"You are wrong, Isaac Jacobsen!" rapped Pepys, and snatched the packet in a flash. "It has!" The man on the chair lurched. Every speck of colour fled from his naturally florid face, leaving it a dull, neutral grey. He threw out one hand to steady himself, and with the other plunged to his hip. "Both up!" ordered Pepys crisply. And Mr. Bernard Megger found himself looking down a revolver barrel that pointed accurately between his twitching eyebrows, nor wavered one hair's breadth! Unsteadily he raised his arms--staring, with dilated pupils, at this master of consummate craft. "It is by such acts of fatuity as your careful preservation of these proofs of identity," came in ironic tones, "that all rogues are bowled out, Jacobsen! I will admit that you had them well hidden. It was good of you to find them. I had despaired of doing so myself!" With that the speaker backed towards the open door. "Inspector Pepys!" gasped Bernard Megger, swallowing between the words, "I shall remember you!" "You will be wasting grey matter!" replied the man addressed, and was gone. Megger, dropping heavily into the chair, saw that the departing visitor had thrown a slip of pasteboard upon the carpet. As the key turned in the lock, and the dim footsteps sounded upon the stair, he lurched unsteadily to his feet, and, stooping, picked up the card. Simons, his man, returned half an hour later, having been detained in his favourite saloon by a chance acquaintance who had conceived a delirious passion for his society. He found his master locked in the study--with the key on the wrong side--and, furthermore, in the grip of apoplexy, with a crumpled visiting-card crushed in his clenched right hand. CHAPTER XI MR. SANRACK VISITS THE HOTEL ASTORIA Mr. J. J. Oppner and his daughter sat at breakfast the next morning at the Astoria. Oppner was deeply interested in the _Gleaner_. "Zoe," he said suddenly. "This is junk--joss--ponk!" His voice had a tone quality which suggested that it had passed through hot sand. Zoe looked up. Zoe Oppner was said to be the prettiest girl in the United States. Allowing that discount necessary in the case of John Jacob Oppner's daughter, Zoe still was undeniably very pretty indeed. She looked charming this morning in a loose wrap from Paris, which had cost rather more than an ordinary, fairly well-to-do young lady, residing, say, at Hampstead, expends upon her entire toilette in twelve months. "What's that, Pa?" she inquired. "What but this Severac Bablon business!" Assisted by her father, she had diligently searched that morning through stacks of daily papers for news of the robbery in Victoria Street. But in vain. "Guess it's a false alarm, Zoe!" Mr. Oppner had drawled, in his dusty fashion. "Some humorist got a big hustle on him last night. Like enough Mr. Megger was guyed by the same comic that sent _me_ on a pie-chase!"