“Yes,” the magazine editor echoed.  “To back your skill is legal; to back your luck is foolish; to back your knowledge is—­”

“Immoral,” I suggested.

“Very good business,” said the magazine editor.

“It’s a simple trick,” Charles interposed.  “I should have spotted it if it had been done by any other fellow.  But his patter about inspiration put me clean off the track.  That’s the rascal’s dodge.  He plays the regular conjurer’s game of distracting your attention from the real point at issue—­so well that you never find out what he’s really about till he’s sold you irretrievably.”

We set the New York police upon the trail of the Colonel; but of course he had vanished at once, as usual, into the thin smoke of Manhattan.  Not a sign could we find of him.  “Mary’s,” we found an insufficient address.

We waited on in New York for a whole fortnight.  Nothing came of it.  We never found “Mary’s.”  The only token of Colonel Clay’s presence vouchsafed us in the city was one of his customary insulting notes.  It was conceived as follows:—­

“O ETERNAL GULLIBLE!—­Since I saw you on Lake George, I have run back to London, and promptly come out again.  I had business to transact there, indeed, which I have now completed; the excessive attentions of the English police sent me once more, like great Orion, “sloping slowly to the west.”  I returned to America in order to see whether or not you were still impenitent.  On the day of my arrival I happened to meet Senator Wrengold, and accepted his kind invitation solely that I might see how far my last communication had had a proper effect upon you.  As I found you quite obdurate, and as you furthermore persisted in misunderstanding my motives, I determined to read you one more small lesson.  It nearly failed; and I confess the accident has affected my nerves a little.  I am now about to retire from business altogether, and settle down for life at my place in Surrey.  I mean to try just one more small coup; and, when that is finished, Colonel Clay will hang up his sword, like Cincinnatus, and take to farming.  You need no longer fear me.  I have realised enough to secure me for life a modest competence; and as I am not possessed like yourself with an immoderate greed of gain, I recognise that good citizenship demands of me now an early retirement in favour of some younger and more deserving rascal.  I shall always look back with pleasure upon our agreeable adventures together; and as you hold my dust-coat, together with a ring and letter to which I attach importance, I consider we are quits, and I shall withdraw with dignity.  Your sincere well-wisher, CUTHBERT CLAY, Poet.”

“Just like him!” Charles said, “to hold this one last coup over my head in terrorem.  Though even when he has played it, why should I trust his word?  A scamp like that may say it, of course, on purpose to disarm me.”

For my own part, I quite agreed with “Margot.”  When the Colonel was reduced to dressing the part of a known personage I felt he had reached almost his last card, and would be well advised to retire into Surrey.