pleasure of exercising his wit in confidence games and sneak-thievery. Among his honest accomplishments was the ability to perform sleight-of-hand tricks well enough to work profitably in the lesser theater circuits. He had married a woman who made part of the show Presidio operated for a time—a good-looking woman, but as ready to turn a confidence trick as to help her husband's stage work, or do a song and dance as an interlude. They had been warned to leave San Francisco for a year, and not to return then, unless bringing proof that they had walked in moral paths during their exile.

   "And you mistook me for Presidio?" asked Carrington, with the manner of one flattered.

   "For a second, and seeing only your side face. Of course, I saw my mistake when you turned and spoke to me. Presidio is considered the best-looking crook we've ever had."

   "Now, that's nice! Where did you say he's gone?"

   "I don't know."

   Carrington found that out for himself. He first interrupted his voyage by a stop of some weeks in Japan. Later, at the Oriental Hotel in Manila, the day of his arrival there, he saw a man observing him with smiling interest, a kind of smile and interest which prompted Carrington to smile in return. He was bored because the only officer he knew in the Philippines was absent from Manila on an expedition to the interior; and the man who smiled looked as if he might scatter the blues if he were permitted to try. The stranger approached with a bright, frank look, and said, "Don't you remember me, Mr. Carrington?"

   "No-o."

   "I was head waiter at the St. Dunstan."

   "Oh, were you? Well, your face has a familiar look, somehow."

   "Excuse my speaking to you, but I guess your last trip was what induced me to come out here."

   "That's odd."

   "It is sort of funny. I'd saved a good deal—I'm the saving sort—and the tenner you gave me that night—you remember, the night of

    the

   dinner—happened to fetch my pile up to exactly five hundred. So I says to myself that here was my chance to make a break for freedom—independence, you understand."

 Prev. P 6/105 next