way for a while. Then they got to watching me pretty close, so I decided to take a European trip for my health. I went to London, but it was early spring, and the raw damp brought out my fever, so I lit out for Monte Carlo, and managed to drop the bulk of my wad, then went up to Paris, where the first man I ran into at the Moulin Rouge was my old pal, Jeff.

      We sat down and had a drink, then says he: "Look here, Frank, I'm off to a swell supper-party. Will you come? Any friend of mine will be welcome there."

      "Who are the people?" I asked.

      "The spread is being given by Léontine Petrovsky," says he. "She's a wonder; half French, half Polish. Nobody knows exactly what her lay is, but she's a good fellow and knows her little book. Some say she's a nihilist, others say she's the head of a French gang of thieves. Whatever her game may be it pays, all right. She's got a house over in Passy, near Ranelagh. Come on; you might meet somebody there that 'd be useful."

      I agreed, so we piled into a taxi and sped over across the city. We were both in evening dress and might have passed anywhere for a couple of English swells—the real thing. Jeff stopped the motor on a corner, and we got out and walked down a quaint little street and rang the bell of a big iron gate which opened into a garden. A footman in uniform let us ​in, and we followed him down a path with beds of flowers on either side. The house was a pretty little stone cottage with ivy growing over the walls and a big studio window at the top. As we reached the door we heard a lot of talking and laughter, which stopped suddenly as the door opened, then went on again.

      Four women and two men were in the room, but the only one I had any eyes for was a tall, dark girl in an orange-coloured chiffon gown that made her look like a nymph coming up out of some gorgeous lily. It was cut lower than you'd see anywhere except on the French stage, and she had a great rope of pearls, almost as deep as amber, and just matching her satin skin. I've seen some lovely women in my time, but this girl was superhuman when it came to body and face and the tone of her voice. Everybody was in evening dress, of course, and the first glimpse I got of the others made me think I was in a sure-enough swell crowd. The girls were pretty, and the men, one a Pole and the other a Frenchman, looked distinguished and high bred. The Frenchman wore the red ribbon and had a fine face with keen eyes and an iron-grey moustache and imperial.

      "Léontine," says Jeff to the beauty, "let me present my old friend and comrade, Francis Clamart. I found him all alone at the Moulin Rouge and brought him with me, knowing that you would make him welcome."

      I bowed, but Léontine came forward and gave me her hand.

      "M. Clamart is doubly welcome," says she, "on my friend's account as well as upon his own."

      ​She looked me straight in the eyes, and I felt the blood coming into my face, for never in my life had I seen such eyes before. In my business we get the habit of taking in any peculiarity about a person at one glance, and I saw that this girl's eyes were tawny yellow around the pupils, then deepened gradually into a dark jade-green. Her hair was thick, almost black, rather curly but cut a bit short and drawn snugly down over her head and held by a gold band just above her ears so that the curls clustered around her neck.

      "While introducing my friend," says Jeff, "I might add a few of his titles. He is also known as 'His Lordship,' 'Wall Street Frank,' 'Tide-Water Clam,' and 'The Swell.'"

      "Ha!" says the Frenchman. "I have heard of you, camarade!" He stepped over and gave me his hand.

      "Monsieur Maxeville," says Léontine, with a smile, "is also a celebrity. No doubt you have heard of 'Chu-Chu le Tondeur?'"

      I had, of course, because my profession has its cracks as well as its cracksmen. The Pole I had never heard of, but they told me that his work was mostly executive, having an able gang under him to carry out his ideas. The girls were two of them "souris d'hôtel,"