The American left London, thinking he had heard the last of the affair. But when he got back to his home in the States he found a letter waiting for him. That waiter had found out who he was, and wanted more hush-money. He wanted $5000. The victim of the attack at the gaming house had died, the writer said, and unless he received the amount named he should communicate with the police. Even if the young-man evaded arrest, the story would be in all the English papers, and copied into the American ones.
The young American read the letter carefully two or three times, and then went to a solicitor, telling him the whole story. The solicitor advised him not to reply, but to let him communicate with an agent in London, who would inquire into the whole affair. The investigation made by the London agent revealed the fact that the police of London were totally ignorant of any such affair, that no one had been found stabbed in a gambling house, and that no police raid on a gambling house in Soho had taken place at that date.
The American visitor to London had been marked down by one of the gang of bad characters who infest hotels for the purpose of swindling strangers. The agreeable Englishman was the concocter of the whole scheme.
The only thing that was a mystery now was the stabbing. The American had seen the dagger plunged into the man's breast.
The stabbing was a comedy, though it had looked like a tragedy at the time. The dagger was a stage dagger, which appears to penetrate the body of the victim, but really goes up the handle. The two policemen who came in were probably made up on the premises for the occasion, and the "gamblers" were members of the gang of blackmailers to which the Englishman staying at the hotel belonged.
It is not likely that this sensational little scene was arranged for the occasion only. It had doubtless been effectually played many times before on unsuspecting visitors to the metropolis. Without the stabbing' it is common enough. One of the commonest tricks of a well-known gang is to lure a visitor anxious to see life to some questionable haunt, and make him the victim of a bogus police raid. The staid and sober citizens of good repute will generally pay handsomely to avoid publicity.
In the case of the young American, a deliberate scheme of lifelong blackmail was planned. The report in the evening newspaper was a master stroke. But there are means of getting a sensational statement that has not a word of truth in it past the most vigilant of sub-editors.
Some of the most dangerous female swindlers in the world are to be found in fashionable hotels. They frequently have foreign titles. Princesses, marchionesses, countesses, and baronesses there are who are well known to the international police, and who yet continue to live luxuriously year in, year out, on a methodical system of fraud.
Few of them are young—many of them are middle-aged, and some are elderly. But they rarely fail to pay their expenses, though they may fail to pay the tradespeople they honour with their patronage. Even in this matter, however, they are careful, and avoid, if they possibly can, any transaction with a shopkeeper which might lead to the publicity of the police court A charge of swindling would be inconvenient. It would necessitate the adoption of a new title, and that would be awkward, because the majority of these adventuresses are too well known to certain people in fashionable resorts to be able to change a title without exciting suspicion.