Part 17

For a moment or two I felt decidedly panicky. Before my mind's eye headlines in the next day's papers were vividly emblazoned:

"WELL-KNOWN JEWELLER STEALS THE DIAMONDS HE SOLD"

or something like that. Finally I recollected that the road to the service entrance of Fernhurst ran quite close to the boundary of the next estate. I determined to try that way.

To reach the boundary I was obliged to make a long detour. Still there were no sounds behind me to indicate that an alarm had been raised, at any rate a public alarm. The line between the two estates was marked by a thorn hedge and a wire fence. Choosing a dark spot I managed to struggle through without receiving any serious damage. I finally gained the street through the service gate of this place.

This brought me out beyond the point where Jim was to be stationed with the motor car, and I had to retrace my steps. The car was in the appointed spot. Jim was on the front seat with his head craned in the other direction whence he expected me. I gave him a little signal. He was much troubled to see me come from that way thinking the plan had fallen through, but was reassured no doubt by the fall of the necklace on the floor of his car. I was thankful to be rid of the cursed thing.

There were several cars standing across the street, with their chauffeurs chatting together, and I was afraid of attracting attention to myself or to Jim by turning back at that moment. I kept on. I was startled half out of my wits when a motor patrol wagon full of police came flying up the street past me. It turned in at the service gate of Fernhurst ahead. Since I was travelling in that direction I had to keep on.

A man stepped out as I approached. Seizing my shoulder he swung me half around so that the light fell on my face. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

I thought it was all up with me. "I just wanted to have a look at the swells," I stammered.

Another man joined him. "Hold this guy," said the first. While the second man kept a hand twisted in my collar, the first one frisked me expeditiously. I had taken care, of course, not to have anything on me. But the side pocket of my coat was still hot from the diamonds.

Finding nothing the man growled an order for my release. The second man spun me around, and propelled me towards town with a shove. "Get the H---- out of here!" said he.

And I did.

J. M.

27

REPORT OF J. M. No. 18

_New York, July 6th, Midnight._

I have just returned from a celebration up at Lorina's house. Everybody made a clean get-away last night, and the diamonds are safe in Lorina's desk, so the gang made merry. The newspaper stories of the affair caused us the greatest amusement. The police, as you have seen, are very wide of the mark. Of us all, only Frank has fallen under suspicion. It appears that I was right in my guess as to his identity. The affair will ruin him socially, though it is not likely to lead to his arrest. I can't say that I feel sorry for the youth. Of all the parts in this sordid drama, Frank, the decoy played the most contemptible.

In the general loosening of tongues to-night I have some rather interesting matter to report. When I arrived at the house all the gang except Lorina were in the dining-room. Spencer, the negro, told me she was up in the office, so I went up-stairs to make my report. The office door was open a crack, and as I was about to knock I heard Lorina's voice within. She was talking over the telephone. The first sound of her voice froze me where I stood in astonishment. The tone was that of a woman distracted by love and longing. Think of it, Lorina!

I heard her say: "I'll do anything you tell me. But I want to see you. I must see you sometimes, dearie. What is the use of all this working and worrying, what am I doing it for if you never even let me see you? I can't stand it. I can't go on. I _won't_ stand it!"

Do you wonder that I was amazed?

There was a silence, and she went on in a broken, humbled tone: "No--I didn't mean that. I will obey you. You always know best. But don't be so hard on me. Please, dearie, _please_----!"

At this point Foxy came running up-stairs. I was caught rather awkwardly.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I came up-stairs to report to Mrs. Mansfield," I said, "but I don't like to disturb her. She seems to be having a private conversation."

He listened at the door for a moment, then pulled me away.

"Beat it!" said he. "She's talking to the boss. She'd kill us if she found us here."

One other thing that I had heard Lorina say was: "Then I'll keep the coal here, until I hear from you again."

"Coal" or "white coal" is their slang for diamonds, so I suppose she meant the necklace.

I returned down-stairs full of speculations regarding this wonderful and mysterious "boss." What kind of man must he be, thus to bring the imperious Lorina who commands us like slaves, to her knees?

Frank was not present at the party in the dining-room. He is not a regular member of the gang. Besides Foxy, Jumbo, Jim the chauffeur and myself, there were several of the younger fellows, but not Blondy, I am glad to say, for I should not like to see that nice boy drinking. Lorina appeared only once or twice and then but for a moment. The lady's gaiety was forced. However, she was liberal in her hospitality. Champagne flowed like water.

Jumbo got very drunk and even Foxy drank enough to make him indiscreet. It was then that interesting ancient history was retold. It would astonish you to see Foxy at such moments. There is nothing about him of the dull, prosy bore that he ordinarily affects.

Jumbo was toasting him with maudlin praise. "Drink to Foxy, fellows!" he cried. "There's the lad that brings home the bacon! The slickest, smoothest article of them all!"

Foxy took it as no more than his due.

"Say, Foxy," asked another admirer, "what was the hardest trick you ever turned?"

Naturally I have to let others ask these questions. Curiosity on my part would be prejudicial to my health. I am on the _qui vive_ for the replies, though.

"Oh, six months ago, when I lifted an actress' pearls," drawled Foxy.

Fancy how I pricked up my ears.

"Tell us about it," said the same youngster.

All the young ones sit at Foxy's feet, you understand.

Foxy was nothing loath. "Elegant pearls," he said reminiscently, "blue pearls, they called them, though I couldn't see the blue. But fine and choice! It was a long operation. I had to take a job acting in her company a couple of months beforehand. You see she kept the real pearls in a safety deposit box, and wore a phony string, which added to our difficulties. First I had to persuade her to wear the real pearls one night."

"How did you do that?" somebody asked.

"I egged on the leading man to make a bet with her that he could tell the real from the phony."

"Was he in with you?"

"No, indeed. Innocent as a lamb. He didn't know that I put the idea in his mind."

"Foxy is a wonder to manage!" put in Jumbo.

"After the bet was made, we had the actress trailed every day until she went to the bank and got out her pearls. Then we knew she would wear them that night. She wore them in the first act. In the second she had on a nurse's costume, and had to leave them off. My next job was to get her maid out of the dressing-room during the second act. I managed this by having it gossiped around the company that the star was going to introduce some new business that night, and so the maid went out to look on, see? So I went in her dressing-room----"

"How did you get in?" asked some one.

"Walked in straight as if I had a good right to. There was no other way. I frisked the room, but could only find one string of pearls. You see, I counted on two, the phony and the real. I couldn't tell which was which. I had arranged to have a fellow who was in with us, a pearl expert call on me between the acts. I saw him at the stage door, and showed him the string I had. He said they were phony. So I had to do it all over.

"During the third act, however, luck was with me. The actress' maid not having seen anything new in the second act left the dressing-room of her own accord to watch the scene. I went in again. This time I found the real thing in a pocket of the petticoat she had worn in the second act. I left the phony string in its place.

"And they never got on to you!" said his admirer.

"Nah! That was where Enderby came in. He fixed the crime on the young leading man and broke up the show. Lord! I laughed. It let me out, too. I was sick of the fool business of acting every night. It wasn't till lately that Enderby got it in his head that he'd made a mistake. It's too late now. The pearls have been sold and the swag divided."

Jumbo took a hand in the tale at this point. "Let me tell you the joke about selling the pearls," said he. "Me and slim Foley set up an elegant office on Maiden Lane, with stenographers and office boys and all, everything swell. We were brokers in precious stones, see? We sent out decoy letters to the leading man Foxy mentioned, and I'm blest if we didn't sell him the string of pearls back again. Then he gave them to the actress, the fool, and she fired him and bust up the company."

"But I don't understand," said the young fellow, "what did you want to sell them to him for? Risky business I should say."

"Don't ask me," said Jumbo with a shrug. "Orders from higher up."

This suggests a new line of thought, doesn't it?

During one of Lorina's brief visits to the dining-room, she was pleased to commend me for my work last night. She asked me to come to her down-town office to-morrow afternoon as soon as I finished work. I enclose the card she gave me with her address.* Subtle irony, eh?

* The card enclosed by Mr. Dunsany read:

THE EARNEST WORKERS PUBLISHING CO., No. -- Fifth Avenue, New York. Mrs. Lorina Mansfield, Manager.

To-morrow night I'll report on what happens there.

J. M.

J. M. #19

_New York, July 7th._

The number on Fifth avenue given me was not a great distance from Dunsany's and I was there by 5:15 this afternoon. It is one of the older office buildings and is filled with the most respectable tenants, mostly firms engaged in some form of religious business: publishers, mission boards, church supplies, etc. It is amusing to think of Lorina in such company.

Lorina's office, of course, was no whit less respectable in appearance than a hundred others in the building. There was a respectable elderly stenographer, a subdued office boy, and Lorina herself playing her part of the saleswoman of religious literature in a starched shirt waist. She waved me to a seat beside her desk, and started right in to sell me a consignment of tracts. I confess I was a bit dazed by the scene.

At five-thirty the respectable stenographer and the subdued office-boy asked her humbly if she desired them any further, and upon receiving a negative departed.

When the door closed behind them Lorina yawned, stretched, and swore softly--to take the religious taste out of her mouth, I suppose. I laughed, but she didn't like it. I have discovered that laughter makes these people uneasy.

"Cut it out!" she said frowning.

I apologised.

"English," she said, "Jumbo told me that you would be glad to get a little extra work as a diamond expert."

I nodded, wondering what was coming next.

"There's a friend of mine a jewel-broker next door," she went on, nodding towards the adjoining room. "His business is so full of risks from thieves, you know, that he decided the best way to fool them would be to take an humble little office in this building without so much as an extra lock on the door to give warning."

Lorina only handed out this line of talk to save her face. I was not expected to believe it. These people are never frank with each other, even when there's nothing to be gained by bluffing. It is only when the men have been drinking that things are called by their right names.

"My friend needs an assistant, a diamond expert," Lorina continued. "For a couple of months now, he's been at his wit's end to find a man he could trust. Jumbo said you were just the man for the job so I recommended you, and my friend told me to bring you around."

I nodded sagely to all this palaver. "Am I to give up my job at Dunsany's?" I asked, hoping that the answer would be in the affirmative.

"No," she said. "That's a good thing, too. This new job will only take an hour or two in the evenings and on Saturday afternoons."

She arose and tapped in a peculiar way on the door that led into the adjoining office. Some one got up within, and unlocked and opened it. Fortunately as a result of all that has happened during the past few weeks I have my nerves under strict control, for I got a shock. There stood Freer, the missing ex-head of my pearl department!

We were introduced. Freer saw nothing suspicious in my aspect. There was a lot of palaver which I will not tire you with. The upshot of it was that I was engaged to assist my late assistant at a handsome salary. For the present I was to work from 5:15 to 6:30 every evening, as well as Saturday afternoons, and Sunday mornings if necessary.

"I do not like to work late at night," said Freer nervously. "It attracts attention."

Freer undertook then and there to explain my duties. "My work is with the pearls," he said, "and the diamond end of the business has been neglected since I lost my last assistant two months ago."

"He died," remarked Lorina with a peculiar look at me.

I got her meaning.

Against one wall of Freer's office was a large letter file with drawers that pulled out, and a shutter to pull down over the whole at night, and lock. It was built entirely of steel as the modern custom is. Freer pulled out one of the drawers but instead of letters inside, my amazed eyes beheld a heap of gleaming diamond jewelry. There were necklaces, dog-collars, lavallieres, pins, bracelets, rings. I wondered if the thirty-odd remaining drawers were filled with like treasures, and made a breathless mental computation of their value--millions! It was a modern burlesque of the scene in Aladdin's cave!

Freer, referring to the drawer he held open said: "These are consignments of diamonds lately received, which I have not had the time to inventory. You see each article is tagged with a number. You are to take them in numerical order, enter a careful description and valuation in a journal, then demount the stones, weigh them, grade them and put them in stock."

He opened several other drawers which contained princely treasures of unset diamonds lying on white cotton. They were carefully graded according to size, colour, quality. Here apparently is the loot of years past. I could not begin to give any estimate of its value. I have not seen the pearls yet.

"The other part of your work," Freer went on, "will be to fill the orders for diamonds that are received." He showed me several order slips, evidently from the phraseology, made out by experienced jewellers, but bearing no shipping directions.

"Am I to send these orders out?" I asked with a simple air.

He shook his head. "Enter the orders in the order book, fill them from stock, and turn them over to me."

"Mind you do not carry your work to the window," put in Lorina sharply.

I nodded.

"Mind you do not leave anything about at night," added Freer, "no tools, no papers. The women come in here to clean after we are gone."

He showed me where the tools of my trade were kept. In addition to everything else needful, in a locked cabinet there is a beautiful little electric crucible for melting down gold and platinum.

I immediately set to work under the eyes of Lorina and Freer.

You can imagine in what excitement I now write this. Our work is done!--or almost done, for we have not yet got a line on that mysterious and terrible "boss." For a moment I thought it might be Freer, but he is as subservient to Lorina as the rest. Man! Man! What a haul we shall make--if there is no slip! We must do our best of course to ensure complete success, but I beg of you not to risk too far what we have in our grasp, in the hope of getting more. I confess I am a little scared by the magnitude of the developments to-day. Do not wait too long before delivering your master stroke!

J. M.

28

To resume my own part in these matters, you can conceive what a great responsibility devolved upon me in the light of these two last reports. I did not have to have Mr. Dunsany remind me of it. I was like a player in a close game who holds the best card. The question was when to play it. One may easily hold one's trumps too long. Still I could not bear to show my hand without the assurance of taking the king, i.e., the "boss."

So I still held off, though the tension was frightful, particularly on poor Dunsany. In every subsequent report he begged me to strike, and take our chance of getting our man through the disclosures sure to be made in the general crash. There was more up on this game than cards were ever played for.

In the meantime I was straining every nerve to pick up a clue to the "boss." I knew that we must get him in the end if we could hold off long enough. I arranged a meeting with the boy Blondy, and cross-examined him for hours. The poor youngster was only too anxious to tell me what he knew, but he could not help me.

He said that Lorina never sent any of the men to the boss. All communications between them were made without the aid of a third party. Some of the men, he said, affected to believe that the boss was a myth invented by Lorina to keep them in awe. I had, however, good reason in my reports to know that the boss was a real man.

I put the most skilful woman operative I could procure on Lorina's trail. It appeared, however, from her first report that Lorina was instantly aware of being watched, and fooled the operative at her pleasure. Thus she became a danger to me instead of a help, since Lorina with her infernal cleverness might very easily have found a way to intercept our communications. So I discharged the operative two days after I hired her.

In justice to Mr. Dunsany, who hourly ran such a terrible risk, I now took the police into my confidence. The chief of the detective bureau at this time was Lanman, a man I had always respected for his contempt of spectacular methods and his strong sense. I went to see him.

He did not know me, of course. He listened to my story with an incredulous grin. He has an aspect as grim and forbidding as a granite cliff. But as I piled up my evidence, and read from Mr. Dunsany's report, I shook the cliff. I had the satisfaction of seeing the granite betray excitement.

When I was done he was convinced. He was frankly envious of my luck in obtaining such a case, and of my success with it, but he showed a disposition to play absolutely fair. I had been afraid that he might try to rob me of the fruits of my success with the public.

Lanman agreed that it was best to hold off for a day or two longer in the hope of getting the "boss." In the meantime he secured a room at # -- Fifth avenue on the same floor where Lorina had her offices, and there every day during the hours while Mr. Dunsany was at work, waited six men within call. We next secured quarters in the little hotel three doors from Lorina's house, and every night ten of Lanman's men were domiciled there. Signals were agreed on in case of need.

Matters stood thus at the end of the week whose beginning had witnessed the Newport robbery. On Friday morning Irma Hamerton came to town again. I witnessed her arrival in the lobby of the Rotterdam, which you will remember was her hotel before it had been mine. Every one sat up and stared. She was as lovely as only herself, but I thought, looked harassed. Mount was attending her like a shadow, smoother, more elegant and more complacent than ever.

With a fanciful, sentimental feeling I had engaged rooms on the same floor of the hotel as Irma's. Her suite was rented by the year. During the morning as I went to and fro in the corridor of the eleventh floor, I could not help but notice an unusual stir in the neighbourhood of Irma's rooms. Messengers were flying, packages arriving, and the switchboard busy.

There is a telephone switchboard on each floor of the Rotterdam, opposite the elevators. In addition to answering the calls, the operator is supposed to keep an eye on things generally. While I was waiting for the elevator I asked the girl on our floor what was the cause of the excitement. She said she didn't know, but said it with a simper and a toss of the head that added to my uneasiness. Downstairs I asked the clerk with whom I was on friendly terms, but with no better success.

While I was hanging around the lobby, Irma and Mount came down. They took a taxi at the door. Following a sudden impulse I engaged the next in line, and ordered the driver to follow them. They led me through the maze of down-town traffic direct to the Municipal Building. They disappeared in the bureau of Marriage Licenses, and my worst fears were confirmed.