The Leopard's Spots

This novel revolves around Montagu Stagg and his niece, Stella Henson. Excerpt: "Stagg was making quite a handsome living by the ingenious expedient of writing letters to potential investors warning them off certain things, and, at the same time, utilizing those bucket-shop circulars luring the cash into his coffers in quite another direction. It was a brilliant scheme and redounded to the credit of 'Frank Fair,' alias Montagu Stagg, who was thus able to pose before his confiding young relative as a man of the highest and purest motives. Of course, Stella could know nothing of the little dingy office in the city where Stagg spent a couple of hours each afternoon sending out his circulars and posting them in person. It must not be imagined, of course, that all this money came to his net. If Stagg gleaned a daily ten percent. of it, he was perfectly satisfied, and so the great game went on. Stagg was a cheery, breezy, humorous rascal, perfectly straight in all his dealings outside what he regarded as his legitimate business, and generous and easy-going to a fault.