“More!  To be precise, I have received exactly seventy-two thousand pounds, Mr. Narkom.  But, as I tell you, I have to-day but one hundred pounds of that sum left.  Lost in speculation?  Oh, dear no!  I’ve not invested one farthing in any scheme, company, or purchase since the night you gave me my chance and helped me to live an honest life.”

“Then in the name of Heaven, Cleek, what has become of the money?”

“It has gone in the cause of my redemption, Mr. Narkom,” he answered in a hushed voice.  “My good friend—­for you really have been a good friend to me, the best I ever had in all the world—­my good friend, let us for only just this one minute speak of the times that lie behind.  You know what redeemed me—­a woman’s eyes, a woman’s rose-white soul!  I said, did I not, that I wanted to win her, wanted to be worthy of her, wanted to climb up and stand with her in the light?  You remember that, do you not, Mr. Narkom?”

“Yes, I remember.  But, my dear fellow, why speak of your ’vanishing cracksman’ days when you have so utterly put them behind you, and since lived a life beyond reproach?  Whatever you did in those times you have amply atoned for.  And what can that have to do with your impoverished state?”

“It has everything to do with it.  I said I would be worthy of that one dear woman, and—­I can never be, Mr. Narkom, until I have made restitution; until I can offer her a clean hand as well as a clean life.  I can’t restore the actual things that the ‘vanishing cracksman’ stole; for they are gone beyond recall, but—­I can, at least, restore the value of them, and—­that I have been secretly doing for a long time.”

“Man alive!  God bless my soul!  Cleek, my dear fellow, do you mean to tell me that all the rewards, all the money you have earned—­”

“Has gone to the people from whom I stole things in the wretched old days that lie behind me,” he finished very gently.  “It goes back, in secret gifts, as fast as it is earned, Mr. Narkom.  Don’t you see the answers, the acknowledgments, in the ‘Personal’ columns of the papers now and again?  Wheresoever I robbed in those old days, I am repaying in these.  When the score is wiped off, when the last robbery is paid for, my hand will be clean, and—­I can offer it; never before.”

“Cleek!  My dear fellow!  What a man!  What a man!  Oh, more than ever am I certain now that old Sir Horace Wyvern was right that night when he said that you were a gentleman.  Tell me—­I’ll respect it—­tell me, for God’s sake, man, who are you? What are you, dear friend?”

“Cleek,” he made reply.  “Just Cleek!  The rest is my secret and—­God’s!  We’ve never spoken of the past since that night, Mr. Narkom, and, with your kind permission, we never will speak of it again.  I’m Cleek, the detective—­at your service once more.  Now, then, let’s have the new strange case on which you called me here.  What’s it all about?”