“This gentleman comes from Scotland Yard,” she said. “Perhaps you will be so kind as to go into matters with him. I do not understand business or legal details. Mr. Falconer will represent me,” she added to the young man, who bowed with an alacrity that suggested, as did his glance at Falconer, that the prospect of conferring with a man rather than a woman was a distinct relief to him. Then, before Falconer’s not very rapid mind had adjusted itself to the situation, she had bowed slightly to the young man and left the room. CHAPTER III Three days before, the name of William Romayne had been widely known and respected throughout Europe as the name of a successful and distinguished financier. Now, it was the centre of a nine-days’ wonder as the name of a master swindler, detected. A bank, established in London within the last twelve months in connection with a company offering an exceptionally high rate of interest, had suddenly suspended payment. The circumstances were so ordinary, and the explanation offered so plausible, that at first no suspicion of underhand dealings presented itself. It was in connection with the first whispers--which ran like wildfire through financial London--of something beneath the surface, that it first became known that William Romayne had some connection, as yet undefined by rumour, with the bank in question; a fact hitherto quite unknown. The whispers grew with rapidity which was almost incredible even to the whisperers, into a definite and authentic shout of accusation; and with the exposure of an outline of such daring and ingenious fraud as had not been perpetrated for many a day, another fact had become public property. The exposure had been brought about by an incredibly short-sighted blunder on the part of the master mind by which the whole affair had been conceived. William Romayne’s was the master mind, and William Romayne, in trying to overreach alike his dupes and his confederates, had overreached himself. His own hand had created the clue which had led eventually to the ruin of the scheme he had originated. His death, with the news of which the London Stock Exchange was ringing only a few hours after it was known in Nice, was the forfeit paid by a strong nature to which success in all its undertakings was the very salt of life.