It was several hours later. In the ornately furnished vault at the shop
of Osmuhn & Son were the younger Osmuhn and Helen Marle, seated side by
side in two Heppelwhite chairs, their hands clasped, unashamed. At the
small table was Osmuhn, senior; across from him, where she had been when
the wonderful ruby disappeared, was Mrs. Marle.
Young Osmuhn jumped to his feet as footsteps sounded outside.
“Here he comes!” his voice rang out joyously, as Thornley Colton
entered, a long, paper-wrapped bundle under his arm.
Osmuhn, senior, came forward and held out his hand. “I can never thank
you enough,” he said brokenly.
“Thank me?” smiled the blind man. “The thanks are all on my side. It was
the most interesting problem I ever tackled.”
He laid down the long bundle on the small table, and took Mrs. Marle’s
extended hand. She did not say a word, but the expression on her face
told volumes; and she understood that the man without eyes knew.
“Now tell us how it was all done,” broke in Helen Marle eagerly. “Henry
has just told us how wonderful you were at the house. Tell us how the
ruby vanished.”
The irrepressible curiosity of the girl brought a smile to the blind
man’s lips. “I’ll start right at the beginning,” he promised. “At the
police station the false Norvel consented to talk--a little. The Hindu
is in the hospital. The two of them followed the Thousand Facets of Fire
all through Europe, trying to get their hands on it. The real Norvel
bought it before they had a chance to steal it, and substitute the
imitation they had had made. Not knowing that he had already sent it to
America, they were following Norvel when their automobile crashed into
his on the outskirts of an obscure French village. The drivers of both
cars were killed. Norvel got a knock on the head that resulted in
concussion of the brain.
“The thief, who refuses to tell his name, or anything of his history,
had both hips broken, and was made a cripple for life. But he is a
wonderful man. He had a cot next to Norvel, and for weeks he heard
Norvel rave of his past life, the ruby, the business--things that are
reiterated over and over in the raving of delirium. The thief realised
what the knowledge was worth. The fake news of Norvel’s death went out.
When he had recovered sufficiently to leave the hospital, he was
murdered, and the thief became Norvel. He returned here, a changed man,
but there was never a chance for suspicion. He was a wonderful actor. He
knew everything that Norvel had known, and he knew jewels even better
than Norvel himself.
“His Hindu partner and an Englishman who merely played the role of
Norvel’s valet came with him. But the thief was a master. The crude
stealing made possible by his position didn’t appeal to him. He wanted
excitement, to astound people. So he planned to make a million by the
cleverest thefts ever committed in the world. The Hindu had learned
secrets from the greatest yogi in India, and he was a wonderful worker
in gold plate and other metals. For weeks he worked and produced these.”
Colton stripped the paper from the long bundle, and the two heavy canes
Norvel had always carried were revealed.
“What----,” began Osmuhn dazedly.
Colton took one of the canes and laid it on the table. “This is the cane
Norvel put on the glass case when the diamond necklace disappeared. Let
me have that one he stole for a minute, will you?”
Osmuhn swung open the door of the safe and laid it before the blind man.
“Your son was talking, while Norvel was fingering the necklace like
this.” Colton pretended to examine the string of stones with his eyes,
placing them in a perfectly straight line with the end of the cane, not
four inches from its feruled bottom. “Watch!” he commanded. “Don’t take
your eyes from the stones!” He turned away; not one of them saw the
delicate pull he gave to the black thread that was attached to an almost
invisible knob at the cane handle. But they did see the feruled bottom
spring open. They saw a small claw dart out, swift as the fang of a
snake, catch the first stone of the necklace, and in a fraction of an
instant the necklace had been drawn into the hollow cane like a snake in
its hole--swiftly, silently. The cap closed at the bottom, the cane was
merely a cane once more.
He showed them the thread, like the one Norvel had pulled when he
started toward his overcoat.
“But the mist I saw?” demanded Osmuhn, junior. “What was that?”
“That is the most wonderful thing the Hindu yogi have in their bag of
tricks. I was present at a private exhibition of it twenty years ago in
the hill country of India. The men who were with me said that they saw a
man disappear in a cloud of mist, just as you saw it attempted to-day.
Twenty years ago it was one of the most profound mysteries of India.
To-day it isn’t.”
“Isn’t?” echoed Osmuhn.
“No. The trick is done with a wonderful powder called _scurtii-scurtii_.
The powder is so finely ground that when let free in absolutely still
air it hangs in the shape of a mist until a breeze blows it away. But it
doesn’t billow out like mist, or fog. By some curious property it hangs
in the form of a thin, impenetrable curtain, either vertically or
horizontally, according to the way it has been shot into the air. The
disappearance trick in India can be done only on an absolutely calm day.
Just as it could be done only in a vault like this, or in the store
outside, when every one had gone, and there was no possibility of a door
opening. The powder was released from the cane when the end opened.”
“But the ruby?” asked Mrs. Marle. “There is no break in the concrete
walls; no way that Mr. Norvel could have gotten access to this room.”
Colton pointed toward the brass wall-plate, with its two light buttons,
a foot from her elbow. “There is the explanation, and the thing that
told me how the trick had been done.”
They crowded around the table to gaze at the two innocent-appearing
buttons.
“When you snapped off the light for me,” said the blind man to the
jeweller, “my ear, trained for years to read every sound, immediately
caught the false note in the snap of the button against the contact.
When I snapped on the lights my fingers found something that no eye
could ever have detected. Instead of being roughly ground
mother-of-pearl, as the centre of those black buttons always is, my
supersensitive finger tip knew instantly that it was highly polished
glass; a lens, in fact.”
“By Jove, you’re right!” Osmuhn had been examining it with a powerful
glass.
“Yes,” nodded Colton, “and if you put the glass to the other plain
button you’ll see a narrow slot, not much thicker than a sheet of paper,
through which the _scurtii-scurtii_ was injected the minute Mr. Osmuhn
turned his back to follow his invariable rule of arranging the small
boxes in the safe, while the customer looked at the jewel. The minute
the mist had covered the ruby, Norvel, in his office on the other side
of the wall, where there is a plate exactly opposite this, so that the
electricians would only have to make one hole for both in the solid
concrete, swung the plates back and stole the jewel like this.”
He unscrewed the heavy knob from the other cane, and from the hollow
interior took what looked like a slender cane that, they could see, was
made like a telescope of wonderfully thin metal sections. At the small
end was a shallow, heavy rubber cup, with the interior smeared with a
thick, gummy substance. Colton’s fingers found a curious trigger-like
projection at the larger end.
“I don’t need the ruby for this. When the wall plate, which he and the
Hindu had fixed when Norvel was supposed to be working late, swung
open--hidden, of course, from Mrs. Marle by the mist--he thrust the cup
end of the cane through the opening like this.” He thrust the cane
toward Mrs. Marle’s hand. Before she could jerk it away, his finger
touched the trigger, and the cane shut up like a telescope, as swiftly
and silently as a darting shaft of light. “The actual theft didn’t take
an instant,” explained Colton, and he couldn’t keep the admiration from
his voice. “All he had to do was to touch the stone in your hand, which
wasn’t a foot from the wall-plate, the partial vacuum of the cup and the
gummy substance would make it stick, and the spring inside would bring
it through the plate-hole instantly. Then the plate closed, and the
thing was accomplished before you could move a muscle.”
“But what made the mist disappear?” Osmuhn wanted to know. “There was no
current of air here.”
“When you turned you must have shut the safe door. Of course, that would
blow it away instantly, and the powder is so fine that you’d never see a
trace of it. In the robbery of the necklace Norvel swung around with his
coat on his arm, so that it formed a fan.”
“But how did you ever connect the man who had fooled us all; the man who
had impersonated Norvel so successfully?” queried Osmuhn.
Colton’s lips curved in a curious smile. “The impersonation was so
perfect that it would have deceived any one with eyes, just as his
thefts did. And his acting of Davidson was a wonderful piece of work. He
could impersonate everything but valvular heart disease.”
“Valvular heart disease?” queried Osmuhn dumbly.
“Yes.” Colton’s lips and voice were serious. “He was the most wonderful
criminal I have ever met. A criminal with imagination great enough to
plan such crimes, and daring sufficient to execute them when a single
move, or a breath of air, would have betrayed him. But his acting was
too good. When he came in here after stealing the ruby there was not a
fraction of a beat above normal in his heart. He was as cool as ice when
the heart of ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have been pounding
like a trip hammer. It was steady as a clock even when I left him in the
chair apparently on the verge of collapse. Even then he was planning an
unsuspicious get-away. Even when Shrimp, my boy, almost knocked his
chair over, there wasn’t a flutter. I shook hands with him, so that I
could establish his identity absolutely. To me there is as much
difference between hands and wrists as there is between faces to men who
see. But the pulse beat of valvular heart disease is absolutely
unmistakable. The heart of the man who played Norvel so successfully was
as sound as my own.
“I spoke in here of the possibility of the thief having learned his
facts by listening to Norvel in his delirium. The thief realised that a
cable to France might give away his whole game. I was afraid that he had
hidden the necklace so cunningly that we wouldn’t find it, though I knew
where the ruby was ten minutes after it was stolen.”
Osmuhn half jumped from his chair.
“You--knew where--the ruby was!” he gasped.
“Yes. I took care to touch his cane handles as I shook hands with him.
Your son’s story of the necklace theft told me that one of the canes was
responsible for that. While he was in here the ruby was in the big knob
at the end of the cane, not three feet away from where it had been
stolen. But with my own stick and wonderfully sensitive finger-tips, I
knew that the necklace had been put somewhere else. Therefore, I gave
him the hint he needed about Mrs. Marle’s reception. I knew if he had an
imitation--which was likely, because he must have been on the track of
the ruby to meet Norvel on the other side--he would try to get it into
Mrs. Marle’s possession for the purpose of confusing all of us. Then my
boy found out about his dual role of Davidson and Norvel. Davidson
appeared only after Norvel had arrived home, and Norvel was supposed to
be in such physical condition that he couldn’t be seen at home. I
immediately told you that the jewel was an imitation, put in Mrs.
Marle’s home by the real thief, because I knew Norvel would hear all
about it, and understand that I wasn’t fooled for a minute. It was time
for him to go. The French boat sailed at noon to-day. I knew he would
see me, because he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to prove his
superiority, and make a final grand-stand play by disappearing before
our very eyes as Davidson, and walk out of the next house a few minutes
later as Norvel the diamond expert, whose twenty-eight years’ service
with Osmuhn & Son placed him above suspicion. You see, he was taking no
chances; he always had two ways open. But he forgot that the mist he had
appear in his library meant nothing to me. _My eyes can’t be deceived!_”
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