CHAPTER I

It required but a mere glance at the tall, plump, sleek-conditioned man whom my clerk brought into my office one winter afternoon to see that my visitor either was or had been one of the class known as gentlemen’s gentlemen. Confidential servant was written all over him; a certain something in his eye suggested that he had all his life been keeping the secrets, as well as brushing the clothes and superintending the linen, of at least a marquis. That eye lighted up as it fell on me; its owner bowed with a mixture of…