AND MORE DIAMONDS!
There was a rap on the door, and a clerk thrust his head in.
"Mr. Birnes to see you, sir," he announced.
"Show him in," directed Mr. Latham. "Sit down, both of you, and
let's see what he has to say."
There was an odd expression of hope deferred on the detective's
face when he entered. He glanced inquiringly at Mr. Schultze and
Mr. Czenki, whereupon Mr. Latham introduced them.
"You may talk freely," he added. "We are all interested alike."
The detective crossed his legs and balanced his hat carefully on
a knee, the while he favored Mr. Czenki with a sharp scrutiny. There
was that in the thin, scarred face and in the beady black eyes which
inevitably drew the attention of a stranger, and half a dozen times
as he talked Mr. Birnes glanced at the expert.
He retold the story of the cab ride up Fifth Avenue, and the car trip
back downtown--omitting embarrassing details such as the finding of
two notes addressed to himself--dwelt a moment upon the empty gripsack
which Mr. Wynne carried on the car, and then:
"When you told me, Mr. Latham, that the gripsack had contained
diamonds when Mr. Wynne left here I knew instantly how he got rid of
them. He transferred them to some person in the cab, in accordance
with a carefully prearranged plan. That person was a woman!"
"A woman!" Mr. Latham repeated, as if startled.
"Dere iss alvays wimmins in id," remarked Mr. Schultze
philosophically. "Go on."
Mr. Birnes was not at all backward about detailing the persistence
and skill it had required on his part to establish this fact; and
he went on at length to acquaint them with the search that had been
made by a dozen of his men to find a trace of the woman from the time
she climbed the elevated stairs at Fifty-eighth Street. He admitted
that the quest for her had thus far been fruitless, assuring them at
the same time that it would go steadily on, for the present at least.
"And now, Mr. Latham," he went on, and inadvertently he glanced at
Mr. Czenki, "I have been hampered, of course, by the fact that you
have not taken me completely into your confidence in this matter. I
mean," he added hastily, "that beyond a mere hint of their value I
know nothing whatever about the diamonds which Mr. Wynne had in the
gripsack. I gathered, however, that they were worth a large sum of
money--perhaps, even a million dollars?"
"Yah, a million dollars ad leasd," remarked Mr. Schultze grimly.
"Thank you," and the detective smiled shrewdly. "Your instructions
were to find where he got them. If there had been a theft of a
million dollars' worth of diamonds anywhere in this world, I would
have known it; so I took steps to examine the Custom House records
of this and other cities to see if there had been an unusual shipment
to Mr. Wynne, or to any one else outside of the diamond dealers,
thinking this might give me a clew."
"And what was the result?" demanded Mr. Latham quickly.
"My agents have covered all the Atlantic ports and they did not come
in through the Custom House," replied Mr. Birnes. "I have not heard
from the western agents as yet, but my opinion is--is that they were
perhaps smuggled in. Smuggling, after all, is simple with the
thousands of miles of unguarded coasts of this country. I don't know
this, of course; I advance it merely as a possibility."
Mr. Latham turned to Mr. Schultze and Mr. Czenki with a triumphant
smile. Diamonds in meteors! Tommyrot!
"Of course," the detective resumed, "the whole investigation centers
about this man Wynne. He has been under the eyes of my agents as no
other man ever was, and in spite of this has been able to keep in
correspondence with his accomplices. And, gentlemen, he has done it
not through the mails, not over the telephone, not by telegraph, and
yet he has done it."
"By wireless, perhaps?" suggested Mr. Czenki. It was the first time
he had spoken, and the detective took occasion then and there to stare
at him frankly.
"And not by wireless," he said at last. "He sends and receives
messages from the roof of his house in Thirty-seventh Street by
homing pigeons!"
"Some more fandastics, eh, Laadham?" Mr. Schultze taunted. "Some
more chimericals?"
"I demonstrate this much by the close watch I have kept of Mr. Wynne,"
the detective went on, there being no response to his questioning look
at Mr. Schultze. "One of my agents, stationed on the roof of the
house adjoining Mr. Wynne's" (it was the maid-servant next door) "has,
on at least one occasion, seen him remove a tissue-paper strip from a
carrier pigeon's leg and read what was written on it, after which he
kissed it, gentlemen, kissed it; then he destroyed it. What did it
mean? It means that that particular message was from the girl to whom
he transferred the diamonds in the cab, and that he is madly in love
with her."
"Oh, dese wimmins! I dell you!" commented Mr. Schultze.
There was a little pause, then Mr. Birnes continued impressively:
"This correspondence is of no consequence in itself, of course. But
it gives us this: Carrier pigeons will only fly home, so if Mr.
Wynne received a message by pigeon it means that at some time, within
a week say, he has shipped that pigeon and perhaps others from the
house in Thirty-seventh Street to that person who sent him the
message. If he sends messages to that person it means that he has
received a pigeon or pigeons from that person within a week. And how
were these pigeons shipped? In all probability, by express. So,
gentlemen, you see there ought to be a record in the express offices,
which would give us the home town, even the name and address, of the
person who now has the diamonds in his or her keeping. Is that clear
to all of you?"
"It is perfectly clear," commented Mr. Laadham admiringly, while the
German nodded his head in approval.
"And that is the clew we are working on at the moment," the detective
added. "Three of my men are now searching the records of all the
express companies in the city--and there are a great many--for the
pigeon shipments. If, as seems probable, this clew develops, it may
be that we can place our hands on the diamonds within a few days."
"I don'd d'ink I vould yust blace my hands on dem," Mr. Schultze
advised. "Dey are his diamonds, you know, und your hands might ged
in drouble."
"I mean figuratively, of course," the detective amended.
He stopped and drummed on his stiff hat with his fingers. Again he
glanced at the impassive face of Mr. Czenki with keen, questioning
eyes; and for one bare instant it seemed as if he were trying to
bring his memory to his aid.
"I've found out all about this man Wynne," he supplemented after a
moment, "but nothing in his record seems to have any bearing on this
case. He is an orphan. His mother was a Van Cortlandt of old Dutch
stock, and his father was a merchant downtown. He left a few
thousands to the son, and the son is now in business for himself with
an office in lower Broad Street. He is an importer of brown sugar."
"Brown sugar?" queried Mr. Czenki quickly, and the thin, scarred face
reflected for a second some subtle emotion within him. "Brown
sugar!" he repeated.
"Yes," drawled the detective, with an unpleasant stare, "brown sugar.
He imports it from Cuba and Porto Rico and Brazil by the shipload, I
understand, and makes a good thing of it."
A quick pallor overspread Mr. Czenki's countenance, and he arose with
his fingers working nervously. His beady eyes were glittering; his
lips were pressed together until they were bloodless.
"_Vas iss?_" demanded Mr. Schultze curiously.
"My God, gentlemen, don't you see?" the expert burst out violently.
"Don't you see what this man has done? He has--he has--"
Suddenly, by a supreme effort, he regained control of himself, and
resumed his seat.
"He has--what?" asked Mr. Latham.
For half a minute Czenki stared at his employer; then his face grew
impassive again.
"I beg your pardon," he said quietly. "Mr. Wynne is a heavy importer
of sugar from Brazil. Isn't it possible that those _are_ Brazilian
diamonds? That new workings have been discovered somewhere in the
interior? That he has smuggled them in concealed in the sugar-bags,
right into New York, under the noses of the customs officials? I beg
your pardon," he concluded.
Late in the afternoon of the following day a drunken man, unshaven,
unkempt, unclean and clothed in rags, lurched into a small pawnshop
in the lower Bowery and planked down on the dirty counter a handful
of inert, colorless pebbles, ranging in size from a pea to a peanut.
"Say, Jew, is them real diamonds?" he demanded thickly.
The man in charge glanced at them and nearly fainted. Ten minutes
later Red Haney, knight of the road, was placed under arrest as a
suspicious character. Uncut diamonds, valued roughly at fifty
thousand dollars, were found in his possession.
"Where did you get them?" demanded the amazed police.
"Found 'em."
"_Where_ did you find them?"
"None o' your business."
And that was all they were able to get out of him at the moment.