“Has the breastplate any particular history?” I asked.
“It is of great age and of immense value,” said Professor Andreas.
“Without being able to make an absolute assertion, we have many reasons
to think that it is possible that it may be the original urim and
thummim of Solomon’s Temple. There is certainly nothing so fine in any
collection in Europe. My friend, Captain Wilson here, is a practical
authority upon precious stones, and he would tell you how pure these
are.”
Captain Wilson, a man with a dark, hard, incisive face, was standing
beside his _fiancée_ at the other side of the case.
“Yes,” said he, curtly, “I have never seen finer stones.”
“And the gold-work is also worthy of attention. The ancients excelled in
——”—he was apparently about to indicate the setting of the stones, when
Captain Wilson interrupted him.
“You will see a finer example of their gold-work in this candlestick,”
said he, turning to another table, and we all joined him in his
admiration of its embossed stem and delicately ornamented branches.
Altogether it was an interesting and a novel experience to have objects
of such rarity explained by so great an expert; and when, finally,
Professor Andreas finished our inspection by formally handing over the
precious collection to the care of my friend, I could not help pitying
him and envying his successor whose life was to pass in so pleasant a
duty. Within a week, Ward Mortimer was duly installed in his new set of
rooms, and had become the autocrat of the Belmore Street Museum.
About a fortnight afterwards my friend gave a small dinner to
half-a-dozen bachelor friends to celebrate his promotion. When his
guests were departing he pulled my sleeve and signalled to me that he
wished me to remain.
“You have only a few hundred yards to go,” said he—I was living in
chambers in the Albany. “You may as well stay and have a quiet cigar
with me. I very much want your advice.”
I relapsed into an arm-chair and lit one of his excellent Matronas. When
he had returned from seeing the last of his guests out, he drew a letter
from his dress-jacket and sat down opposite to me.
“This is an anonymous letter which I received this morning,” said he. “I
want to read it to you and to have your advice.”
“You are very welcome to it for what it is worth.”
“This is how the note runs: ‘Sir,—I should strongly advise you to keep a
very careful watch over the many valuable things which are committed to
your charge. I do not think that the present system of a single watchman
is sufficient. Be upon your guard, or an irreparable misfortune may
occur.’”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, that is all.”
“Well,” said I, “it is at least obvious that it was written by one of
the limited number of people who are aware that you have only one
watchman at night.”
Ward Mortimer handed me the note, with a curious smile. “Have you an eye
for handwriting?” said he. “Now, look at this!” He put another letter in
front of me. “Look at the _c_ in ‘congratulate’ and the _c_ in
‘committed.’ Look at the capital _I_. Look at the trick of putting in a
dash instead of a stop!”
“They are undoubtedly from the same hand—with some attempt at disguise
in the case of this first one.”
“The second,” said Ward Mortimer, “is the letter of congratulation which
was written to me by Professor Andreas upon my obtaining my
appointment.”
I stared at him in amazement. Then I turned over the letter in my hand,
and there, sure enough, was “Martin Andreas” signed upon the other side.
There could be no doubt, in the mind of any one who had the slightest
knowledge of the science of graphology, that the Professor had written
an anonymous letter, warning his successor against thieves. It was
inexplicable, but it was certain.
“Why should he do it?” I asked.
“Precisely what I should wish to ask you. If he had any such misgivings,
why could he not come and tell me direct?”
“Will you speak to him about it?”
“There again I am in doubt. He might choose to deny that he wrote it.”
“At any rate,” said I, “this warning is meant in a friendly spirit, and
I should certainly act upon it. Are the present precautions enough to
insure you against robbery?”
“I should have thought so. The public are only admitted from ten till
five, and there is a guardian to every two rooms. He stands at the door
between them, and so commands them both.”
“But at night?”
“When the public are gone, we at once put up the great iron shutters,
which are absolutely burglar-proof. The watchman is a capable fellow. He
sits in the lodge, but he walks round every three hours. We keep one
electric light burning in each room all night.”
“It is difficult to suggest anything more—short of keeping your day
watchers all night.”
“We could not afford that.”
“At least, I should communicate with the police, and have a special
constable put on outside in Belmore Street,” said I. “As to the letter,
if the writer wishes to be anonymous, I think he has a right to remain
so. We must trust to the future to show some reason for the curious
course which he has adopted.”
So we dismissed the subject, but all that night after my return to my
chambers I was puzzling my brain as to what possible motive Professor
Andreas could have for writing an anonymous warning letter to his
successor—for that the writing was his was as certain to me as if I had
seen him actually doing it. He foresaw some danger to the collection.
Was it because he foresaw it that he abandoned his charge of it? But if
so, why should he hesitate to warn Mortimer in his own name? I puzzled
and puzzled until at last I fell into a troubled sleep, which carried me
beyond my usual hour of rising.
I was aroused in a singular and effective method, for about nine o’clock
my friend Mortimer rushed into my room with an expression of
consternation upon his face. He was usually one of the most tidy men of
my acquaintance, but now his collar was undone at one end, his tie was
flying, and his hat at the back of his head. I read his whole story in
his frantic eyes.
“The museum has been robbed!” I cried, springing up in bed.
“I fear so! Those jewels! The jewels of the urim and thummim!” he
gasped, for he was out of breath with running. “I’m going on to the
police-station. Come to the museum as soon as you can, Jackson!
Good-bye!” He rushed distractedly out of the room, and I heard him
clatter down the stairs.
I was not long in following his directions, but I found when I arrived
that he had already returned with a police inspector, and another
elderly gentleman, who proved to be Mr. Purvis, one of the partners of
Morson and Company, the well-known diamond merchants. As an expert in
stones he was always prepared to advise the police. They were grouped
round the case in which the breastplate of the Jewish priest had been
exposed. The plate had been taken out and laid upon the glass top of the
case, and the three heads were bent over it.
“It is obvious that it has been tampered with,” said Mortimer. “It
caught my eye the moment that I passed through the room this morning. I
examined it yesterday evening, so that it is certain that this has
happened during the night.”
It was, as he had said, obvious that some one had been at work upon it.
The settings of the uppermost row of four stones—the carnelian, peridot,
emerald, and ruby-were rough and jagged as if some one had scraped all
round them. The stones were in their places, but the beautiful gold-work
which we had admired only a few days before had been very clumsily
pulled about.
“It looks to me,” said the police inspector, “as if some one had been
trying to take out the stones.”
“My fear is,” said Mortimer, “that he not only tried, but succeeded. I
believe these four stones to be skilful imitations which have been put
in the place of the originals.”
The same suspicion had evidently been in the mind of the expert, for he
had been carefully examining the four stones with the aid of a lens. He
now submitted them to several tests, and finally turned cheerfully to
Mortimer.
“I congratulate you, sir,” said he, heartily. “I will pledge my
reputation that all four of these stones are genuine, and of a most
unusual degree of purity.”
The colour began to come back to my poor friend’s frightened face, and
he drew a long breath of relief.
“Thank God!” he cried. “Then what in the world did the thief want?”
“Probably he meant to take the stones, but was interrupted.”
“In that case one would expect him to take them out one at a time, but
the setting of each of these has been loosened, and yet the stones are
all here.”
“It is certainly most extraordinary,” said the inspector. “I never
remember a case like it. Let us see the watchman.”
The commissionaire was called—a soldierly, honest-faced man, who seemed
as concerned as Ward Mortimer at the incident.
“No, sir, I never heard a sound,” he answered, in reply to the questions
of the inspector. “I made my rounds four times, as usual, but I saw
nothing suspicious. I’ve been in my position ten years, but nothing of
the kind has ever occurred before.”
“No thief could have come through the windows?”
“Impossible, sir.”
“Or passed you at the door?”
“No, sir; I never left my post except when I walked my rounds.”
“What other openings are there in the museum?”
“There is the door into Mr. Ward Mortimer’s private rooms.”
“That is locked at night,” my friend explained, “and in order to reach
it any one from the street would have to open the outside door as well.”
“Your servants?”
“Their quarters are entirely separate.”
“Well, well,” said the inspector, “this is certainly very obscure.
However, there has been no harm done, according to Mr. Purvis.”
“I will swear that those stones are genuine.”
“So that the case appears to be merely one of malicious damage. But none
the less, I should be very glad to go carefully round the premises, and
to see if we can find any trace to show us who your visitor may have
been.”
His investigation, which lasted all the morning was careful and
intelligent, but it led in the end to nothing. He pointed out to us that
there were two possible entrances to the museum which we had not
considered. The one was from the cellars by a trap-door opening in the
passage. The other through a skylight from the lumber-room, overlooking
that very chamber to which the intruder had penetrated. As neither the
cellar nor the lumber-room could be entered unless the thief was already
within the locked doors, the matter was not of any practical importance,
and the dust of cellar and attic assured us that no one had used either
one or the other. Finally, we ended as we began, without the slightest
clue as to how, why, or by whom the setting of these four jewels had
been tampered with.
There remained one course for Mortimer to take, and he took it. Leaving
the police to continue their fruitless researches, he asked me to
accompany him that afternoon in a visit to Professor Andreas. He took
with him the two letters, and it was his intention to openly tax his
predecessor with having written the anonymous warning, and to ask him to
explain the fact that he should have anticipated so exactly that which
had actually occurred. The Professor was living in a small villa in
Upper Norwood, but we were informed by the servant that he was away from
home. Seeing our disappointment, she asked us if we should like to see
Miss Andreas, and showed us into the modest drawing-room.
I have mentioned incidentally that the Professor’s daughter was a very
beautiful girl. She was a blonde, tall and graceful, with a skin of that
delicate tint which the French call “mat,” the colour of old ivory or of
the lighter petals of the sulphur rose. I was shocked, however, as she
entered the room to see how much she had changed in the last fortnight.
Her young face was haggard and her bright eyes heavy with trouble.
“Father has gone to Scotland,” she said. “He seems to be tired, and has
had a good deal to worry him. He only left us yesterday.”
“You look a little tired yourself, Miss Andreas,” said my friend.
“I have been so anxious about father.”
“Can you give me his Scotch address?”
“Yes, he is with his brother, the Rev. David Andreas, 1, Arran Villas,
Ardrossan.”
Ward Mortimer made a note of the address, and we left without saying
anything as to the object of our visit. We found ourselves in Belmore
Street in the evening in exactly the same position in which we had been
in the morning. Our only clue was the Professor’s letter, and my friend
had made up his mind to start for Ardrossan next day, and to get to the
bottom of the anonymous letter, when a new development came to alter our
plans.
Very early on the following morning I was aroused from my sleep by a tap
upon my bedroom door. It was a messenger with a note from Mortimer.
“Do come round,” it said; “the matter is becoming more and more
extraordinary.”
When I obeyed his summons I found him pacing excitedly up and down the
central room, while the old soldier who guarded the premises stood with
military stiffness in a corner.
“My dear Jackson,” he cried, “I am so delighted that you have come, for
this is a most inexplicable business.”
“What has happened, then?”
He waved his hand towards the case which contained the breastplate.
“Look at it,” said he.
I did so, and could not restrain a cry of surprise. The setting of the
middle row of precious stones had been profaned in the same manner as
the upper ones. Of the twelve jewels, eight had been now tampered with
in this singular fashion. The setting of the lower four was neat and
smooth. The others jagged and irregular.
“Have the stones been altered?” I asked.
“No, I am certain that these upper four are the same which the expert
pronounced to be genuine, for I observed yesterday that little
discoloration on the edge of the emerald. Since they have not extracted
the upper stones, there is no reason to think the lower have been
transposed. You say that you heard nothing, Simpson?”
“No, sir,” the commissionaire answered. “But when I made my round after
daylight I had a special look at these stones, and I saw at once that
some one had been meddling with them. Then I called you, sir, and told
you. I was backwards and forwards all the night, and I never saw a soul
or heard a sound.”
“Come up and have some breakfast with me,” said Mortimer, and he took me
into his own chambers.—“Now, what _do_ you think of this, Jackson?” he
asked.
“It is the most objectless, futile, idiotic business that ever I heard
of. It can only be the work of a monomaniac.”
“Can you put forward any theory?”
A curious idea came into my head. “This object is a Jewish relic of
great antiquity and sanctity,” said I. “How about the anti-Semitic
movement? Could one conceive that a fanatic of that way of thinking
might desecrate——”
“No, no, no!” cried Mortimer. “That will never do! Such a man might push
his lunacy to the length of destroying a Jewish relic, but why on earth
should he nibble round every stone so carefully that he can only do four
stones in a night? We must have a better solution than that, and we must
find it for ourselves, for I do not think that our inspector is likely
to help us. First of all, what do you think of Simpson, the porter?”
“Have you any reason to suspect him?”
“Only that he is the one person on the premises.”
“But why should he indulge in such wanton destruction? Nothing has been
taken away. He has no motive.”
“Mania?”
“No, I will swear to his sanity.”
“Have you any other theory?”
“Well, yourself, for example. You are not a somnambulist, by any
chance?”
“Nothing of the sort, I assure you.”
“Then I give it up.”
“But I don’t—and I have a plan by which we will make it all clear.”
“To visit Professor Andreas?”
“No, we shall find our solution nearer than Scotland, I will tell you
what we shall do. You know that skylight which overlooks the central
hall? We will leave the electric lights in the hall, and we will keep
watch in the lumber-room, you and I, and solve the mystery for
ourselves. If our mysterious visitor is doing four stones at a time, he
has four still to do, and there is every reason to think that he will
return to-night and complete the job.”
“Excellent!” I cried.
“We will keep our own secret, and say nothing either to the police or to
Simpson. Will you join me?”
“With the utmost pleasure,” said I; and so it was agreed.
It was ten o’clock that night when I returned to the Belmore Street
Museum. Mortimer was, as I could see, in a state of suppressed nervous
excitement, but it was still too early to begin our vigil, so we
remained for an hour or so in his chambers, discussing all the
possibilities of the singular business which we had met to solve. At
last the roaring stream of hansom cabs and the rush of hurrying feet
became lower and more intermittent as the pleasure-seekers passed on
their way to their stations or their homes. It was nearly twelve when
Mortimer led the way to the lumber-room which overlooked the central
hall of the museum.
He had visited it during the day, and had spread some sacking so that we
could lie at our ease, and look straight down into the museum. The
skylight was of unfrosted glass, but was so covered with dust that it
would be impossible for any one looking up from below to detect that he
was overlooked. We cleared a small piece at each corner, which gave us a
complete view of the room beneath us. In the cold white light of the
electric lamps everything stood out hard and clear, and I could see the
smallest detail of the contents of the various cases.
Such a vigil is an excellent lesson, since one has no choice but to look
hard at those objects which we usually pass with such half-hearted
interest. Through my little peep-hole I employed the hours in studying
every specimen, from the huge mummy-case which leaned against the wall
to those very jewels which had brought us there, gleaming and sparkling
in their glass case immediately beneath us. There was much precious
gold-work and many valuable stones scattered through the numerous cases,
but those wonderful twelve which made up the urim and thummim glowed and
burned with a radiance which far eclipsed the others. I studied in turn
the tomb-pictures of Sicara, the friezes from Karnak, the statues of
Memphis, and the inscriptions of Thebes, but my eyes would always come
back to that wonderful Jewish relic, and my mind to the singular mystery
which surrounded it. I was lost in the thought of it when my companion
suddenly drew his breath sharply in, and seized my arm in a convulsive
grip. At the same instant I saw what it was which had excited him.
I have said that against the wall—on the right-hand side of the doorway
(the right-hand side as we looked at it, but the left as one
entered)—there stood a large mummy-case. To our unutterable amazement it
was slowly opening. Gradually, gradually the lid was swinging back, and
the black slit which marked the opening was becoming wider and wider. So
gently and carefully was it done that the movement was almost
imperceptible. Then, as we breathlessly watched it, a white thin hand
appeared at the opening, pushing back the painted lid, then another
hand, and finally a face—a face which was familiar to us both, that of
Professor Andreas. Stealthily he slunk out of the mummy-case, like a fox
stealing from its burrow, his head turning incessantly to left and to
right, stepping, then pausing, then stepping again, the very image of
craft and of caution. Once some sound in the street struck him
motionless, and he stood listening, with his ear turned, ready to dart
back to the shelter behind him. Then he crept onwards again upon tiptoe,
very, very softly and slowly, until he had reached the case in the
centre of the room. There he took a bunch of keys from his pocket,
unlocked the case, took out the Jewish breastplate, and, laying it upon
the glass in front of him, began to work upon it with some sort of
small, glistening tool. He was so directly underneath us that his bent
head covered his work, but we could guess from the movement of his hand
that he was engaged in finishing the strange disfigurement which he had
begun.
I could realize from the heavy breathing of my companion, and the
twitchings of the hand which still clutched my wrist, the furious
indignation which filled his heart as he saw this vandalism in the
quarter of all others where he could least have expected it. He, the
very man who a fortnight before had reverently bent over this unique
relic, and who had impressed its antiquity and its sanctity upon us, was
now engaged in this outrageous profanation. It was impossible,
unthinkable—and yet there, in the white glare of the electric light
beneath us, was that dark figure with the bent, grey head, and the
twitching elbow. What inhuman hypocrisy, what hateful depth of malice
against his successor must underlie these sinister nocturnal labours. It
was painful to think of and dreadful to watch. Even I, who had none of
the acute feelings of a virtuoso, could not bear to look on and see this
deliberate mutilation of so ancient a relic. It was a relief to me when
my companion tugged at my sleeve as a signal that I was to follow him as
he softly crept out of the room. It was not until we were within his own
quarters that he opened his lips, and then I saw by his agitated face
how deep was his consternation.
“The abominable Goth!” he cried. “Could you have believed it?”
“It is amazing.”
“He is a villain or a lunatic—one or the other. We shall very soon see
which. Come with me, Jackson, and we shall get to the bottom of this
black business.”
A door opened out of the passage which was the private entrance from his
rooms into the museum. This he opened softly with his key, having first
kicked off his shoes, an example which I followed. We crept together
through room after room, until the large hall lay before us, with that
dark figure still stooping and working at the central case. With an
advance as cautious as his own we closed in upon him, but softly as we
went we could not take him entirely unawares. We were still a dozen
yards from him when he looked round with a start, and uttering a husky
cry of terror, ran frantically down the museum.
“Simpson! Simpson!” roared Mortimer, and far away down the vista of
electric lighted doors we saw the stiff figure of the old soldier
suddenly appear. Professor Andreas saw him also, and stopped running,
with a gesture of despair. At the same instant we each laid a hand upon
his shoulder.
“Yes, yes, gentlemen,” he panted, “I will come with you. To your room,
Mr. Ward Mortimer, if you please! I feel that I owe you an explanation.”
My companion’s indignation was so great that I could see that he dared
not trust himself to reply. We walked on each side of the old Professor,
the astonished commissionaire bringing up the rear. When we reached the
violated case, Mortimer stopped and examined the breastplate. Already
one of the stones of the lower row had had its setting turned back in
the same manner as the others. My friend held it up and glanced
furiously at his prisoner.
“How could you!” he cried. “How could you!”
“It is horrible—horrible!” said the Professor. “I don’t wonder at your
feelings. Take me to your room.”
“But this shall not be left exposed!” cried Mortimer. He picked the
breastplate up and carried it tenderly in his hand, while I walked
beside the Professor, like a policeman with a malefactor. We passed into
Mortimer’s chambers, leaving the amazed old soldier to understand
matters as best he could. The Professor sat down in Mortimer’s
arm-chair, and turned so ghastly a colour that for the instant, all our
resentment was changed to concern. A stiff glass of brandy brought the
life back to him once more.
“There, I am better now!” said he. “These last few days have been too
much for me. I am convinced that I could not stand it any longer. It is
a nightmare—a horrible nightmare—that I should be arrested as a burglar
in what has been for so long my own museum. And yet I cannot blame you.
You could not have done otherwise. My hope always was that I should get
it all over before I was detected. This would have been my last night’s
work.”
“How did you get in?” asked Mortimer.
“By taking a very great liberty with your private door. But the object
justified it. The object justified everything. You will not be angry
when you know everything—at least, you will not be angry with me. I had
a key to your side door and also to the museum door. I did not give them
up when I left. And so you see it was not difficult for me to let myself
into the museum. I used to come in early before the crowd had cleared
from the street. Then I hid myself in the mummy-case, and took refuge
there whenever Simpson came round. I could always hear him coming. I
used to leave in the same way as I came.”
“You ran a risk.”
“I had to.”
“But why? What on earth was your object—_you_ to do a thing like that?”
Mortimer pointed reproachfully at the plate which lay before him on the
table.
“I could devise no other means. I thought and thought, but there was no
alternative except a hideous public scandal, and a private sorrow which
would have clouded our lives. I acted for the best, incredible as it may
seem to you, and I only ask your attention to enable me to prove it.”
“I will hear what you have to say before I take any further steps,” said
Mortimer, grimly.
“I am determined to hold back nothing, and to take you both completely
into my confidence. I will leave it to your own generosity how far you
will use the facts with which I supply you.”
“We have the essential facts already.”
“And yet you understand nothing. Let me go back to what passed a few
weeks ago, and I will make it all clear to you. Believe me that what I
say is the absolute and exact truth.
“You have met the person who calls himself Captain Wilson. I say ‘calls
himself’ because I have reason now to believe that it is not his correct
name. It would take me too long if I were to describe all the means by
which he obtained an introduction to me and ingratiated himself into my
friendship and the affection of my daughter. He brought letters from
foreign colleagues which compelled me to show him some attention. And
then, by his own attainments, which are considerable, he succeeded in
making himself a very welcome visitor at my rooms. When I learned that
my daughter’s affections had been gained by him, I may have thought it
premature, but I certainly was not surprised, for he had a charm of
manner and of conversation which would have made him conspicuous in any
society.
“He was much interested in Oriental antiquities, and his knowledge of
the subject justified his interest. Often when he spent the evening with
us he would ask permission to go down into the museum and have an
opportunity of privately inspecting the various specimens. You can
imagine that I, as an enthusiast, was in sympathy with such a request,
and that I felt no surprise at the constancy of his visits. After his
actual engagement to Elise, there was hardly an evening which he did not
pass with us, and an hour or two were generally devoted to the museum.
He had the free run of the place, and when I have been away for the
evening I had no objection to his doing whatever he wished here. This
state of things was only terminated by the fact of my resignation of my
official duties and my retirement to Norwood, where I hoped to have the
leisure to write a considerable work which I had planned.
“It was immediately after this—within a week or so—that I first realized
the true nature and character of the man whom I had so imprudently
introduced into my family. The discovery came to me through letters from
my friends abroad, which showed me that his introductions to me had been
forgeries. Aghast at the revelation, I asked myself what motive this man
could originally have had in practising this elaborate deception upon
me. I was too poor a man for any fortune-hunter to have marked me down.
Why, then, had he come? I remembered that some of the most precious gems
in Europe had been under my charge, and I remembered also the ingenious
excuses by which this man had made himself familiar with the cases in
which they were kept. He was a rascal who was planning some gigantic
robbery. How could I, without striking my own daughter, who was
infatuated about him, prevent him from carrying out any plan which he
might have formed? My device was a clumsy one, and yet I could think of
nothing more effective. If I had written a letter under my own name, you
would naturally have turned to me for details which I did not wish to
give. I resorted to an anonymous letter, begging you to be upon your
guard.
“I may tell you that my change from Belmore Street to Norwood had not
affected the visits of this man, who had, I believe, a real and
overpowering affection for my daughter. As to her, I could not have
believed that any woman could be so completely under the influence of a
man as she was. His stronger nature seemed to entirely dominate her. I
had not realized how far this was the case, or the extent of the
confidence which existed between them, until that very evening when his
true character for the first time was made clear to me. I had given
orders that when he called he should be shown into my study instead of
to the drawing-room. There I told him bluntly that I knew all about him,
that I had taken steps to defeat his designs, and that neither I nor my
daughter desired ever to see him again. I added that I thanked God that
I had found him out before he had time to harm those precious objects
which it had been the work of my lifetime to protect.
“He was certainly a man of iron nerve. He took my remarks without a sign
either of surprise or of defiance, but listened gravely and attentively
until I had finished. Then he walked across the room without a word and
struck the bell.
“‘Ask Miss Andreas to be so kind as to step this way,’ said he to the
servant.
“My daughter entered, and the man closed the door behind her. Then he
took her hand in his.
“‘Elise,’ said he, ‘your father has just discovered that I am a villain.
He knows now what you knew before.’
“She stood in silence, listening.
“‘He says that we are to part for ever,’ said he.
“She did not withdraw her hand.
“‘Will you be true to me, or will you remove the last good influence
which is ever likely to come into my life?’
“‘John,’ she cried, passionately, ‘I will never abandon you! Never,
never, not if the whole world were against you.’
“In vain I argued and pleaded with her. It was absolutely useless. Her
whole life was bound up in this man before me. My daughter, gentlemen,
is all that I have left to love, and it filled me with agony when I saw
how powerless I was to save her from her ruin. My helplessness seemed to
touch this man who was the cause of my trouble.
“‘It may not be as bad as you think, sir,’ said he, in his quiet,
inflexible way. ‘I love Elise with a love which is strong enough to
rescue even one who has such a record as I have. It was but yesterday
that I promised her that never again in my whole life would I do a thing
of which she should be ashamed. I have made up my mind to it, and never
yet did I make up my mind to a thing which I did not do.’
“He spoke with an air which carried conviction with it. As he concluded
he put his hand into his pocket and he drew out a small cardboard box.
“‘I am about to give you a proof of my determination,’ said he. ‘This,
Elise, shall be the first-fruits of your redeeming influence over me.
You are right, sir, in thinking that I had designs upon the jewels in
your possession. Such ventures have had a charm for me, which depended
as much upon the risk run as upon the value of the prize. Those famous
and antique stones of the Jewish priest were a challenge to my daring
and my ingenuity. I determined to get them.’
“‘I guessed as much.’
“‘There was only one thing that you did not guess.’
“‘And what is that?’
“‘That I got them. They are in this box.’
“He opened the box, and tilted out the contents upon the corner of my
desk. My hair rose and my flesh grew cold as I looked. There were twelve
magnificent square stones engraved with mystical characters. There could
be no doubt that they were the jewels of the urim and thummim.
“‘Good God!’ I cried. ‘How have you escaped discovery?’
“‘By the substitution of twelve others, made especially to my order, in
which the originals are so carefully imitated that I defy the eye to
detect the difference.’
“‘Then the present stones are false?’ I cried.
“‘They have been for some weeks.’
“We all stood in silence, my daughter white with emotion, but still
holding this man by the hand.
“‘You see what I am capable of, Elise,’ said he.
“‘I see that you are capable of repentance and restitution,’ she
answered.
“‘Yes, thanks to your influence! I leave the stones in your hands, sir.
Do what you like about it. But remember that whatever you do against me,
is done against the future husband of your only daughter. You will hear
from me soon again, Elise. It is the last time that I will ever cause
pain to your tender heart,’ and with these words he left both the room
and the house.
“My position was a dreadful one. Here I was with these precious relics
in my possession, and how could I return them without a scandal and an
exposure? I knew the depth of my daughter’s nature too well to suppose
that I would ever be able to detach her from this man now that she had
entirely given him her heart. I was not even sure how far it was right
to detach her if she had such an ameliorating influence over him. How
could I expose him without injuring her—and how far was I justified in
exposing him when he had voluntarily put himself into my power? I
thought and thought, until at last I formed a resolution which may seem
to you to be a foolish one, and yet, if I had to do it again, I believe
it would be the best course open to me.
“My idea was to return the stones without any one being the wiser. With
my keys I could get into the museum at any time, and I was confident
that I could avoid Simpson, whose hours and methods were familiar to me.
I determined to take no one into my confidence—not even my daughter—whom
I told that I was about to visit my brother in Scotland. I wanted a free
hand for a few nights, without inquiry as to my comings and goings. To
this end I took a room in Harding Street that very night, with an
intimation that I was a Pressman, and that I should keep very late
hours.
“That night I made my way into the museum, and I replaced four of the
stones. It was hard work, and took me all night When Simpson came round
I always heard his footsteps, and concealed myself in the mummy-case. I
had some knowledge of gold-work, but was far less skilful than the thief
had been. He had replaced the setting so exactly that I defy any one to
see the difference. My work was rude and clumsy. However, I hoped that
the plate might not be carefully examined, or the roughness of the
setting observed, until my task was done. Next night I replaced four
more stones. And to-night I should have finished my task had it not been
for the unfortunate circumstance which has caused me to reveal so much
which I should have wished to keep concealed. I appeal to you,
gentlemen, to your sense of honour and of compassion, whether what I
have told you should go any farther or not. My own happiness, my
daughter’s future, the hopes of this man’s regeneration, all depend upon
your decision.”
“Which is,” said my friend, “that all is well that ends well, and that
the whole matter ends here and at once. To-morrow the loose settings
shall be tightened by an expert goldsmith, and so passes the greatest
danger to which, since the destruction of the Temple, the urim and
thummim have been exposed. Here is my hand, Professor Andreas, and I can
only hope that under such difficult circumstances I should have carried
myself as unselfishly and as well.”
Just one footnote to this narrative. Within a month Elise Andreas was
married to a man whose name, had I the indiscretion to mention it, would
appeal to my readers as one who is now widely and deservedly honoured.
But if the truth were known, that honour is due not to him but to the
gentle girl who plucked him back when he had gone so far down that dark
road along which few return.