“It’s the Blue Pear,” she said, hesitatingly, wondering how to
begin—“which, of course, means nothing to you.”
“And just what _is_ it, please?”
“The Blue Pear, Jim, is a diamond. It’s a diamond that you and I, in
some way or another, have got to get back!”
“To get back? Then when did we lose it?”
“_I_ lost it. That’s what I’ve got to tell you.”
“Well, first tell me what it is,” he said, wondering at her seeming
gaiety, not comprehending her nervous rebound from depression to
exhilaration.
“It’s a very odd diamond, and a very big diamond, only tinted with a
pale blue coloring the same as the Hope Diamond is tinged with yellow.
That’s how it came to get its name. But the odd thing about it is that,
when it was cut in Amsterdam, rather than grind away a fifteen-carat
irregularity, it was left in a sort of pear-shape. Even before it was
mounted by Lalique, it sold in Paris for well over six thousand pounds.
Later, in Rio de Janeiro, it brought something like seven thousand
pounds. There it was given to a French actress by a Spanish-American
coffee-king. It was an African stone, in the first place.”
“But what’s all this geography for?” asked Durkin.
“Wait, dear heart, and you’ll understand. The coffee-king quarrelled
with the Paris woman. This woman, though, smuggled the stone back to
France with her. It was sold there, a few months later, for about
one-fourth its market value. Still later it was bought for a little
under six thousand pounds, by the late Earl of Warton, who gave it to
his younger daughter, Lady Margaret Singford, when she married young
Cicely—Sir Charles Cicely, who was wounded the first year of the war,
you remember. Well, Sir Charles didn’t like the setting—it had been
made into a marquise ring of some sort—so he took it to Rene Lalique’s
work-shop in Paris, and had it mounted after his own ideas.”
“But who is Lalique?”
“A French _l’art nouveau_ goldsmith—the Louis Tiffany of the Continent.
But I’ve a lot to tell you, Jim, and only a little time to do it in, so
we shall have to cut out these details. Lalique made a pendant out of
the Blue Pear, hung on a thin gold stem, between little leaves of beaten
gold, with diamond dew-drops on them. Well, four weeks ago the Blue Pear
was stolen from Lady Margaret’s jewel case. No, Jim, thank you, not by
me; but if you’ll wait, I’ll try to explain.
“I hardly know what made me do it—it was _ennui_, and being lonesome, I
suppose. Perhaps it was the money,—a little. But, you see, when Albert,
my innocently wayward young cousin, got mixed up with young Singford, I
found out a thing or two about _that_ less innocent gentleman. It
started me thinking; and thinking, of course, started me acting.”
He nodded, as a sign that he was following her.
“I had detective-agency cards printed, and went straight to the Cicelys.
Lady Margaret wouldn’t see me; she sent down word that the reward of
three hundred pounds was still open, and that there was no new
information. But I saw her at last—I shan’t explain just how. Before
very long I found out something further, and rather remarkable—that
Lady Margaret wanted to drop the case altogether, and was trying to
blind Scotland Yard and the police. And that made me more determined.
“Before the end of the week, I found out that young Singford, Lady
Margaret’s brother, had been mixed up in a row at Monaco, had made a
mess of things, later, at Oxford, and had decided to try ranching in the
Canadian North-West. I had already booked my passage on the _Celtic_,
but the whole thing then meant too much for me, and, when I found young
Singford was sailing that week on the _Majestic_, I succeeded in getting
a berth on that steamer. Jim, as soon as I saw that wretched boy on
deck, I knew that I had guessed right, or almost right. Oh, I know them,
I know them! I suppose it’s because, in the last year or two, I have
come in contact with so many of them. But there he was, as plain as day,
a criminal with stage-fright, a beginner without enough nerve to face
things out. I rather think he may have been a nice boy at one time. And
I know just how easy it is, once you make the first little wrong turn,
to keep on and on and on, until you daren’t turn back, even if you had
the chance to.”
“And you took pity on him?” inquired Durkin, “or did you merely vivisect
him at a distance?”
“Not altogether—but first I must tell you of the second dilemma. Before
we sailed, and the first day out, I thought it best to keep to my cabin.
You can understand why, of course. After all, this is such a little
world, when you know the Central Office might be after you!”
“Or some old business friend?”
“That was precisely what I thought, only a good deal harder, when I was
sat down to dinner, the second day out, and glanced across the table.
You remember my telling you about my first experiences in America, when
I was a shrinking and pink-cheeked young English governess, and never
knew a bold thought or a dishonest act? Do you remember my describing
the woman—it’s always a woman who is hard on another woman!—who
accused me of—of having designs on her husband? Her husband, a
miserable, oily little Hebrew diamond-merchant who twice insulted me on
the stairs of his own house, when I had to swallow it without a word!
Well, it was that woman who sat across the table from me. They had put
me at the Captain’s table—my London gown, you see, looks uncommonly
well. But there was that woman, a little more faded and wizened and
wrinkled, looking at me with those beady old hawk eyes of hers; and I
knew there was trouble ahead.
“A war-correspondent, who had been nice to me, had brought up about
everybody at our table worth while, and introduced them to me, that
night before going down. So, when I saw that yellow face and those hawk
eyes, I knew I had to think hard and fast.”
“‘Are you not the young woman,’ she said, in a sort of _frappé_ of nasal
indignation, ‘are you not the young woman whom I once employed as a
governess and discharged for misconducting herself with—er—with the
other servants?’
“I was so busy trying to be cool that I didn’t bother thinking out an
answer. I did want to say, though, that it was not a servant, but her
own devoted and anointed husband. I kept on talking to the Captain,
deciding to ignore her icily. But that yellow hag deliberately repeated
her question, and I heard the war-correspondent gasp out an indignant
‘My God, madam!’ and saw the Captain’s face growing redder and redder.
So I went on and asked the Captain if intoxication was becoming commoner
on the high seas. Then she began to splutter and tremble. I kept looking
at her as languidly as ever, and a steward had to help her away.
“But she knew that she was right. And she knew that I knew she knew.
Though I had all the men on my side, and the Captain cheerfully saw to
it that she was moved down to the tail end of the Doctor’s table, among
the commercial travellers and the school-ma’ms, I knew well enough that
she was only waiting for her chance.
“It didn’t change the face of things, but it upset me, and made me more
cautious in the way I handled young Singford. In some way, I felt a bit
sorry for the poor chap, I thought a little sympathy might perhaps
soften him, and make him tell me something worth while. But he had too
much good old English backbone for that. And, although he told me I was
the best woman he ever knew, and a little more solemn nonsense like
that, I at last had to go for him very openly. It was a moonlight
night—the sea-air was as soft as summer. We were standing by the rail,
looking out over the water. Then I made the plunge, and very quietly
told him I knew two things, that he had stolen his sister’s diamond
pendant, and that for three days he had been thinking about committing
suicide.
“I watched his hand go up to his breast-pocket—the moon was on his
terrified young face—and I came a little nearer to him, for I was
afraid of something—I tried to tell him there was no use jumping
overboard, and none whatever in throwing the Blue Pear into the
Atlantic. That would only make things past mending, forever. Besides, he
was young, and his life was still before him. I talked to him—well, I
believe I cried over him a little, and finally, without a word, he
reached in under his coat, and there, in the moonlight, handed me the
Blue Pear. I gave him my word of honor it would be taken back to his
sister, and even lent him twenty pounds—and you can imagine how little
I had left!”
Durkin looked up, as though to ask a question, but she silenced him with
her uplifted hand.
“That was the night we came up the Bay. I slipped down to my cabin, and
turned on the electric light. Then I opened the little case, and looked
at my pendant. You know I never liked diamonds, they always seemed so
cold and hard and cruel—well, as though the tears of a million women
had frozen into one drop. But this Blue Pear—oh, Jim, it was
beautiful!”
“It _was_?—Good heavens, you don’t mean—?”
“Shhhh! Not so loud! Yes, that is just it. There I stood trying it in
the light, feasting on it, when a voice said behind me, a voice that
made my hair creep at the roots, ‘A very unsafe stone to smuggle, young
lady!’ And there, just inside my door, stood the yellow hag. She had
stolen down, I suppose, to nose among my luggage a bit. I could have
shaken her—I almost did try it.
“We stood staring at each other; it was the second battle of the kind
between us on board that ship. I realized she had rather the upper hand
in this one. I never saw such envy and greed and cruelty in a human
face, as she ogled that stone.
“It seemed to intoxicate her—she was drunk to get her hands on it—and
she had enough of her own, too. So, once more, I had to think as fast as
I could, for I knew that this time she would be relentless.
“‘No, I shan’t smuggle it,’ I said, in answer to her look.
“‘_You_ pay duty—a thousand, two thousand dollars!’ she gasped at me,
still keeping her eyes on the stone, flashing there in the light. ‘Given
to you,’ she almost hissed, ‘by some loving father whose child you
guided into the paths of wisdom? Oh, I know you, you lying huzzy! It’s
mine!’ she cried, like a baby crying for the moon, ‘it’s mine! You—you
stole it from me!’”
She paused, at the memory of the scene, and Durkin stirred uneasily on
the seat.
“What made the fool say that?” he demanded.
“Why, she meant that she could claim it, and intended to claim it,
insinuating that she would see that it was declared at the wharf, if I
kept it, and arguing that I might as well lose it quietly to _her_, as
to the Treasury officers. I knew in a flash, then, that she didn’t know
what the Blue Pear was. I closed the little gun-metal case with a snap.
Then I put it, Blue Pear and all, in her hand. She turned white, and
asked me what I meant.
“‘I am going to give it to you—for a while, at least,’ I said, as
coolly as I could, making a virtue, of course, of what I knew was going
to be a necessity.
“She looked at me open-mouthed. Then she tore open the case, looked at
the stone, weighed it in her fingers, gasped a little, held it to the
light again, and turned and looked at me still once more.
“‘This pendant _was_ stolen!’ she cried, with sudden conviction. She
looked at the stone again—she couldn’t resist it.
“‘You might call it the Robin’s Egg, when you have it re-cut,’ I told
her.
“She gave a jump—that was what she was thinking of, the shrewd old
wretch. She shoved the case down in her lean old breast.
“‘Then you will smuggle it in for me?’ I asked her.
“‘Yes, I’ll get it through, if I have to swallow it!’
“‘And you will keep it?’ I asked; and I laughed, I don’t know why.
“‘You remember my house?’ she cried, with a start.
“‘Like a book!’ I told her.
“‘But still I’ll keep it!’ she declared.
“It was a challenge, a silly challenge, but I felt at that moment that
this was indeed a plunge back into the old ways of life. But, to go on.
She didn’t seem to realize that keeping the Blue Pear was like trying to
conceal a white elephant, or attempting to hide away a Sierra Nevada
mountain. Then that cruel old avaricious, over-dressed, natural-born
criminal had her turn at laughing, a little hysterically, I think. And,
for a minute or two, I felt that all the world had gone mad, that we
were only two gray gibbering ghosts talking in the enigmas of insanity,
penned up in throbbing cages of white enamelled iron.
“I followed her out of the cabin, and walked up and down alone in the
moonlight, wondering if I had done right. At the wharf, I fully intended
to risk everything and inform on her, then cable to the Cicelys. But she
must have suspected something like that—my stewardess had already told
me there were two Treasury Department detectives on board—and got her
innings first. For I found myself quietly taken in charge, and my
luggage gone over with a microscope—to say nothing of the gentle old
lady who massaged me so apologetically from head to foot, and seemed a
bit put out to find that I had nothing more dutiable than an extra pair
of French gloves.”
“Had you expected this beforehand?” interposed Durkin.
“Yes, the stewardess had told me there was trouble impending—that’s
what made me afraid about the Blue Pear. Just as I got safely through
Customs, though, I caught sight of the yellow hag despatching her maid
and luggage home in a taxi-cab, while she herself sailed away in
another,—I felt so sure she was going straight to her husband’s store,
Isaac Ottenheimer & Company, the jeweller and diamond man on Fifth
Avenue, you know, that I scrambled into a taxi and told the driver to
follow my friend to Ottenheimer’s. When we pulled up there, I drew the
back curtains down and watched through a quarter-inch crack. The woman
came out again, looking very relieved and triumphant. And that’s the
whole story—only,—”
She did not finish the sentence, but looked at Durkin, who was slowly
and dubiously rubbing his hands together, with the old, weary,
half-careless look all gone from his studious face.
He glanced back at the woman beside him admiringly, lost himself in
thought for a moment, and then laughed outright.
“You’re a dare-devil, Frank, if there ever was one!” he cried; then he
suddenly grew serious once more.
“No, it’s not _daring_,” she answered him. “The true name of it is
_cowardice_!”