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"He said nothing, but he had caught me once with his keys, and I think that he suspected. I read in his eyes that he suspected. As you know, he never held up his head again."

There was silence in the room. It was broken by Mycroft Holmes.

"Can you not make reparation? It would ease your conscience, and possibly your punishment."

"What reparation can I make?"

"Where is Oberstein with the papers?"

"I do not know."

"Did he give you no address?"

"He said that letters to the Hotel du Louvre, Paris, would eventually reach him."

"Then reparation is still within your power," said Sherlock Holmes.

"I will do anything I can. I owe this fellow no particular good-will. He has been my ruin and my downfall."

"Here are paper and pen. Sit at this desk and write to my dictation. Direct the envelope to the address given. That is right. Now the letter:

"DEAR SIR:

"With regard to our transaction, you will no doubt have

observed by now that one essential detail is missing. I have

a tracing which will make it complete. This has involved

me in extra trouble, however, and I must ask you for a

further advance of five hundred pounds. I will not trust it to

the post, nor will I take anything but gold or notes. I would

come to you abroad, but it would excite remark if I left the

country at present. Therefore I shall expect to meet you in

the smoking-room of the Charing Cross Hotel at noon on

Saturday. Remember that only English notes, or gold, will

be taken.

That will do very well. I shall be very much surprised if it does not fetch our man."

And it did! It is a matter of history - that secret history of a nation which is often so much more intimate and interesting than its public chronicles - that Oberstein, eager to complete the coup of his lifetime, came to the lure and was safely engulfed for fifteen years in a British prison.

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