"I'll pay you one thousand dollars for eight days' work in Paris."
"You will get a first-class ticket from New York to Paris and return, and hotel coupons for ten days in the Hotel Beraud, in Paris. You will leave, in all probability, on February first, arrive on the eighth. On the ninth you will go to the American Express office and cash some of your checks. They will serve to identify you. Do it again on February tenth. At exactly eleven minutes past eleven on the eleventh you will whisper to the mail clerk: 'It is eleven-eleven, to-day the eleventh. Give me the eleven letters for W. W. Lowry.' If you do not receive eleven letters, don't take any, but return the next day at precisely the same hour, and say exactly the same words. What was it I said you should say to the correspondence clerk?"
"It is eleven-eleven, to-day the eleventh. Give me the eleven letters for W. W. Lowry," repeated the man.
"Right! When you get the eleven letters you will bring them unopened to me--here. Now go to Mrs. Brady's boarding-house, 299 East Seventy-third Street; tell her you are Mr. Lowry. Your room and board are paid for. Make it a point to be at the house every day at eleven in the morning until after luncheon and at six p.m. You must not go out evenings under any circumstances. I'll allow you eleven dollars a week for tobacco and will bring you some clothes. Come back Wednesday at eleven-thirty. Here's this week's eleven dollars. That will be all."
"That's all right, my friend; but--" began the man.
"I wasn't going to ask; I was going to remark that you would have to show me that one thousand dollars for the week's work."
"Next Wednesday I'll take you to the American Express Company. I'll give you one thousand dollars and you will buy the checks yourself and sign them. I'll keep them until sailing-day and I'll give them to you on the steamer. Forging," he went on with a sneer, "is signing another man's name with intent to defraud. You will sign your own name--your own signature--on travelers' checks that you yourself have paid for. See? A thousand dollars for asking for eleven letters and bringing them to me, unopened, is good graft, friend. If you make good I'll keep you busy."
"No drinking. Above all things, no talking! I may be crazy, my friend; but what would you be if you gave up a job worth a thousand dollars a week and all expenses paid? Remember our motto: No questions answered!"