The famous Tausch bureau of private espionage, of which we heard so much during the Harden trial in 1907, and which was founded by Baron Tausch for the purposes of spying, just as a private individual in Britain, or America, or France, might found a news agency—this bureau had its analogy once in London on a minor scale, and was conducted, very privately to be sure, by a deceased peer bearing a title of ancient degree which is now owned by a youth whose relationship to "Old Inquisition" (as he was once called by a society paper) must necessarily have been very remote. Nevertheless, and for fear of hurting anyone's susceptibilities, we propose to speak of the defunct noble as Lord Pinkerton. It was not necessary to be in Society to recognise this peer whose business was as well known to London residents as his face—aquiline as to the nose and eye, somewhat furtive in his movements, generally silent, but always observant and mysterious. He flourished in the late mid-Victorian days when nearly every man and woman in important Society was able to show as many quarterings of nobility as are required for membership among the Knights of Malta, or as formerly were essential to every candidate for inclusion in White's Club. Accordingly, he was an elderly man in the eighties and early nineties when golden keys began to open the doors of the most sacrosanct circles. One does not require to be very old to remember the great social transition that took place between, say, 1887 and 1902, when the first-fruits of the Education Act of 1870, together with the results of Colonial enterprise had combined to create a new class of social climber, which altogether upset previously existing conditions and, indeed, finally ended by flooding them out. In former generations wealth had, of course, always found a way in; but it was wealth with some added virtue and by no means that which expressed itself in mere display and extravagance such as arrived in the mid-eighties with adventurers of all types and kinds in the hunt for social distinctions and honours. By the nature of things, the exclusive peer found he was fighting elemental forces, and as a consequence he was far from proving the regenerator of Society that he hoped to be. It is certain, however, that his private correspondents kept him well informed, for it was well known that by 1890 he had been successful in hunting down many individuals, mostly foreigners, whose claim to social recognition had not only not even the merit of being backed by great wealth or good birth, but whose early careers had been stained by crimes of the darkest kind and who had made their appearance in London society under assumed titles and names which were either fictitious, or to the ownership of which they had no claim whatever. Some of these men had made their early debut by successful operations on that dead-leveller the Turf, had been elected to fashionable racing-clubs