"Is Franklyn to help the Maxwell woman again?" asked Mr. Howell, who was 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 unblemished reputation, on account of his expert knowledge 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 came many an art gem stolen from its owner on the Continent and smuggled over by devious ways known only to The Sparrow and his associates. And just as ingeniously the stolen property was sent across to America, so well camouflaged that the United States Customs officers were deceived. With pictures it was their usual method to coat the genuine 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 master once more ready for purchase at a high price by American collectors.
Truly, the gloved hand of The Sparrow was a master hand. He had brought well-financed and well-organized 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, from a barefaced jewel theft to the forgery of American banknotes.
And yet, so strange and mysterious a personality was he that not twenty persons in the whole criminal world had ever met him in the flesh. The tall, good-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 him.
Why? Because he was only the brains of the great, widespread criminal organization. He remained in smug 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 more wonderful criminal combine had ever been organized 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 Montmartre without a trace of English accent.