Produced by Al Haines. *A PRINCE* *OF* *SWINDLERS* BY GUY BOOTHBY ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY CLEVELAND, OHIO, U. S. A. Copyright, 1907, by Bainbridge Cayll *CONTENTS.* CHAPTER I. A Criminal in Disguise CHAPTER II. The Den of Iniquity CHAPTER III. The Duchess of Wiltshire’s Diamonds CHAPTER IV. How Simon Carne Won the Derby CHAPTER V. A Service to the State CHAPTER VI. A Visit in the Night CHAPTER VII. The Man of Many Crimes CHAPTER VIII. An Imperial Finale *A PRINCE OF SWINDLERS* *CHAPTER I.* *A CRIMINAL IN DISGUISE.* After no small amount of deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that it is only fit and proper I should set myself right with the world in the matter of the now famous 18--swindles. For, though I have never been openly accused of complicity in those miserable affairs, yet I cannot rid myself of the remembrance that it was I who introduced the man who perpetrated them to London society, and that in more than one instance I acted, innocently enough, Heaven knows, as his _Deus ex machinâ_, in bringing about the very results he was so anxious to achieve. I will first allude, in a few words, to the year in which the crimes took place, and then proceed to describe the events that led to my receiving the confession which has so strangely and unexpectedly come into my hands. Whatever else may be said on the subject, one thing at least is certain--it will be many years before London forgets that season of festivity. The joyous occasion which made half the sovereigns of Europe our guests for weeks on end, kept foreign princes among us until their faces became as familiar to us as those of our own aristocracy, rendered the houses in our fashionable quarters unobtainable for love or money, filled our hotels to repletion, and produced daily pageants the like of which few of us have ever seen or imagined, can hardly fail to go down to posterity as one of the most notable in English history. Small wonder, therefore, that the wealth, then located in our great metropolis, should have attracted swindlers from all parts of the globe.