The insults which had been heaped upon the Celebrity on the yacht seemed to have raised rather than lowered him in Miss Thorn’s esteem, for these two ensconced themselves among the pines above the camp with an edition de luxe of one of his works which she had brought along.  They were soon absorbed in one of those famous short stories of his with the ending left open to discussion.  Mr. Cooke was indisposed.  He had not yet recovered from the shaking up his system had sustained, and he took to a canvas easy chair he had brought with him and placed a decanter of Scotch and a tumbler of ice at his side.  The efficacy of this remedy was assured.  And he demanded the bunch of newspapers he spied protruding from my pocket.

The rest of us were engaged in various occupations:  Mr. Trevor relating experiences of steamboat days on the Ohio to Mrs. Cooke; Miss Trevor buried in a serial in the Century; and Farrar and I taking an inventory of fishing-tackle, when we were startled by aloud and profane ejaculation.  Mr. Cooke had hastily put down his glass and was staring at the newspaper before him with eyes as large as after-dinner coffee-cups.

“Come here,” he shouted over at us.  “Come here, Crocker,” he repeated, seeing we were slow to move.  “For God’s sake, come here!”

In obedience to this emphatic summons I crossed the stream and drew near to Mr. Cooke, who was busily pouring out another glass of whiskey to tide him over this strange excitement.  But, as Mr. Cooke was easily excited and on such occasions always drank whiskey to quiet his nerves, I thought nothing of it.  He was sitting bolt upright and held out the paper to me with a shaking hand, while he pointed to some headlines on the first page.  And this is what I read: 

Treasurer takes A trip.

Charles Wrexell Allen, of the miles Standish
bicycle company, gets off with 100,000 dollars.

Detectives baffled.

The absconder A back bay social leader.

Half way down the column was a picture of Mr. Allen, a cut made from a photograph, and, allowing for the crudities of newspaper reproduction, it was a striking likeness of the Celebrity.  Underneath was a short description.  Mr. Allen was five feet eleven (the Celebrity’s height), had a straight nose, square chin, dark hair and eyes, broad shoulders, was dressed elaborately; in brief, tallied in every particular with the Celebrity with the exception of the slight scar which Allen was thought to have on his forehead.

The situation and all its ludicrous possibilities came over me with a jump.  It was too good to be true.  Had Mr. Charles Wrexell Allen arrived at Asquith and created a sensation with the man who stole his name I should have been amply satisfied.  But that Mr. Allen had been obliging enough to abscond with a large sum of money was beyond dreaming!