A BOLD AND CUNNING SCHEME.
On the afternoon previous to Mr. Dinsmore's death a woman of perhaps
sixty years alighted from an elegant private carriage before the door
of a fine residence on West ---- street, in New York city.
She was simply but richly clad in heavy, lustrous black silk, and was a
woman of fine appearance, although her face wore a look of deep sadness
which seemed to indicate some hidden trouble or sorrow.
Her hair was almost white, but carefully arranged, and lay low upon her
placid, but slightly wrinkled, brow in soft, silken waves that were very
becoming to her. Her complexion was unusually clear and fair for one of
her years, although it might have been enhanced somewhat by the fine vail
of white tulle which she wore over it. She was tall and commanding in
figure, a little inclined toward portliness, but every motion was replete
with graceful dignity and high-bred repose.
After giving directions to her coachman to wait for her, she mounted the
steps leading to the door, pausing for an instant to read the name, "R.
Wesselhoff, M.D." engraved upon a silver plate, before ringing the bell.
A colored servant soon answered her call, and responded affirmatively to
her inquiry if the noted physician was in, then ushered her into a small
but elegantly appointed reception-room upon the right of the lofty hall.
Five minutes later an elderly and singularly prepossessing man entered
and saluted his visitor in a gracious and respectful manner.
"Mrs. Walton, I suppose?" he remarked, just glancing at the card which
she had given the servant.
The woman bowed, then observed, with a patient but pathetic sigh:
"I have called, Doctor Wesselhoff, upon a very sad errand, and one which
I trust you will regard as strictly confidential."
"Certainly, madame; I so regard all communications made by my patients,"
the gentleman courteously responded.
"I have a son," madame resumed, "who has of late betrayed symptoms of the
strangest mania, although he appears to be in perfect health in all other
respects. He imagines that some gigantic robbery has been committed;
sometimes he declares that bonds to a large amount have been stolen, at
other times it is money, then again that costly jewels have disappeared;
but the strangest phase of his malady consists in the fact that he
accuses me, and sometimes other members of the family, of being the
thief, and insists that he must have me arrested. This has gone on for
some time, and I have been obliged to adopt every kind of device in order
to keep him from carrying out his threats and thus creating a very
uncomfortable scandal. This morning he became more violent than usual,
and I felt obliged to take some decided step in regard to proper
treatment for him; therefore my visit to you."
"It is a singular mania, truly," said the physician, who had been
listening with the deepest interest to his companion's recital. "I
think I never have met with anything exactly like it before in all my
experience. How old is your son, Mrs. Walter?"
"Twenty-four years," the woman replied, with a heavy sigh; "and," she
added, tremulously, "I cannot bear the thought of sending him to any
common lunatic asylum. I learned recently that you sometimes receive
private patients to test their cases before sending them to a public
institution, and that you have frequently effected a cure in critical
cases. Will you take my son and see what you think of his case--what you
can do for him? I shall not mind the cost--I wish to spare nothing, and
I do not wish any one, at least of our friends and acquaintances, to know
that he is under treatment for insanity until you pronounce your verdict.
He seems sane enough upon all other topics, except now and then he
persists in calling himself by some other name, and I know he would be
very sensitive, should he recover, to have his condition known. He does
not even suspect that I am contemplating any such thing, and I shall be
obliged to use strategy in bringing him to you."
Doctor Wesselhoff was evidently very deeply interested in the case; he
had never heard of anything like it before, and all his professional
enthusiasm was aroused.
He spent some time questioning his visitor, and finally decided that he
would receive the young man immediately--to-morrow afternoon Mrs. Walton
might bring him, he said, if she could conveniently arrange to do so.
"I think, perhaps, it will not be best for me to come with him myself,"
the lady said, after considering the matter for some time. "Truly," she
added, with a sad smile, "I almost fear to go out with him, lest he put
his threats into execution and have me arrested. But I think I can
arrange with my sister, Mrs. Vanderbeck, to persuade him to come with
her as if to call upon a friend."
The matter was arranged thus, and madame arose to take her leave, the
physician accompanying her to the door and feeling deep sympathy for the
cultured and attractive woman in her strange affliction.
The next day, about one o'clock--the day following Mona Montague's
attendance at the opera with Ray Palmer, and only a few hours after Mr.
Dinsmore's death, a brilliantly beautiful woman, who might have been
forty-five years of age, entered the handsome store of Amos Palmer & Co.,
diamond merchants and jewelers.
She was exquisitely dressed in an expensive, tailor-made costume of gray
ladies' cloth, with a gray felt bonnet trimmed with the same shade of
velvet as her dress. Her hands were faultlessly gloved, her feet incased
in costly imported boots, and everything about her apparel bespoke her a
favorite of wealth and luxury.
Her appearance was the more marked from the fact that her hair was a
deep, rich red, and curled about her fair forehead in lovely natural
curls, while she wore over her face a spotted black lace veil, which,
however, did not quite conceal some suspicious wrinkles and
"crow's-feet," if that had been her object in wearing it.
She had driven to the store in a plain but elegant _coupé_, drawn by a
pair of black horses in gold-mounted harness. Her driver was apparently a
man of about thirty years, and of eminently respectable appearance in his
dark-green livery.
She approached a counter on entering the store, and, in a charmingly
affable manner, asked to look at some diamonds.
As it happened, at that hour, one of the clerks was absent, and Mr. Amos
Palmer was himself in attendance in his place, and politely served the
lady, laying out before her a glittering array of the costly stones she
desired to examine.
He saw at once that she was a judge of the gems, for she selected not the
largest and most showy, but the purest and the best, and he could but
admire her discernment and taste.
When she had made her selections, and she took plenty of time about it,
chatting all the while with the gentleman in the most intelligent and
fascinating manner, she remarked that she wished her husband to see them
before she concluded her purchase.
"But," she added, thoughtfully, "he is something of an invalid, and
not able to come to the store to examine them; have you not some one
whom you could trust, Mr. Palmer, to take the stones to my home for his
inspection? If he sanctions my choice he will at once write a check for
their price, or the attendant could return them if they were not
satisfactory."
"Certainly," Mr. Palmer graciously responded; "we frequently have such
requests, and are only too willing to accommodate our customers. Will
madame kindly give me her address?"
Madame smiled as she drew a costly card-case from her no less costly
shopping-bag, and taking a heavy card with beveled edges from it, laid it
upon the counter before the jeweler, remarking that she should like to
have the clerk accompany her directly back in her own carriage, as she
wanted the matter decided at once, for the diamonds were to be worn that
evening if they suited.
"Mrs. William Vanderbeck, No. 98 ---- street," Mr. Palmer read, and then
slipped the card into his vest pocket, after which he beckoned a clerk to
him.
"Ask my son to step this way a moment," he said.
The man bowed respectfully, bestowing an admiring glance upon the
attractive woman on the other side of the counter, and then withdrew
to a private office at the other end of the room.
A moment later Ray Palmer made his appearance and approached his father.
Mr. Palmer introduced his son to Mrs. Vanderbeck, mentioned her desire
that some one be sent to her residence with the diamonds she had selected
for her husband's approval, and asked if he would assume the
responsibility.
The young man readily consented, for the duty was not an unusual one, and
immediately returned to the office for his coat and hat, while his father
carefully put up the costly stones in a convenient form for him to take,
and chatted socially with the beautiful Mrs. Vanderbeck meantime.
When they were ready Ray slipped the package into one of the outside
pockets of his overcoat, but retained his hold upon it, and then followed
the lady from the store to her carriage, and the next moment they drove
away.
The young man found his companion a most charming woman. She was bright,
witty, cultured and highly educated. She had evidently seen a great deal
of the world, and was full of anecdotes, which she knew how to relate
with such effect that he forgot for the time everything but the charm of
her presence and conversation.
The drive was rather a long one, but Ray did not mind that, and was, on
the whole, rather sorry when the carriage stopped, and Mrs. Vanderbeck
remarked, in the midst of a witty anecdote:
"Here we are at last--ah--"
This last ejaculation was caused by discovering that she could not rise
from her seat, her dress having been shut into the door of the _coupé_.
Ray bent forward with a polite "allow me," to assist her, but found that
he could not disengage the dress.
Just then the coachman opened the door, but in spite of the young man's
utmost care, the beautiful cloth was badly torn in the operation.
"What a pity!" he exclaimed, in a rueful tone.
But madame looked up with a silvery laugh.
"Never mind," she said lightly, "accidents will happen, and I ought to
have been more careful when I entered the carriage."
Ray stepped out upon the sidewalk, where he stood waiting to assist
his companion, who, however, was trying to pin the rent in her skirt
together. Then gathering up some packages that were lying on the seat
opposite, she laughingly inquired:
"Please may I trouble you with these for a moment?"
"Indeed you may. Pray excuse my negligence," Ray gallantly exclaimed, as
he extended his hands for them.
She filled them both, and then gracefully descended to the ground.
"You can wait, James, to take Mr. Palmer back," she quietly remarked, as
they turned to mount the steps of the residence before which they had
stopped.
"Pray do not ask your man to do that, Mrs. Vanderbeck; I can take a car
just as well," the young man exclaimed.
"No, indeed," she returned, with a brilliant smile, "I am sure it would
be very uncourteous in me to allow you to do so after your kindness in
coming with me."
She rang the bell, and the door was almost immediately opened by a
colored servant, when the beautiful woman led the way to a small
reception room on the right of the hall, where she invited her companion
to be seated, while she went to arrange for the interview with her
husband.
She glided gracefully from the room, and Ray, depositing upon the table
the packages he held, began to remove his gloves, while he glanced about
the elegant apartment, noticing its hangings and decorations and many
beautiful pictures.
Presently a gentleman of very prepossessing appearance entered, and Ray,
arising, was astonished to behold, instead of the invalid he had pictured
to himself, a man in the prime of life and apparently in perfect health.
He bowed politely.
"Mr. Vanderbeck, I presume?" he remarked, inquiringly.
The gentleman smilingly returned his salute, without responding to the
name, then courteously asked him to take a seat.
Ray took the proffered chair, and then observed, although he wondered why
Mrs. Vanderbeck did not return:
"As I suppose you know, I have called, at the request of Mrs. Vanderbeck,
to have you examine some--Good heavens!"
And he suddenly leaped from his chair as if shot from it by some powerful
but concealed spring, his face as pale as his shirt bosom, great drops of
cold perspiration breaking out upon his forehead.
He had put his hand in his pocket as he spoke, to take from it the
package of diamonds, but--_it was gone_!
"Pray do not be so excited, my young friend," calmly observed his
companion, "but sit down again and tell me your errand."
But Ray Palmer did not hear or heed him. He had rushed to the window,
where, with a trembling hand, he swept aside the heavy draperies and
looked out upon the street for the _coupé_ in which he had been brought
to that house.
It was not in sight, and the fearful truth burst upon him--he had been
the victim of an accomplished sharper.
He had been robbed, and the clever thief had suddenly vanished, leaving
no trace behind her.