The clerk gazed across at him.  “Yes, Sir Charles,” he answered, in a somewhat severe tone.  “You must remember you drew a quarter’s dividend from myself—­last week—­at this very counter.”

Charles stared at him fixedly.  “Show me the signature,” he said at last, in a slow, dazed fashion.  I suspected mischief.

The clerk pushed the book across to him.  Charles examined the name close.

“Colonel Clay again!” he cried, turning to me with a despondent air.  “He must have dressed the part.  I shall die in the workhouse, Sey!  That man has stolen away even my nest-egg from me.”

I saw it at a glance.  “Mrs. Quackenboss!” I put in.  “Those portraits on the Etruria!  It was to help him in his make-up!  You recollect, she sketched your face and figure at all possible angles.”

“And last quarter’s?” Charles inquired, staggering.

The clerk turned up the entry.  “Drawn on the 10th of July,” he answered, carelessly, as if it mattered nothing.

Then I knew why the Colonel had run across to England.

Charles positively reeled.  “Take me home, Sey,” he cried.  “I am ruined, ruined!  He will leave me with not half a million in the world.  My poor, poor boys will beg their bread, unheeded, through the streets of London!”

(As Amelia has landed estate settled upon her worth a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, this last contingency affected me less to tears than Charles seemed to think necessary.)

We made all needful inquiries, and put the police upon the quest at once, as always.  But no redress was forthcoming.  The money, once paid, could not be recovered.  It is a playful little privilege of Consols that the Government declines under any circumstances to pay twice over.  Charles drove back to Mayfair a crushed and broken man.  I think if Colonel Clay himself could have seen him just then, he would have pitied that vast intellect in its grief and bewilderment.

After lunch, however, my brother-in-law’s natural buoyancy reasserted itself by degrees.  He rallied a little.  “Seymour,” he said to me, “you’ve heard, of course, of the Bertillon system of measuring and registering criminals.”

“I have,” I answered.  “And it’s excellent as far as it goes.  But, like Mrs. Glasse’s jugged hare, it all depends upon the initial step.  ‘First catch your criminal.’  Now, we have never caught Colonel Clay—­”

“Or, rather,” Charles interposed unkindly, “when you did catch him, you didn’t hold him.”

I ignored the unkindly suggestion, and continued in the same voice, “We have never secured Colonel Clay; and until we secure him, we cannot register him by the Bertillon method.  Besides, even if we had once caught him and duly noted the shape of his nose, his chin, his ears, his forehead, of what use would that be against a man who turns up with a fresh face each time, and can mould his features into what form he likes, to deceive and foil us?”