The Councillors of Falconhoe by Fred M. White

It was not a boast so much as an actual fact that Jelicorse stated when he told the Councillors that he had the records of all Europe's master criminals at his finger ends.

He did not, of course, mean that those wily scoundrels who preyed on ordinary humanity in the shape of vulgar swindles or international thieves, practising the old devices which will be ever successful so long as the average crop of fools is born into the world, but the type which is a cut above these predatory scamps, and embraces political intrigue and the many ramifications of European politics. It was these big things that most appealed to the Councillors of Falconhoe, and it was rarely indeed that they touched anything else. But now and then Jelicorse, as managing director of the guild, inclined favourably towards a mere adventure mainly because it sometimes led them on to the track of some wily secret service man of foreign birth, whose secrets might be useful in future activities. And because of this he was inclined to lend a favourable ear to the advances of the Grand Duke Sven in the matter of the Katherine Pearl Necklace.