Sinister House by Fred M. White — Read

Beaucaire set out on his journey to the North on the best of terms with the world in general and himself in particular. For the first time since the Armistice he began to see his way clear to a state of things he had been working for during the last seven or eight years. He had pulled off a considerable coup in that splendidly audacious manner of his and, with any luck, fortune would crown his efforts.

He was not, perhaps, by nature a criminal, and if he could once lay his hands on a sufficient sum of money to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life, he would be only too willing to turn his back upon the dangerous path and live, in future, the life of the ordinary prosperous citizen. Clever and unscrupulous as he was, he despised crime and criminals. It was, after all, so easy to be a criminal and the mere deceiving of mankind was not a difficult matter for anyone who devoted himself to the ways that were dark and the tricks that were mean. So Beaucaire told himself that once he was free to follow his own dictates, he would turn his back upon the past and live cleanly in the future. He knew only too well that he was beginning to be suspect.