I arranged for an interview with my unknown correspondent, by putting a club in the pocket of my dressing gown. Two men appeared. One, a very common sort of person, I kept in my drawing room and the other, a young, respectable looking chap I took into my den. There I began my cross-examination. After promising to show me the long-lost watch the following morning he called in his companion who proved to be a waiter in a _café_ in which my wife had enjoyed her clandestine meetings. His description of the man immediately served to identify him as one of my wife's former admirers--a gentleman-about-town who had squandered $20,000 on her, proposed and been accepted (before our marriage) and, fortunately, gone broke before the ceremony could be performed! My discovery that he was the gentleman in the case made me wonder. I had not heard that his fortunes had been repaired--before this! The following morning we visited a pawn broker's shop and there in the window, hanging on a line, was my watch. I recognized it, not only from its engraved initials but also because it was one of three which were never duplicated. I had bought all three in Paris years before and given two of them to my two best friends. When it disappeared I was sure it had been stolen and did my best to trace it with the aid of the police. I did not suspect my wife! The young man had discovered the facts when the man-about-town in a moment of drunken braggadocio boasted of his friendship with my wife and displayed my watch as proof of it! [Illustration: AS SHYLOCK _One of my successful failures_] In the frenzy of the moment my impulse was to drop all else and find this whelp--to drive him at the point of a revolver into that pawn shop and there make him redeem and return to me the property which I could not accuse him of stealing! On second thought I realized that if I ever laid eyes on him I could never refrain from taking just one pop at him--and if the sound appealed to me I was afraid I might continue popping. So I counted ten and my reason returned. To be locked up for murder even if for only a few minutes is not a thing to be courted. Besides there were always my mother and father to consider. Altogether it would have been the act of a fool and for once I determined to play another rôle. In following out this resolve I hastily left Los Angeles and started for London. Loving wife and fond mama had no intimation of my discovery. They were awaiting me at the station and never did a husband get a warmer greeting! Why, even mama seemed to have absorbed much of loving daughter's excess of affection for me! And thus they conducted me to a snug apartment in the Savoy Hotel. To interrupt such tender solicitude for my well being by vulgar references to other men who yesterday had been the recipients of all I was getting then would have put me too far out of the picture! So I sat tight and waited for morning.