Another of Sothern’s practical jokes was carried out with the assistance of Sir Charles Wyndham—in those days innocent of any pretensions to the accolade. This particular experiment was six months in the working, and by the elaborate means adopted its victim was kept on the tenterhooks of suspense during all that time. The late Mr. Edgar Bruce, then lately joined to the ranks of “the profession,” was the unfortunate dupe. Bruce was an ambitious young gentleman, and the joke was so contrived as to play on this characteristic. It commenced in this way: Sothern had it put about that he had been approached by the Russian Minister on the possibility of getting together a company of English comedians to play in St. Petersburg. He personally could not accept the flattering command. He pretended to offer it to Wyndham, and Wyndham handed the proposal on to Bruce. Bruce jumped at it, and then, and for a period of six months, the fun waxed fast and furious. Bruce was invited to meet the Minister. An old nobleman smothered in orders, but having no language but French and his native tongue, was introduced to Bruce at a luncheon given for the purpose. At that time Bruce had no French, and the conversation was carried on with Wyndham as interpreter. Preliminaries were settled. An agreement was signed. There remained nothing now but to engage a company. Here again his good friends Wyndham and Sothern came to the rescue. They made a careful selection of actors and actresses who were let into the secret. Eventually the affair got paragraphed in the newspapers. The public was as greatly duped as Bruce himself, and those interested in theatrical matters gossiped knowingly about the visit of the English comedians to Russia. Constant devices were adopted to raise, and sometimes to dash, the hopes of the victim. Once Sothern borrowed a thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds from his jeweller, and lent them to Miss Edith Chalice—one of the supposed Bruce Company—who exhibited them to the deluded victim as a gift from the Minister, asking him to name any little souvenir he would desire for himself from the same potentates. Bruce made his desires known; but that was as far as the matter ever went in that particular direction.