"It has everything to do with it. I said I would be worthy of that one dear woman, and--I can never be, Mr. Narkom, until I have made restitution; until I can offer her a clean hand as well as a clean life. I can't restore the actual things that the 'vanishing cracksman' stole; for they are gone beyond recall, but--I can, at least, restore the value of them, and--that I have been secretly doing for a long time." "Man alive! God bless my soul! Cleek, my dear fellow, do you mean to tell me that all the rewards, all the money you have earned--" "Has gone to the people from whom I stole things in the wretched old days that lie behind me," he finished very gently. "It goes back, in secret gifts, as fast as it is earned, Mr. Narkom. Don't you see the answers, the acknowledgments, in the 'Personal' columns of the papers now and again? Wheresoever I robbed in those old days, I am repaying in these. When the score is wiped off, when the last robbery is paid for, my hand will be clean, and--I can offer it; never before." "Cleek! My dear fellow! What a man! What a _man_! Oh, more than ever am I certain _now_ that old Sir Horace Wyvern was right that night when he said that you were a gentleman. Tell me--I'll respect it--tell me, for God's sake, man, who are you? _What_ are you, dear friend?" "Cleek," he made reply. "Just Cleek! The rest is my secret and--God's! We've never spoken of the past since _that_ night, Mr. Narkom, and, with your kind permission, we never will speak of it again. I'm Cleek, the detective--at your service once more. Now, then, let's have the new strange case on which you called me here. What's it all about?" "Necromancy--wizardry--fairy-lore--all the stuff and nonsense that goes to the making of 'The Arabian Nights'!" said Narkom, waxing excited as his thoughts were thus shoved back to the amazing affair he had in hand. "All your 'Red Crawls' and your 'Sacred Sons' and your 'Nine-fingered Skeletons' are fools to it for wonder and mystery. Talk about witchcraft! Talk about wizards and giants and enchanters and the things that witches did in the days of Macbeth! God bless my soul, they're nothing to it. Those were the days of magic, anyhow, so you can take it or leave it, as you like; but this--look here, Cleek, you've heard of a good many queer things and run foul of a good many mysteries, I'll admit, but did you ever--in this twentieth century, when witchcraft and black magic are supposed to be as dead as Queen Anne--did you ever, my dear fellow, hear of such a marvel as a man putting on a blue leather belt that was said to have the power of rendering the wearer invisible and then forthwith melting into thin air and floating off like a cloud of pipe smoke?" "Gammon!" "Gammon nothing! Facts!" "Facts? You're off your head, man. The thing couldn't possibly happen. Somebody's having you!"