At the bar of the Bellevue Hotel in San Remo,
in 1927, I had the bad luck to number Count Utesky
among my habitual clients:  the classic person who
inspires all the trust in the world but sometimes
proves to be an incorrigible swindler.

With unprecedented ability, he succeeded in
persuading me to lend him my entire pay for
the season and vanished into thin air, never to
be heard from again.