"God pardon me!" cried the detective. "What have you done? I am a ruined man."
"I think," returned the Prince with a smile, "that many well to do people in this city might envy you your ruin."
"Alas! your Highness!" said the officer, "and you corrupt me after all?"
"It seems there was no help for it," replied Florizel. "And now let us go forward to the Prefecture."
Not long after, the marriage of Francis Scrymgeour and Miss Vandeleur was celebrated in great privacy; and the Prince acted on that occasion as groomsman. The two Vandeleurs surmised some rumor of what had happened to the diamond; and their vast diving operations on the River Seine are the wonder and amusement of the idle. It is true that through some miscalculation they have chosen the wrong branch of the river. As for the Prince, that sublime person, having now served his turn, may go, along with the "Arabian Author," topsy-turvy into space. But if the reader insists on more specific information, I am happy to say that a recent revolution hurled him from the throne of Bohemia, in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect of public business; and that his Highness now keeps a cigar store in Rupert Street, much frequented by other foreign refugees. I go there from time to time to smoke and have a chat, and find him as great a creature as in the days of his prosperity; he has an Olympian air behind the counter; and although a sedentary life is beginning to tell upon his waistcoat, he is probably, take him for all in all, the handsomest tobacconist in London.
THE MYSTERY OF THE STEEL DISK
BY BROUGHTON BRANDENBURG
Broughton Brandenburg, a young Ohioan, was educated at Otterbein and Princeton Universities, became a war correspondent at twenty, serving in the Spanish-American and Boer wars, and shortly thereafter attracted attention as a traveler and sociological investigator. He studied immigration disguised as an Italian peasant, and sea-faring life as a common sailor and stevedore. Then he began to write sea stories, immigration articles, circus stories, and occasionally unusually interesting detective stories. "Lawrence Rand" has been the central figure in a number of tales notable for business-like handling of real people.
THE MYSTERY OF THE STEEL DISK