The victims of these thefts have really no redress. It is so hard to find the guilty woman afterwards, or even to locate the house, for unless the pleasure hunter suspects some trap he pays no particular attention to the kind of house, its situation, or its number. In the case of a stranger he never seeks the thieves again, but "pockets his loss." If an elderly man, he does likewise. But if he be really an obstinate man, determined upon catching the thieves and prosecuting them, he will invariably be approached and his money and valuables will be returned to him upon condition that he withdraws his complaint. Convictions are very rarely obtained in any case from the difficulty of identifying the parties. Many of these women never see a penny of the plundered money, the man, in most cases, retaining the whole of the loot. It sometimes happens that a victim discovers that he has been robbed before he leaves, and makes what is called in the vernacular a "kick"; if so, it also sometimes happens that he is unmercifully beaten by the lover and his pals, but it has occurred that when "the kicker" was a man about town, that he has gotten away with his assailant in a manner calculated to make the heart of a Sullivan beat with pleasure. There is quite a different feature of this panel-game, but which more properly belongs to black-mail, in which, through the peep-holes in the doors, the face of the man or woman in the adjoining room is studied, waited for on the outside, followed to his or her home, and in a few days threatened with exposure, if the sum demanded is not forthcoming. Couples have been known to ply the panel-game very successfully in some of the most prominent hotels in the city. The lady would make her conquest upon the streets in the ordinary manner and the game would be worked in two rooms of the hotel as already described. This enterprise was carried on successfully by a scoundrel and his wife at one time in one of the best hotels, and although it was generally known, there never was any one to complain against them. It was only by the proprietor specially employing several detectives that they were finally discovered, arrested and punished. CHAPTER IX. A THEATRICAL ROMANCE. _Kale Fisher, the Famous Mazeppa, involved--Manager Hemmings charged by Fast-paced Mrs. Bethune with Larceny._ A good many years since, at a fashionable boardinghouse in Philadelphia, a handsome Adonis-shapen young man, well and favorably known by the name of George Hemmings, became acquainted with a member of the fairer sex who had scarcely passed "sweet sixteen," and was accredited with a bountiful supply of beauty, named then Eliza Garrett. An intimacy at once sprung up between the two, which at length ripened into a mutual attachment.