"Not impossible, I suppose," he said more quietly. "This sort of thing
has happened to me before. I doubt if there was ever a time when I was
not harboring some thief or another. They never steal from me, you
understand. They are the pickets, the outposts, who watch where the
jewels go, and report to Headquarters. But Freer! He had been with me
ten years. He had an instinct for pearls!"
"Headquarters?" I said eagerly. "Then you agree with me that there is
an organised gang at work?"
"That's no secret," he said. "Every jeweller knows that there is a
kind of corporation of jewel thieves. It is probably ten years old,
and better organised and administered than our own association."
"Why don't you break it up?"
"Break it up!" he echoed. "It is my dearest ambition! There has never
been a meeting of our association but what I have urged with all my
eloquence that we get together and break up the thief trust. They will
not support me. Everybody suspects that he has spies in his
establishment, perhaps like Freer in a responsible position. The
crooks seem to have us where they want us. They have never robbed us,
you see. There is a sort of unwritten agreement, you leave us alone
and we'll leave you. The other men in the association say: 'If our
customers are careless with their jewels, we are not responsible.' But
I say we are! These crooks have put us in a position where, if we do
not go after them, we may be said to be in league with them."
"Mr. Mount is a member of the association, I suppose?"
"Mount? Oh yes, he's the president. To give Mount credit I must say
that he has always supported me in this matter, though not so warmly as
I would have liked. But I am considered a fanatic."
"Why don't you and he do it together?" I asked.
"He won't go into it without the backing of the Association."
"Why don't you go it alone?" I said. "You are powerful."
He glanced at me sharply. "I will when I see my way," he said. "Such
police officers and detectives as have happened to come under my
observation have not seemed to me the right men for the job. When I
find my man----"
"Will you consider me as an applicant for the job?" I asked quietly.
He studied me hard. "I should be difficult to satisfy," he said.
"First of all as to references," I said. There were some good men who
backed me. I gave him their names.
"How about Mount?" he asked.
"I have already applied to him for the job," I said frankly, "and was
turned down. He is satisfied with the recovery of the pearls. As long
as he has refused to go in, I think it would be better not to let him
know about our plans. That, however, is up to you."
"I shall not let him know," Mr. Dunsany said briefly.
To make a long story short, I succeeded in satisfying Mr. Dunsany of my
fitness to undertake the matter in hand. We concluded a defensive and
offensive alliance. He let me understand that expense was to be no
object. I saw him every day. We met at his club, which was as safe a
place as we could find.
I gave him my full confidence, of course. With Roland's consent I told
him everything that had occurred up to that time. Mr. Dunsany for his
part had a whole file of evidence that he had quietly collected. He
turned it over to me. It was interesting, and in the end valuable, but
it had nothing to do with the case of the blue pearls.
We laid our plans with infinite care. There was no hurry now, and
every move was planned in advance. Absolute secrecy was imperative.
Mr. Dunsany and I agreed not to take a soul on earth into our
confidence.
It was necessary to hire a small army of operatives. I did not figure
in this. I had Peter Keenan, an old friend of mine, who was not known
generally among my friends, act for me. Peter was a faithful,
conscientious soul, not at all brilliant. He hired a suite of offices
on Forty-second street and set up the "International Detective Agency."
Peter was the nominal head, and Sadie the real directress of this
establishment. Here the operatives were hired and sent on their
errands. Each did his little task knowing nothing of the general plan.
Meanwhile Mr. B. Enderby was to be found all day in his office on
Fortieth street with his feet on the desk, chinning with his young
friends or composing a new play. You see the second cryptogram led me
to suspect that they were aware of my identity, and in case I were
watched, as I surely would be, I desired to give the impression that I
had dropped all activities in connection with jewels or jewel thieves.
I communicated with Sadie by letter. Uncle Sam is at once the most
public and the safest messenger. For emergencies we arranged a system
of telephone calls.
It would be a tedious task to set down all the routine work of the
agency. There were mistakes, disappointments and blind trails without
number. To begin with, Sadie was ordered to trace Freer, the pearl
agent, also Sanford and Jones, the bogus jewellers, and any of their
employees. All this entailed great labour, and it was absolutely
barren of result. These people seemed to have vanished into thin air.
In the case of Kenton Milbourne she was more successful. She wrote:
"In my character of Miss Covington the actress, I called on several of
the women of Miss Hamerton's company who gave me their addresses when
we disbanded. From their gossip I learned without having to ask
questions, that Kenton Milbourne has not disappeared. They have all
met him on Broadway. He is apparently living the ordinary life of an
actor out of a job, going around to the different agencies to list his
name, etc. His address is No. -- West 49th street.
"I have allotted three of our best men to keep Milbourne under
surveillance. The first, D.B., who has been an actor, is working
independently of the other two. He has engaged a room in the same
house and will make friends with M. The other two operatives, A.N. and
S.C., are to trail him turn and turn about."
Thus the ground was laid out. Making my report in turn to Mr. Dunsany,
I said: "It's all very well as far as it goes, but we must do some
original work. Tracking the theft of Miss Hamerton's pearls is
following a cold trail. Our work is destroyed by the fact that the
jewels have been recovered. We must branch out."
"What do you propose?" said he.
"Let us lay a tempting bait for a new robbery, and catch them
red-handed."
"Go ahead!"
"Are you prepared to risk something choice in diamonds or pearls?"
"Anything I have in stock."
"Very well. First, however, we've got to get a man accepted into the
inmost circle of the thief trust."
14
Mr. Walter Dunsany and part of his family sailed for Liverpool on the
following Wednesday. The fact was liberally commented on in the
newspapers. A squad of reporters saw him off at the pier, and got a
statement from him on the country's business prospects.
I must offer my little tribute of admiration to Mr. Dunsany. I have
yet to meet his equal for daring and gameness. Middle-aged men are not
generally conspicuous for these qualities, and when they are rich into
the bargain--why, to hang on to what they've got is usually their
highest aim. But Mr. Dunsany insisted on playing the rôle of danger in
our projected drama. He eagerly accepted a part that the most
hot-headed young adventurer might have quailed from. I would never
have allowed him to go in ahead of me, but unluckily an expert
knowledge of gems was required. That he had and I had not. He
insisted anyway that I must be free for the general command of all our
forces.
Twelve days after Mr. Dunsany's departure, one John Mattingly, in
appearance a sober, decent, elderly artizan, descended the second-class
gangway of one of our speediest ocean ferry-boats, and went to Ellis
Island with the other immigrants. Landed in due course at the foot of
Manhattan Island, he gazed at the towering buildings with a wondering
eye, and allowed himself to be guided to an humble hotel in the
neighbourhood.
I was not there to meet him for a very good reason, but later in the
day I received a note apprising me of his arrival. Two days later I
had another telling me that having presented letters of recommendation,
he had been engaged in the gem-setting shops of Dunsany and Co. I
cannot do better than quote from his own reports. Far from being the
usual cut and dried affairs, they were little human documents of
humorous observation.