He was so impressed with the story that he said they could not afford to retain him, valuable as he was, if there was a probability that he was not what he should be. But to be sure that they were making no mistake, they would commence the investigation in England, and at once. That day a cablegram was forwarded to an agent in London, who was given full instructions what to do and how to send his report.
Having disposed of Mr. Stone for a brief period I devoted a day or two to investigating Mrs. Stone and Nellie Mason, and I know the result will be read with interest. There was no record at Peekskill that showed that either of the ladies ever resided there. There was no record in Lewiston of Nellie Mason's father or Nellie Mason. She had never lived at Mrs. Gilbert's in East Thirteenth Street, but Miss Frances West had, and, by the loquacious landlady, who knew about all there was in this world worth knowing, and who had not kept a boarding house all these years for nothing, I was advised to investigate Miss West very sharply indeed. When I asked Mrs. Gilbert if she had not heard of Miss West's marriage, she said: "Tut, tut, I do not believe one word of it."
I was not long in determining beyond a doubt that Mrs. Stone sent the telegram to herself, announcing her husband's death. She had ingeniously sent it to her own number in West Twenty-seventh Street, knowing that the messenger, when he found no such person on the west side, would surely cross to East Twenty-seventh, and would not reach the last number till after she had arrived home. While I was looking up the telegram I heard that a detective was looking up a Miss Nellie Mason from Peekskill, who, it was supposed, had purloined a beautiful stem-winding, full jeweled Elgin, No. 10,427 from a gentleman from Boston, who had been spending a short vacation in New York. It is needless to add that there was no such person as Nellie Mason, and that the money-order was not repaid.
When the first returns were in from London it was quite evident that Mr. Stone had been elected by an unusually large majority. The highly perfumed letters of recommendation that he brought over with him were all false, the supposed writers never having heard of such a person. He had been compelled to leave England because of a few slight slips of the pen, which, at this time, it is not worth while to mention and that at Lowestoft, where his parents resided, he was looked upon as a "very slippery gentleman," whose true name was not Stone, but Hartley.
Not long afterward, and quite recently, Stone attempted by misrepresentations to procure a large amount of money from certain Wall Street brokers, which would enable him, he said, "to return to England and live in splendor." But the scheme failed after he had procured a few hundred dollars, and, instead of being permitted to enjoy the magnificence of the old world, he suddenly found himself enjoying the splendors of one of the oldest prisons in New York.
