“Scapegrace Jimmy went to South Africa to finish the sowing of his wild oats, and Nan went there as governess to the children of the South African consul. They met there, and were married. Jimmy was a burglar and a thief, and Nan didn’t suspect it until long after the two had come to this country. Then she found it out, and for a time he compelled her to assist him in his crooked work. Then he got caught, and was sent away, to Sing Sing, and Nan got a divorce. Later, she married Smathers, the man of many faces, and an actor. Then Jimmy got out of prison, thought Nan had peached on him, threatened vengeance, and all that, and intended to kill her, until it happened that you showed him that Nan was not the one who had betrayed him. She wanted to reform, and did so, and Jimmy agreed to let her alone. Then Jimmy got caught, was sent back to England to answer charges against him there, escaped, returned here, and supposedly died on an island in Long Island Sound. That was four years ago. Almost two years ago, Smathers died—I suppose he is really dead, isn’t he?” “Oh, yes, there is no doubt of that, Chick.” “And now Nan discovers her former husband, robbing a house where she is a respected guest, and——” “And that isn’t all of it; not by a long shot.” “Go ahead, then.” “Well, it was a tableau for a moment, after the mutual discovery in that library. There was a half mask on the table, which Jimmy had removed while he was sorting the spoil. He always was a cool proposition, you remember.” “Yes. That is how he got his name of Bare-Faced Jimmy.” “He didn’t lose his presence of mind, just then, either. He stooped and picked up the gun from the floor, dropped it into one of his pockets—and sat down again upon the chair where he had been seated when she interrupted him.” “Just like him.” “The rest of the story I will tell just as Nan told it to me.” “All right.” “She said: ‘For a moment I didn’t know what to do. Until that instant it had never occurred to me that Jimmy was alive. I had not a doubt that he was dead. But there he was, as natural as ever, as handsome as ever, as cool and self-contained as ever, and just as daring as he used to be in the old days.’ “‘Sit down, Nan,’ he said to her; and she sat down. “‘I thought you were dead,’ she told him, and he laughed in his pleasant way, and replied that he was as good as an army of dead men. Then she pointed at the jewels on the table, and at the other things that he had gotten together. “‘At your old tricks?’ she asked him, and he nodded. “‘Can’t keep away from it, Nan,’ he told her. ‘It is in my blood, I guess. But what are you doing here? Are you up to the old game, too?’ “Then she told him all about herself, and they talked together for quite a while. The upshot of it was that Jimmy agreed to take the risk of returning all the things to the rooms from which he had taken them, and she promised to wait where she was, until he had done so.”