There was one case of an admiral who must have put the swindlers into a rare fury. He seemed to be such a very easy mark, for he put eight lakhs of taels within their reach, as they thought. Yet he was wise and he kept one hand tight on the money until such time as the weapons came to his other hand. They did not come to kim and he retained his money.
it in other cases, it is said, the Pigeons were plucked.
The method used in two cases was one of the oldest known variations of the confidence trick. A
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.