He scribbled out a cheque, and then, with the custom of his class, went through the whole pile of notes down to the last one. There was a puzzled frown on his face.
"Are they bad?" Lady Longmere asked quizzically?
"It isn't that," said Isidore. "I've got a fine head for figures, and some of the numbers of these notes strike me as familiar. They are identified in my mind with some sensation or tragedy. It seems to me--ah! got it!"
"What is it now you have got?" Leona asked.
"Why, the corner house," Isidore cried. "Forty of these notes form part of the money taken from the body of that poor murdered fellow in the corner house. Here they are--190793 to 190832. Now which of you was it who came here tonight with these particular notes in your pocket?"
The gamblers looked at one another uneasily, but not one word was said.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
LAWRENCE IS MYSTERIOUS.
Despite his vast wealth and the manner in which he was courted and flattered by society, Mr. Isaac Isidore had contrived to remain single. He had only one passion, and that was the making of money by ingenious schemes; in fact, had he not been a capitalist he would have made a wonderfully good novelist, as Lawrence often said. Mystery and intrigue were the very air he breathed, and for recreation he asked for nothing better than a romance by Gaboriau or Du Boisgobey.