"How long had you had them?"
"Just a few days."
He told me that he had asked Miss Hamerton to marry him, and intended
the necklace for a wedding-gift if she consented.
"You were a downy bird!" I exclaimed.
"Wait till I tell you," he said. "They were a slick pair. You might
have been taken in yourself."
"Did they know you?" I asked, still full of amazement.
"Certainly. I paid for them by check, certified check."
"Which they cashed within half an hour!"
"Maybe. I never enquired."
"Sold Miss Hamerton's pearls back to Miss Hamerton's leading man!" I
cried. "My boy, we have something out of the common in crooks to deal
with!"
"They had a well-furnished suite on an upper floor of a first-class
office building," he resumed. "I was there three or four times. I saw
other customers coming and going. Everything was business-like and all
right looking. Even the stenographer had a prim New England air. They
showed me all kinds of precious stones. I bit at the pearls because I
recognised that they were the same kind Irma had. They asked eight
thousand dollars for them."
"You knew, didn't you, that Miss Hamerton's necklace was worth much
more than that?"
"Yes. But I had been told hers were very fine and perfect. I supposed
these to be not so good."
"And so you paid your money on a chance, and took them home."
"Not quite as fast as that. The jewellers seemed to take it as a
matter of course that I would have the pearls examined by an expert
before purchasing. They suggested that I take them up to Dunsany's."
"_Dunsany's_?" I said amazed.
"Yes. Wasn't that enough to lull suspicion? Dunsany's is more than a
jewelry store; it's a national institution."
"But you never took them there?"
"Indeed I did," was the surprising answer. "Sanford and Jones' clerk
went with me. We saw Mr. Freer, the firm's expert on pearls."
I whistled again. Freer, the man at Dunsany's to whom I had told my
little fiction of the fiction-writer, and who had looked so queer when
I mentioned blue pearls!
"Large gentleman, elegantly-dressed, with a face like a boiled
dumpling?"
"Sure!" cried Roland. "Do you know him, too?"
"Go on with your story!" I said.
"Mr. Freer examined the pearls and told me they were genuine, and of
good quality. He valued them at about twelve thousand dollars."
"The devil he did!" I cried. "This case is spreading wider and wider.
Freer is in the gang, too. To think of their having a picket in
Dunsany's!"
"How do you know?"
"Because he like everybody else in the trade had been informed that the
only necklace of blue-black pearls in the world had been stolen. He
knew, moreover, that it was worth----" But here prudence stopped my
tongue.
"Worth what?" asked Roland.
"Well, much more than twelve thousand."
"The only blue pearls in the world?" he said, puzzled.
"There's a lot about this necklace you don't know," I said smiling.
"All in good time. Go on with your story."
"Well, that's all, isn't it?" said he. "At least you know the rest.
Why these fellows were so careful of details, you will even find their
imprint in gold inside the case. Jones and Sanford, such and such a
number, Maiden Lane."
"Hm! I have a case on my hands now!" I said meditatively. "It may
take me six months or more to clean this up."
"I'll work with you," he said.
"My dear fellow, I like you better every minute," I said, smiling at
him. "But you'd make the worst detective in the world."
"Oh, well, maybe I would," he said.
"There's no need for you to await the outcome of the case," I said.
"We have the evidence right in hand to clear you. I'll lay it before
Miss Hamerton to-morrow morning."
My young friend surprised me again. He leaped up with his dark eyes
positively blazing. "You'll do nothing of the kind!" he cried
passionately. "That affair is done, done for ever. If you interfere,
I won't be responsible for the consequences. She has her pearls back.
Let her be. My time will come when she reads of the capture and the
trial of the real thieves in the public newspapers!"
13
Back in New York next day, I made haste to get to work on the half
dozen clues with which Roland had furnished me.
I may say in passing, though the visit had no important results, that I
called on Mr. Ambler of the Amsterdam Trust Company. At first he
declined to give me any information whatever, but when I hinted that a
certain suspicion rested on Mr. Quarles, he corroborated Roland's story
as far as he knew it. He declined to give me the name of the attorney
who had brought the money to the bank. "My endorsement of Mr. Quarles'
story should be amply sufficient to clear him," he said, with the air
of a bank president.
"Undoubtedly," I said, bowing, and left.
Since there appeared to be no immediate connection between Roland's
legacy and the theft of the pearls, I let that go for the present.
I went to the address of the jewellers on Maiden Lane, but found, as I
expected, that the birds had flown. An irate renting agent aired his
opinion of Messrs. Sanford and Jones, but could give me no information
of their whereabouts. They had leased the offices for a year, and
after five weeks' tenancy, quietly moved out.
"Don't you ask references from prospective tenants?" I asked.
"They gave A1 references," he mourned.
I took down the names of their references for future use. One of them
was Mr. Freer of Dunsany and Company.
My next call was upon Mr. Alfred Mount in his office behind the store
of exquisite fashion. His greeting, while polite, was slightly cooler
than of yore. As a man of the world, I was expected to gather from it,
that our relations were now at an end. It warned me to be wary. I was
already on my guard, because I knew that he hated Roland, and hoped to
profit by his disgrace.
"Anything new?" he asked casually.
"Yes--and no," I said. "I am not satisfied that we have got quite to
the bottom of our case."
"Do we ever get quite to the bottom of anything?" he asked.
"I do not believe that Quarles was alone in this," I said as a feeler.
"What makes you think so?" he asked quickly.
"Nothing definite," I said. "Just a feeling."
He shrugged.
"I believe that expert jewel thieves made a fool of him," I suggested.
"It is possible," said Mount, looking bored.
"If so, it is much to the interest of your business to run them down.
So I have come to ask for your co-operation."
"My dear sir," Mount replied with his indulgent, worldly smile, "the
world is full of trouble. I do not try to escape my share; I face it
like a man, or as near like a man as I can. But I never go searching
for more. We have by your skill recovered the jewels. The reasons for
not pursuing the matter any further are to me obvious. Better let well
enough alone."
I appeared to give in to him. "Maybe you're right. I thought I saw a
chance to earn a little glory."
"There will be plenty of opportunities for that," he said affably.
"You can count on me."
We parted in friendly fashion.
So much for Mr. Alfred Mount. At least he would never be able to say
later that I had not given him his chance.
I went to the magnificent marble building which houses Dunsany and
Company, and asked boldly for Mr. Walter Dunsany, great-grandson of the
founder of the house, and its present head. I was admitted to him
without difficulty. I found him a jeweller and a man of affairs of a
type very different from him I had just come from. Mr. Dunsany was a
simple, unassuming man, direct and outspoken. In short, a man's man.
I was strongly attracted to him, and I may say without vanity that he
seemed to like me. From the first he trusted me more than I had any
right to expect.
At this time he was a man of about forty-five years old, somewhat bald,
and beginning to be corpulent, but with a humorous, eager, youthful
glance. He glanced up from my card with a whimsical smile.
"Confidential investigator? More trouble, I suppose?"
"I'm afraid so," I said. "Have you an employee named Freer, an expert
on pearls."
"I had until a few days ago."
An exclamation of disappointment escaped me.
"What's the matter with Freer?" he asked.
"I suppose you don't know where he is?"
"On his way back to Holland, I suppose. He came from there ten years
ago. Why?"
"One more question first. I am assuming that you know that a certain
famous necklace of blue pearls has been stolen?"
"Mount's pearls? Certainly. Everybody in the trade was advised."
"You are sure Freer knew?"
"Certainly. It was his business first."
"Yet a week or so ago, that necklace was brought into your store by a
man who was considering the purchase of it. He submitted it to Freer.
Freer pronounced the stones genuine, and said that the necklace was
worth about twelve thousand."
Mr. Dunsany jumped up and paced the room agitatedly. "Freer!" he
exclaimed. "Impossible! You are sure of your facts!"