while his amazing story, which I could in no way believe, went whirling
through my brain, and yet gave to me no shape of reality. At the first I
was led to think that he was the madman, and I cracked for sitting there
and hearing the extraordinary narration he had contrived; but there was
something in his manner which forbade any long continuance of the
assumption; and while I had no leisure to bring critical scrutiny upon
his tale, it yet impressed me to immediate action.
"Come," said I, "presuming that your picture is not highly colored, it
is quite time we were at the opera; it is striking half-past twelve now.
You know what women are. Mademoiselle Bernier may wear the bracelet in
the face of everything I have said; and I am inclined to think with you
that it is not wise for her to do so."
"God forbid that she should," said he; and with that we went out
together.
The weather at that time was cold and cheerless; a bleak wind swept
round the corners of the streets; and the lights which illumined the
peristyle of the great building swayed and flickered with lapping
tongues of red and yellow. But once inside, the glow of light and color
passed description. Here, whirling, shouting, dancing, leaping, the
maskers rioted, almost drowning with their clamor the blare of the band;
the superb entrance hall was ablaze with the flash of tawdry jewels and
shining raiment; kings and queens, knights and courtiers, _calicots_ and
clowns, swarmed up the massive staircase, struggling, screaming,
pushing, regardless of everything but the madness of the scene within.
It was with the greatest difficulty that I reached Tussal's box, and
therefrom looking down upon the wild carnival, seeing at the first but a
medley of form and color, a reckless horde of dancers, grisettes,
shepherdesses, over whose heads _confetti_ hurtled, or the _spirales_
which the youths love. What with the dust and the scream of voices, and
the chatter of the thousand tongues, and the heroic efforts of the
fiddlers, it was almost impossible to locate anything or any one; but
the Italian, readier than I, pointed out to me at last the one we
sought; and I observed her sitting in a box quite close to us, where she
seemed to talk with all a girl's _esprit_ to the young sculptor at her
side. A fairer spectacle never was than that of this childish creature,
quaintly dressed in a simple gown of white and black, with a necklace of
pearls about her throat, and a bouquet of roses in her hand; but the
very sight of her turned me sick with fear, for she wore upon her arm
the cursed topaz, and you could see the light of it half over the house.
The Italian and I perceived the thing at the one time; indeed, we rose
from our seats together.
"For the love of Heaven go to her!" said he; "tell the whole story to
both of them; she may not have ten minutes to live."
He had need to say no more, for I was in the _foyer_ as he spoke; but
scarce had I opened the door of Barre's box--which was upon the ground
floor, almost at the level of the dancers--when an appalling scream rose
up even above the clamor of the throng. For one moment, as I stood
quaking with my fears, and sore tempted to draw back, I saw nothing but
a haze of white smoke, a vision of lurid faces and black forms, and
sharper than them all, the figure of Barre himself bending over the body
of the insensible girl. Then, amidst the babbling of voices, and the
sobbing of women, and the cry of the man, which was the most bitter cry
imaginable, I heard the words, "Stop the student in the black cloak--he
has shot Mademoiselle!"
But the girl lay dead, with a bullet through her heart.
* * * * *
The tragedy at the Opera House was talk for many days in Paris; but the
assassin was never taken, nor indeed, heard of. The police inclined to
the theory that some masquerader had discharged a pistol by accident in
the heat of the riot; and to this theory most people inclined. But there
was a large sympathy for M. Georges Barre, who lay near to death for
many weeks after the shock, and who quitted the capital subsequently to
take up his residence in London. I told him the story the Italian had
narrated to me so soon as he was well enough to hear it; but, like the
police of Paris who had it also, I could see that he did not believe a
word of it. He sold me the topaz bracelet, however, and I have it to
this day, for I want the courage to sell it.
Of the Italian I never heard again. I saw him last immediately after the
drama of the ball, when he lurched away from me, wringing his hands
pitifully, begging me to tell his story to the police, and crying that a
curse was upon him. But I take it, in conjunction with his confession,
as a little curious that a madman, described as an ecclesiastic of
Savona, should have thrown himself before a train in the Gare du Nord
two days after the death of Mademoiselle Bernier.
THE RIPENING RUBIES.
THE RIPENING RUBIES.
"The plain fact is," said Lady Faber, "we are entertaining thieves. It
positively makes me shudder to look at my own guests, and to think that
some of them are criminals."
We stood together in the conservatory of her house in Portman Square,
looking down upon a brilliant ball-room, upon a glow of color, and the
radiance of unnumbered gems. She had taken me aside after the fourth
waltz to tell me that her famous belt of rubies had been shorn of one of
its finest pendants; and she showed me beyond possibility of dispute
that the loss was no accident, but another of those amazing thefts which
startled London so frequently during the season of 1893. Nor was hers
the only case. Though I had been in her house but an hour, complaints
from other sources had reached me. The Countess of Dunholm had lost a
crescent brooch of brilliants; Mrs. Kenningham-Hardy had missed a spray
of pearls and turquoise; Lady Hallingham made mention of an emerald
locket which was gone, as she thought, from her necklace; though, as she
confessed with a truly feminine doubt, she was not positive that her
maid had given it to her. And these misfortunes, being capped by the
abstraction of Lady Faber's pendant, compelled me to believe that of all
the startling stories of thefts which the season had known the story of
this dance would be the most remarkable.
These things and many more came to my mind as I held the mutilated belt
in my hand and examined the fracture, while my hostess stood, with an
angry flush upon her face, waiting for my verdict. A moment's inspection
of the bauble revealed to me at once its exceeding value, and the means
whereby a pendant of it had been snatched.
"If you will look closely," said I, "you will see that the gold chain
here has been cut with a pair of scissors. As we don't know the name of
the person who used them, we may describe them as pickpocket's
scissors."
"Which means that I am entertaining a pickpocket," said she, flushing
again at the thought.
"Or a person in possession of a pickpocket's implements," I suggested.
"How dreadful," she cried, "not for myself, though the rubies are very
valuable, but for the others. This is the third dance during the week at
which people's jewels have been stolen. When will it end?"
"The end of it will come," said I, "directly that you, and others with
your power to lead, call in the police. It is very evident by this time
that some person is socially engaged in a campaign of wholesale robbery.
While a silly delicacy forbids us to permit our guests to be suspected
or in any way watched, the person we mention may consider himself in a
terrestrial paradise, which is very near the seventh heaven of delight.
He will continue to rob with impunity, and to offer up his thanks for
that generosity of conduct which refuses us a glimpse of his hat, or
even an inspection of the boots in which he may place his plunder."
"You speak very lightly of it," she interrupted, as I still held her
belt in my hands. "Do you know that my husband values the rubies in each
of those pendants at eight hundred pounds?"
"I can quite believe it," said I; "some of them are white as these are,
I presume; but I want you to describe it for me, and as accurately as
your memory will let you."
"How will that help to its recovery?" she asked, looking at me
questioningly.
"Possibly not at all," I replied; "but it might be offered for sale at
my place, and I should be glad if I had the means of restoring it to
you. Stranger things have happened."
"I believe," said she sharply, "you would like to find out the thief
yourself."
"I should not have the smallest objection," I exclaimed frankly; "if
these robberies continue, no woman in London will wear real stones; and
I shall be the loser."
"I have thought of that," said she; "but, you know, you are not to make
the slightest attempt to expose any guest in my house; what you do
outside is no concern of mine."
"Exactly," said I, "and for the matter of that I am likely to do very
little in either case; we are working against clever heads; and if my
judgment be correct, there is a whole gang to cope with. But tell me
about the rubies."
"Well," said she, "the stolen pendant is in the shape of a rose. The
belt, as you know, was brought by Lord Faber from Burmah. Besides the
ring of rubies, which each drop has, the missing star includes four
yellow stones, which the natives declare are ripening rubies. It is only
a superstition, of course; but the gems are full of fire, and as
brilliant as diamonds."
"I know the stones well," said I; "the Burmese will sell you rubies of
all colors if you will buy them, though the blue variety is nothing more
than the sapphire. And how long is it since you missed the pendant?"
"Not ten minutes ago," she answered.
"Which means that your next partner might be the thief?" I suggested.
"Really, a dance is becoming a capital entertainment."
"My next partner is my husband," said she, laughing for the first time,
"and whatever you do, don't say a word to him. He would never forgive me
for losing the rubies."
When she was gone, I, who had come to her dance solely in the hope that
a word or a face there would cast light upon the amazing mystery of the
season's thefts, went down again where the press was and stood while the
dancers were pursuing the dreary paths of a "square." There before me
were the hundred types one sees in a London ball-room--types of
character and of want of character, of age aping youth, and of youth
aping age, of well-dressed women and ill-dressed women, of dandies and
of the bored, of fresh girlhood and worn maturity. Mixed in the dazzling
_melee_, or swaying to the rhythm of a music-hall melody, you saw the
lean forms of boys; the robust forms of men; the pretty figures of the
girls just out; the figures, not so pretty of the matrons, who, for the
sake of the picturesque, should long ago have been in. As the picture
changed quickly, and fair faces succeeded to dark faces, and the
coquetting eyes of pretty women passed by with a glance to give place to
the uninteresting eyes of the dancing man, I asked myself what hope
would the astutest spy have of getting a clue to the mysteries in such a
room; how could he look for a moment to name one man or one woman who
had part or lot in the astounding robberies which were the wonder of the
town? Yet I knew that if nothing were done, the sale of jewels in London
would come to the lowest ebb the trade had known, and that I,
personally, should suffer loss to an extent which I did not care to
think about.
I have said often, in jotting down from my book a few of the most
interesting cases which have come to my notice, that I am no detective,
nor do I pretend to the smallest gift of foresight above my fellow man.
Whenever I have busied myself about some trouble it has been from a
personal motive which drove me on, or in the hope of serving some one
who henceforth should serve me. And never have I brought to my aid other
weapon than a certain measure of common sense. In many instances the
purest good chance has given to me my only clue; the merest accident has
set me straight when a hundred roads lay before me. I had come to Lady
Faber's house hoping that the sight of some stranger, a chance word, or
even an impulse might cast light upon the darkness in which we had
walked for many weeks. Yet the longer I stayed in the ball-room the more
futile did the whole thing seem. Though I knew that a nimble-fingered
gentleman might be at my very elbow, that half-a-dozen others might be
dancing cheerfully about me in that way of life to which their rascality
had called them, I had not so much as a hand-breadth of suspicion; saw
no face that was not the face of the dancing ass, or the smart man about
town; did not observe a single creature who led me to hazard a question.
And so profound at last was my disgust that I elbowed my way from the
ball-room in despair; and went again to the conservatory where the palms
waved seductively, and the flying corks of the champagne bottles made
music harmonious to hear.
There were few people in this room at the moment--old General Sharard,
who was never yet known to leave a refreshment table until the supper
table was set; the Rev. Arthur Mellbank, the curate of St. Peter's,
sipping tea; a lean youth who ate an ice with the relish of a schoolboy;
and the ubiquitous Sibyl Kavanagh, who has been vulgarly described as a
garrison hack. She was a woman of many partialties, whom every one saw
at every dance, and then asked how she got there--a woman with
sufficient personal attraction left to remind you that she was _passe_,
and sufficient wit to make an interval tolerable. I, as a rule, had
danced once with her, and then avoided both her program and her chatter;
but now that I came suddenly upon her, she cried out with a delicious
pretence of artlessness, and ostentatiously made room for me at her
side.
"_Do_ get me another cup of tea," she said; "I've been talking for ten
minutes to Colonel Harner, who has just come from the great thirst land,
and I've caught it."
"You'll ruin your nerves," said I, as I fetched her the cup, "and you'll
miss the next dance."
"I'll sit it out with you," she cried gushingly; "and as for nerves, I
haven't got any. I must have shed them with my first teeth. But I want
to talk to you--you've heard the news, of course! Isn't it dreadful?"
She said this with a beautiful look of sadness, and for a moment I did
not know to what she referred. Then it dawned upon my mind that she had
heard of Lady Faber's loss.
"Yes," said I, "it's the profoundest mystery I have ever known."
"And can't you think of any explanation at all?" she asked, as she drank
her tea at a draught. "Isn't it possible to suspect some one just to
pass the time?"
"If you can suggest any one," said I, "we will begin with pleasure."
"Well, there's no one in this room to think of, is there?" she asked
with her limpid laugh; "of course you couldn't search the curate's
pockets, unless sermons were missing instead of rubies?"
"This is a case of 'sermons in stones,'" I replied, "and a very serious
case. I wonder you have escaped with all those pretty brilliants on your
sleeves."
"But I haven't escaped," she cried; "why, you're not up to date. Don't
you know that I lost a marquise brooch at the Hayes's dance the other
evening? I have never heard the last of it from my husband, who will not
believe for a minute that I did not lose it in the crowd."
"And you yourself believe----"
"That it was stolen, of course. I pin my brooches too well to lose
them--some one took it in the same cruel way that Lady Faber's rubies
have been taken. Isn't it really awful to think that at every party we
go to thieves go with us? It's enough to make one emigrate to the
shires."
She fell to the flippant mood again, for nothing could keep her from
that; and as there was obviously nothing to be learnt from her, I
listened to her chatter sufferingly.
"But we were going to suspect people," she continued suddenly, "and we
have not done it. As we can't begin with the curate, let's take the slim
young man opposite. Hasn't he what Sheridan calls--but there, I mustn't
say it; you know--a something disinheriting countenance?"
"He eats too many jam tarts and drinks too much lemonade to be a
criminal," I replied; "besides, he is not occupied, you'll have to look
in the ball-room."
"I can just see the top of the men's heads," said she, craning her neck
forward in the effort. "Have you noticed that when a man is dancing,
either he star-gazes in ecstasy, as though he were in heaven, or looks
down to his boots--well, as if it were the other thing?"
"Possibly," said I; "but you're not going to constitute yourself a
_vehmgericht_ from seeing the top of people's heads."
"Indeed," she cried, "that shows how little you know; there is more
character in the crown of an old man's head than is dreamt of in your
philosophy, as what's-his-name says. Look at that shining roof bobbing
up there, for instance; that is the halo of port and honesty--and a
difficulty in dancing the polka. Oh! that mine enemy would dance the
polka--especially if he were stout."
"Do you really possess an enemy?" I asked, as she fell into a vulgar
burst of laughter at her own humor; but she said,--
"Do I possess one? Go and discuss me with the other women--that's what I
tell all my partners to do; and they come back and report to me. It's as
good as a play!"
"It must be," said I, "a complete extravaganza. But your enemy has
finished his exercise, and they are going to play a waltz. Shall I take
you down?"
"Yes," she cried, "and don't forget to discuss me. Oh, these crushes!"
She said this as we came to the press upon the corner of the stairs
leading to the ball-room, a corner where she was pushed desperately
against the banisters. The vigor of the polka had sent an army of
dancers to the conservatory, and for some minutes we could neither
descend nor go back; but when the press was somewhat relieved, and she
made an effort to progress, her dress caught in a spike of the
iron-work, and the top of a panel of silk which went down one side of it
was ripped open and left hanging. For a minute she did not notice the
mishap; but as the torn panel of silk fell away slightly from the more
substantial portion of her dress, I observed, pinned to the inner side
of it, a large crescent brooch of diamonds. In the same instant she
turned with indescribable quickness, and made good the damage. But her
face was scarlet in the flush of its color; and she looked at me with
questioning eyes.
"What a miserable accident," she said. "I have spoilt my gown."
"Have you?" said I sympathetically, "I hope it was not my
clumsiness--but really there doesn't seem much damage done. Did you tear
it in front?"
There was need of very great restraint in saying this. Though I stood
simply palpitating with amazement, and had to make some show of
examining her gown, I knew that even an ill-judged word might undo the
whole good of the amazing discovery, and deprive me of that which
appeared to be one of the most astounding stories of the year. To put an
end to the interview, I asked her laughingly if she would not care to
see one of the maids upstairs; and she jumped at the excuse, leaving me
upon the landing to watch her hurriedly mounting to the bedroom story
above.
When she was gone, I went back to the conservatory and drank a cup of
tea, always the best promoter of clear thought; and for some ten minutes
I turned the thing over in my mind. Who was Mrs. Sibyl Kavanagh, and why
had she sewn a brooch of brilliants to the inside of a panel of her
gown--sewn it in a place where it was as safely hid from sight as though
buried in the Thames? A child could have given the answer--but a child
would have overlooked many things which were vital to the development of
the unavoidable conclusion of the discovery. The brooch that I had seen
corresponded perfectly with the crescent of which Lady Dunholme was
robbed--yet it was a brooch which a hundred women might have possessed;
and if I had simply stepped down and told Lady Faber, "the thief you are
entertaining is Mrs. Sibyl Kavanagh," a slander action with damages had
trodden upon the heels of the folly. Yet I would have given a hundred
pounds to have been allowed full inspection of the whole panel of the
woman's dress--and I would have staked an equal sum that there had been
found in it the pendant of the ripening rubies; a pendant which seemed
to me the one certain clue that would end the series of jewel robberies,
and the colossal mystery of the year. Now, however, the woman had gone
upstairs to hide in another place whatever she had to hide; and for the
time it was unlikely that a sudden searching of her dress would add to
my knowledge.
A second cup of tea helped me still further on my path. It made quite
clear to me the fact that the woman was the recipient of the stolen
jewels, rather than the actual taker of them. She, clearly, could not
use the scissors which had severed Lady Faber's pendant from the ruby
belt. A skilful man had in all probability done that--but which man, or
perhaps men? I had long felt that the season's robberies were the work
of many hands. Chance had now marked for me one pair; but it was vastly
more important to know the others. The punishment of the woman would
scarce stop the widespread conspiracy; the arrest of her for the
possession of a crescent brooch, hid suspiciously it is true, but a
brooch of a pattern which abounded in every jeweler's shop from
Kensington to Temple Bar, would have been consummate lunacy. Of course,
I could have taken cab to Scotland Yard, and have told my tale; but with
no other support, how far would that have availed me? If the history of
the surpassingly strange case were to be written, I knew that I must
write it, and lose no moment in the work.
I had now got a sufficient grip upon the whole situation to act
decisively, and my first step was to re-enter the ball-room, and to take
a partner for the next waltz. We had made some turns before I discovered
that Mrs. Kavanagh was again in the room, dancing with her usual dash,
and seemingly in no way moved by the mishap. As we passed in the press,
she even smiled at me, saying, "I've set full sail again;" and her whole
bearing convinced me of her belief that I had seen nothing.
At the end of my dance my own partner, a pretty little girl in pink,
left me with the remark, "You're awfully stupid to-night! I ask you if
you've seen _Manon Lescaut_, and the only thing you say is, 'The panel
buttons up, I thought so.'" This convinced me that it was dangerous to
dance again, and I waited in the room only until the supper was ready,
and Mrs. Kavanagh passed me, making for the dining-room, on the arm of
General Sharard. I had loitered to see what jewels she wore upon her
dress; and when I had made a note of them, I slipped from the front door
of the house unobserved, and took a hansom to my place in Bond Street.
At the second ring of the bell my watchman opened the door to me; and
while he stood staring with profound surprise, I walked straight to one
of the jewel cases in which our cheaper jewels are kept, and took
therefrom a spray of diamonds, and hooked it to the inside of my coat.
Then I sent the man upstairs to awaken Abel, and in five minutes my
servant was with me, though he wore only his trousers and his shirt.
"Abel," said I, "there's good news for you. I'm on the path of the gang
we're wanting."
"Good God, sir!" cried he, "you don't mean that!"
"Yes," said I, "there's a woman named Sibyl Kavanagh in it to begin
with, and she's helped herself to a couple of diamond sprays, and a
pendant of rubies at Lady Faber's to-night. One of the sprays I know
she's got; if I could trace the pendant to her, the case would begin to
look complete."
"Whew!" he ejaculated, brightening up at the prospect of business. "I
knew there was a woman in it all along--but this one, why, she's a
regular flier, ain't she, sir?"
"We'll find out her history presently. I'm going straight back to
Portman Square now. Follow me in a hansom, and when you get to the
house, wait inside my brougham until I come. But before you do that, run
round to Marlborough Street police-station and ask them if we can have
ten or a dozen men ready to mark a house in Bayswater some time between
this and six o'clock to-morrow morning."
"You're going to follow her home then?"
"Exactly, and if my wits can find a way I'm going to be her guest for
ten minutes after she quits Lady Faber's. They're sure to let you have
the men either at Marlborough Street or at the Harrow Road station. This
business has been a disgrace to them quite long enough."
"That's so, sir; King told me yesterday that he'd bury his head in the
sand if something didn't turn up soon. You haven't given me the exact
address though."