"Then," said Cornish, "I'd better tell you just what I know about it,
and you can form your own opinion as to whether I do know or not. I have
been in the newspaper business on this side for fifteen years, and my
headquarters are in Paris, where these people are very well known. The
man who calls himself 'Chandler Pedlow' was a faro-dealer for Tom Stout
in Chicago when Stout's place was broken up, a good many years ago.
There was a real Chandler Pedlow in Congress from a California district
in the early nineties, but he is dead. This man's name is Ben Welch:
he's a professional swindler; and the Englishman, Sneyd, is another; a
quiet man, not so well known as Welch, and not nearly so clever, but a
good 'feeder' for him. The very attractive Frenchwoman who calls herself
'Comtesse de Vaurigard' is generally believed to be Sneyd's wife, though
I could not take the stand on that myself. Welch is the brains of the
organization: you mightn't think it, but he's a very brilliant
man--he might have made a great reputation in business if he'd been
straight--and, with this woman's help, he's carried out some really
astonishing schemes. His manner is clumsy; _he_ knows that, bless you,
but it's the only manner he can manage, and she is so adroit she can
sugar-coat even such a pill as that and coax people to swallow it. I
don't know anything about the Italian who is working with them down
here. But a gang of the Welch-Vaurigard-Sneyd type has tentacles all
over the Continent; such people are in touch with sharpers everywhere,
you see."

"Yes," Cooley interpolated, "and with woolly little lambkins, too."

"Well," chuckled Cornish, "that's the way they make their living, you
know."