A suspicion seems to have crossed the minds of both that something was wrong, and the British Consul in the town was communicated with. He went to the hotel to which the money was to be sent, and having been supplied with a photograph of Mr. ------ by the solicitor, asked to see him. The proprietor of the hotel recognized the portrait, said Mr. ------ was staying there, but was out with two friends. That evening when the consul called again he saw the two friends. They appeared to be very distressed. They stated that Mr. ------ had been drinking heavily. While out together walking by the shore he had suddenly left them and disappeared. They had made every effort to find him, but had failed, and they feared he must have made his way to a lonely part of the coast and drowned himself. That was the last that was ever heard of the missing young man who went travelling with two strangers he met at a London hotel. Whether they would have taken possession of the money had it been sent it was impossible to say. And there was no proof forthcoming that they had anything to do with the disappearance of Mr. ------, though there is very little doubt they had the bulk of the large sum of money he took with him. * * * * * There is one feature of the fashionable hotel which is not strictly confined to those who live in it. That is the use made by swindlers of the stamped hotel paper. Thomas, the man who committed the crimes for which the unfortunate Mr. Beck suffered so cruelly, wrote nearly all his letters on the note-paper of fashionable hotels. He simply walked in, sat down at a writing-table, and had at once a good address with which to inspire his victims with confidence. On the strength of that hotel note-paper he was accepted by experienced women of the world as an English nobleman of vast fortune. The fashionable hotel is the happy hunting ground of the most dangerous criminals known and unknown to the police. CHAPTER IV--IN A COMMON LODGING-HOUSE _A superior place--Class distinctions--The men who have fallen--The family outcast--The shabby minister--A strange disappearance--The common kitchen_ |IT is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and the church bells have just ceased ringing. Along the broad thoroughfare which is one of the main arteries of London a few belated worshippers are wending their way, prayer-book in hand. But from the side streets come the roar and clamour of a busy market at its height. The hoarse shrieks of the hawkers and the cheap Jacks rise above the murmur of the mob, which elbows its way, a black stream of humanity, between two banks of barrows and open shops. At the corner of one of the side streets--the corner at which the clamour of the market ends and the quiet of the English Sabbath begins--there is a huge, well-ordered, common lodging-house. The whole neighbourhood is Jewish, the area is given up now almost entirely to the alien immigrant; but in this vast lodging-house the guests are not Jews but Gentiles.