"As I told you before, I think he's a crook, only we can't prove it. I've been looking up his record. It's a bad one. The fellow has behaved himself so far in New York, but out West he is known under various names as one of the slickest rogues that ever escaped hanging. At one time he was the chief of a band of international crooks and blackmailers that operated in London, Paris, Buenos Ayres, and the City of Mexico. The scheme they usually worked was to get some prominent man so badly compromised that he would pay any amount to save himself from exposure, and they played so successfully on the fears of their victims that they were usually successful." A worried look came into the young wife's face. Perhaps there was more in Signor Keralio's relations with her husband than she had suspected. Quickly she asked: "Why do they permit a man of that character to be at large?" The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. "You can't proceed against a man unless there is some specific charge made. The police have nothing now against him. He may have reformed for all I know. But that was his record some years ago." "I don't think he'll dare come here again," went on Helen. "He's exceedingly offensive, and yet he has about him a certain magnetism that compels your attention, even while his manner and look repels and irritates. Only the other day he----" Before she could complete the sentence, there was a loud ring at the front door bell. Helen hastily rose, but Ray had already gone forward. "It's Mr. Parker," she cried. "I saw him coming from the window." The next instant the door of the drawing-room was flung open and Mr. Parker appeared. "Hallo, ladies! Howdy, Steell!" The president of the Americo-African Mining Company was not looking his usual debonair self that evening. His manner was nervous and flustered, his face pale and drawn with anxious lines. His coat lacked the customary boutonniere, and his crumpled linen and unshaved chin suggested that he had come direct from his office after a strenuous day without stopping to go through the formality of making a change of attire. Helen was quick to note the alteration in his appearance, and her first instinct, naturally, was to associate it with her husband. Something was amiss. "There's nothing wrong, is there?" she asked in alarm. "No, no, my dear woman!" But his tone was not convincing. He always called her "my dear woman" when nervous or excited, and "my dear lady" in his calmer moods. She at once remarked it, and it did not tend to reassure her. Now greatly alarmed she laid a trembling hand on his arm. "Tell me, please! Don't hide anything from me. Has anything happened to Kenneth?" "No--no; of course not." Quickly changing the subject he asked: "You got a message." "Yes--a cablegram. It came just now." "Have you got it? Let me see it." "Yes, certainly," said Helen, looking around for the dispatch. Unable to find it, she called to her sister.