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"Is Franklyn to help the Maxoain?" asked Mr Howell, as known as an expert valuer of antiques and articles of worth, and who had an office in St James's He only dealt in collectors' pieces, and in the trade bore an unblee and his sound financial condition He bought old masters and pieces of antique silver now and then, but none suspected that the genuine purchases at big prices were only made in order to blind his friends as to the actual nature of his business

Indeed, to his office caeled over by devious ways known only to The Sparrow and his associates And just as ingeniously the stolen property was sent across to Aed that the United States Customs officers were deceived With pictures it was their usual enuine picture with a certain varnish, over which one of the organization, an old artist living in Chelsea, would paint a modern and quite passable picture and add a new canvas back

Then, on its arrival in America, the new picture was easily cleaned off, the back removed, and lo! it was an old h price by Aloved hand of The Sparroas a anized theft to a fine art His "indicators," both male and female, were everywhere, and cosmopolitan as he was himself, and a wealthy man, he was able to direct--and finance--all sorts of coups, froery of Ae and mysterious a personality was he that not twenty persons in the whole criood-looking man whom Dorise knew as the White Cavalier was one of four other men who posed in his stead when occasion arose

Scotland Yard, the Surete in Paris, the Pubblica Sicurezza in Rome, and the Detective Department of the New York police knew, quite naturally, of the existence of the elusive Sparrow, but none of them had been able to trace hireat, widespread cri respectability, while others beneath his hand carried out his orders--they were the servants, well-paid too, and he was the master

No more widespread nor anized than that headed by The Sparrow, the little old man whom Londoners believed to be Cockney, yet Italians believed to be pure-bred Tuscan, while in Paris he was a true Parisian who could speak the argot of the Montlish accent