fessional thieves, he would prefer to lead a double life—to perform his misdeeds as a commoner, and to keep his dukedom spotless. So it was that he gave his name as Hanbury to the clerk in the bureau of the hotel.
While waiting the return of the bell-boy who was sent to announce his arrival, Beaumanoir looked about for Marker, but the spy was nowhere visible in or from the entrance-hall. Having shepherded him to the fold, it was evidently no part of his duty to obtrude himself till further orders.
A minute later the neophyte in crime was limping up the grand staircase in wake of the bell-boy, who conducted him to one of the best private suites on the first floor overlooking the Embankment. It was a moment charged with electricity as the Duke of Beaumanoir found himself face to face with the man who had hired him in his poverty, and now held him fetter-bound in his good fortune.
Yet could this be he—this personification of aged helplessness lying among the cushions of an invalid chair, who, in a thin, piping treble, requested his visitor to come closer? Beaumanoir had pictured all sorts of ideals of the master in crime, but Mr. Clinton Ziegler in the
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