gentlemen burglars, even in fiction. However picturesque and
chivalric, a thief is, after all, a thief. Perhaps it is my training
as a lawyer, or perhaps I am simply narrow, but crime, however
brilliantly carried out, seems to me a sordid and unlovely thing. I
know quite well that there are many people who look at these things
from a different angle, Godfrey is one of them.

I pointed out to him now that, if his intuitions were correct, he
would soon have a chance to match his wits with those of the Great
Unknown.

"Yes," he agreed, "and I'm scared to death--I have been ever since I
began to suspect his identity. I feel like a tyro going up against a
master in a game of chess--mate in six moves!"

"I shouldn't consider you exactly a tyro," I said, drily.

"It's long odds that the Great Unknown will," Godfrey retorted, and
bade me good-bye.

Except for that chance meeting, I saw nothing of him, and in this I
was disappointed, for there were many things about the whole affair
which I did not understand. In fact, when I sat down of an evening
and lit my pipe and began to think it over, I found that I understood
nothing at all. Godfrey's theory held together perfectly, so far as I
could see, but it led nowhere. How had Drouet and Vantine been
killed? Why had they been killed? What was the secret of the cabinet?
In a word, what was all this mystery about? Not one of these
questions could I answer; and the solutions I guessed at seemed so
absurd that I dismissed them in disgust. In the end, I found that the