This was merely a beginning.  Before the day was out he had secured two more victims.  No woman whose character was not without blemish was safe from him—­his wonderful newly acquired gift enabling him to detect any vice, no matter how snugly hidden.  And this wonderful power of discernment brought with it an expression of mystery and penetration which, by enhancing the effect of the power, made the application of it comparatively easy.  Kelson had only to glide after his victim, and with his eyes fixed searchingly on her, to say, “Madam, may I have a word with you?”—­and the battle was more than half won—­the women were too fascinated to think of resistance.

For example, shortly after his initial adventure, he saw a very smartly dressed woman in Van Ness Avenue peep about furtively, and then stop and speak to a little child, who was walking with its nurse.  Divination at once told him everything—­the lady was the mother of the child, but its father was not her legitimate husband, W.S.  Hobson, the millionaire mine owner.

When Kelson courteously informed her he was in possession of her secret—­a secret she had felt positively certain only one other person knew, she went the colour of her pea-green sunshade and attempted to remonstrate.  But Kelson’s appearance, no less than his marvellous knowledge of her life, and character dumbfounded her—­she was simply paralysed into admission; and before he left her, Kelson had added another thousand dollars to his hoard.

That evening, close to the Academy of Science in Market Street, he saw a lady get out of a taxi and quickly enter a pawnbroker’s.  Her whole life at once rose up before him.  She was Ella Crockford, the wife of the Californian Street Sugar King, and, unknown to her husband, she spent her afternoons at a gambling saloon in Kearney Street, where she ran through thousands.

She was now about to pledge her husband’s latest present to her—­a diamond tiara, one of the most notable pieces of jewellery in the country—­in the hope that she would soon win back sufficient money at cards to redeem it.

Kelson stopped her as she came out, and in a marvellously few words, proved to her that he knew everything.  Her amazement was beyond description.

“You must be a magician,” she said, “because I’m certain no one saw me take my jewel-case out of the drawer—­no one was in the room!  And as I put it in my muff immediately, no one could have seen it as I left the house.  Besides, I never told a soul I intended pawning it, so how is it possible you could know—­and be able to repeat the whole of the conversation I had with Walter Le-Grand, to whom I lost so heavily last night?  Tell me, how do you know all this?”

But Kelson would tell her nothing—­nothing beyond her own sins and misfortunes.

“I have nothing to give you,” she told him.  “I dare not ask my husband for more money.”

“What, nothing!” Kelson replied, “When the pawnbroker has just advanced you fifty thousand dollars.  You call that nothing?  Be pleased to give me one thousand, and congratulate yourself that I do not ask for all your ‘nothing.’” And as neither tears nor prayers had any effect, she was obliged to pay him the sum he asked.