"Will You Tell Us by What Extraordinary Process of Reasoning You Came to Lend a Convicted Train-Robber Your Car?"

"Five Fateful Words."
By Edgar Wallace (1875-1932).
First appearance: Tit-Bit Novels, June 10, 1915.
Reprinted in Maclean's, July 15, 1929.
Short story (~12 pages).
Online in Roy Glashan's Library HERE.

"A challenge story in which readers were asked to supply five words that would cause the prosecution in a train-robbery trial to lose its case."

Vanity is not the exclusive province of women, and even if you're filthy rich with all of the advantages like Sir George Farringdon, vanity, as he will find out, can only offer as its
reward a long, long prison stretch.

Resources:
- See more about Edgar Wallace on Wikipedia (HERE) and the GAD Wiki (HERE).

- A collection of other stories by Wallace is reviewed (HERE) and reprinted (HERE).

The bottom line: "Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company."
— François de La Rochefoucauld