His highness seemed genuinely and pathetically surprised, also somewhat incredulous, when I managed to convey to him the true state of affairs concerning myself. I did not, however, trouble to tell him that I felt absolutely bristling with caution towards him, regarding him as the worst type of the _Chevalier d'industrie_ I had ever heard of. So he went away, but did not cease his visits to me, sometimes flashing a pocketful of gold, sometimes without a sou. At last he made his grand coup. He advertised in the French papers for a valet to attend upon a Russian nobleman, who, as he had much valuable jewellery, would require a deposit of £70 as security against dishonesty. Then he took a house in East Dulwich Grove on a twenty-one year lease, and entered into negotiations with a furnishing company to fit it up. Of course he got his valet and his security, with part of which he paid the first instalment of the purchase of his furniture. Within a week he had sold every item of that furniture, and leaving his hapless valet to starve in the empty house, had departed to the wilds of Soho to lead a gay life as long as the money lasted. For this was his peculiarity, stamping him indubitably as one of the _boys_ so graphically depicted by Mr Ernest Binstead; he would lie, swindle, steal, do anything to obtain money, sell the bed from under his dying mother, let us say, or worse than that if it were possible, and when the money was in his possession he would fling it broadcast with both hands as if he were lord of millions.