1898 Copyright, 1898 Copyright BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Entered at Stationers' Hall, London The Knickerbocker Press, New York The Knickerbocker Press, New York [Pg iii] [Pg iii] PREFATORY The first meeting between Mr. Barnes, the detective, and Robert Leroy Mitchel, the gentleman who imagines himself to be able to outdo detectives in their own line of work, was fully set forth in the narrative entitled An Artist in Crime. Subsequently the two men occupied themselves with the solution of a startling murder mystery, the details of which were recorded in The Crime of the Century. The present volume contains the history of several cases which attracted their attention in the interval between those already given to the world, the first having occured shortly after the termination of the events in An Artist in Crime, and the others in the order here given, so that in a sense these stories are continuous and interdependent. The R. O. [Pg v] [Pg v]