"Altogether, taken as you stand, you'd probably assay a quarter of a million. Yet you complacently riot about town and without a moment's hesitation trust yourself in resorts like the Clique Club, rendezvous of the rarest set of rogues New York can boast—and your host its self-confessed proprietor!"
"Oh! everybody knows Morphy's the King of the Bootleggers; but nobody except Revenue officials considers a bootlegger a criminal nowadays."
"Possibly not. Still, I fancy, society is less kindly disposed toward professional blackmailers, notorious demi-mondaines, and jewel thieves of international ill-fame."
"Mr. Lanyard! you don't mean to say—" Folly McFee sat up and made shocked eyes.
"I am one whose lot it has been to see a vast deal of this world, madame. I give you my word I recognized representatives of all those classes at the Clique tonight."
The woman illustrated a little thrill of delicious dread. "Of course, as to blackmailers, I've nothing to fear—"
"Pardon: but can you be sure? In the absence of any fair excuse for bleeding their victims, blackmailers have been known to manufacture evidence. And it's always, with them, the open season for high-spirited young women of fortune with a taste for entertaining indiscretions."
The violet eyes widened and darkened. "Mr. Lanyard! you don't mean—you don't think—!"
"Tell me this, Mrs. McFee: How did you make the acquaintance of Mr. Morphew?"
"Why! through Madame Delorme—"