The most astonishing feature in the "Spanish Swindle," as it is commonly and almost universally known, is the extent to which it is practised and in countries far remote from those in which the trick originates. In one case a resident in the Argentine Republic received a letter from Madrid which he communicated to the press stating that he could not conceive how his name and address had become known. But it was clear that the Argentine and many other directories were possessed by the swindler, for similar letters all conveying the usual rosy stories of hidden treasure had come into the country wholesale. The fraudulent agent had long discovered that the credulity and cupidity on which he trades are universal weaknesses and that he is likely to find victims in every civilised part of the world. At another time Germany was inundated with typewritten letters from the Spanish prisoner, and the correspondent cleverly accounted for his use of the machine by stating that he was employed as a convict clerk in the office of the governor of the prison. An attempt of the same kind was tried on a Swiss gentleman of Geneva, but it failed signally. The swindler in Barcelona thought he had beguiled his correspondent into purchasing certain papers at the price of twelve thousand francs by which a treasure was to be found, and sent a young woman to Geneva to receive the cash. But the Swiss police, having been informed of the transaction, were on the alert, and when she kept her appointment with the proposed dupe she was taken into custody. An individual staying at the same hotel and said to have been in communication with her was also arrested. The emissary denied all complicity in the intended fraud protesting that she had been commissioned by a stranger she met in Barcelona to convey a letter to Geneva and bring back another in return. The ubiquity of the swindle is proved by the adventures of a certain M. Elked, a restaurateur of Buda-Pest, who was lured into making a journey to Madrid, carrying with him a sum of ten thousand francs in cash. The money was to be used in securing possession of a fortune of three hundred thousand francs, part of which was lying in a trunk deposited in the cloak room of a French railway station and part in the strong room of a Berlin bank. Elked was to get the half in return for his advance. On arrival in Madrid he met the representative of his correspondent and was shown bogus receipts from the railway and bank. To remove all possible doubt it was suggested that telegrams should be sent to the railway station and to the bank and in due course what purported to be replies were brought to Elked by a pretended telegraph messenger. The sham telegrams finally convinced him of the genuineness of the business and he arranged to meet the swindler in a certain café to hand over the ten thousand francs.