On the afternoon of February 1st, 1905, Mr. Felix was called to the telephone of his store and asked to make an appointment later in the afternoon, with a gentleman named Nelson who desired to submit to him a business proposition.  Fifteen minutes afterward Mr. Nelson arrived in person and introduced himself as having met Felix at “Lou” Ludlam’s gambling house.  He then produced a copy of the Evening Telegram which contained an article to the effect that the Western Union Telegraph Company was about to resume its “pool-room service,”—­that is to say, to supply the pool rooms with the telegraphic returns of the various horse-races being run in different parts of the United States.  The paper also contained, in connection with this item of news, a photograph which might, by a stretch of the imagination, have been taken to resemble Nelson himself.

Mr. Felix, who was a German gentleman of French sympathies, married to an American lady, had recently returned to America after a ten years’ sojourn in Europe.  He had had an extensive commercial career, was possessed of a considerable fortune, and had at length determined to settle in New York, where he could invest his money to advantage and at the same time conduct a conservative and harmonious business in musical instruments.  Like the Teutons of old, dwelling among the forests of the Elbe, Mr. Felix knew the fascination of games of chance and he had heard the merry song of the wheel at both Hambourg and Monte Carlo.  In Europe the pleasures of the gaming table had been comparatively inexpensive, but in New York for some unknown reason the fickle goddess had not favored him and he had lost upward of $51,000.  “Zu viel!” as he himself expressed it.  Being of a philosophic disposition, however, he had pocketed his losses and contented himself with the consoling thought that, whereas he might have lost all, he had in fact lost only a part.  It might well have been that had not The Tempter appeared in the person of his afternoon visitor, he would have remained in status quo for the rest of his natural life.  In the sunny window of his musical store, surrounded by zitherns, auto-harps, dulcimers, psalteries, sackbuts, and other instrument’s of melody, the advent of Nelson produced the effect of a sudden and unexpected discord.  Felix distrusted him from the very first.

The “proposition” was simplicity itself.  It appeared that Mr. Nelson was in the employ of the Western Union Telegraph Company, which had just opened a branch office for racing news at 27 East Twenty-second Street.  This branch was under the superintendence of an old associate and intimate friend of Nelson’s by the name of McPherson.  Assuming that they could find some one with the requisite amount of cash, they could all make their everlasting fortunes by simply having McPherson withhold the news of some race from the pool rooms long enough to allow one of the others to place a large bet upon some horse which