On finding themselves outside the dive Hamar, Curtis and Kelson first
of all divided the spoil. They then went to a clothes depot and rigged
themselves out in fashionably cut garments; after which they took
rooms at a presentable hotel in Kearney Street, next door to Knobble's
boot store. Then, dressed for the first time in their lives like Nob
Hill dukes, they paraded the pet resorts of the beau-monde--of the
bonanza and railroad set--and making eyes at all the pretty wives and
daughters they met, cogitated fresh devices for making money. As they
sauntered across Pacific Avenue, in the direction of Californian
Street, Kelson suddenly gave vent to a whistle.

"What the deuce is wrong with you?" Hamar exclaimed. "Seen your
grandmother's ghost?"

"No! but I've seen the inner readings of that lady yonder," Kelson
replied, indicating with a jerk of his finger a fashionably dressed
woman walking towards them on the other side of the road. "The deuce
knows how it all comes to me, but I know everything about her, just
the same as I did with the girl in the dive--though I've never seen
her before. She is the wife of D.D. Belton, the cotton magnate, who
lives in a big, white house at the corner of Powell Street--and a
beauty, I can assure you. Supposed to be most devoted to her husband,
she is now on her way to keep an appointment with the Rev. J.T.
Calthorpe of Sancta Maria's Church in Appleyard Street, with whom she
has been holding clandestine meetings for the past six months."

"Whew!" Hamar ejaculated. "You speak as if it was all being pumped
into you by some external agency--automatically."