Chapter 2

caterer.

“This, under ordinary circumstances, would have ended the business, but there being some great function in prospect, Jones did not feel like losing so good a man without making an effort to recover him, so he looked up his references in the hope of obtaining some clue to his present whereabouts.

“He kept all such matters in a special book and expected to have no trouble in finding the man’s name, James Wellgood, or that of his former employer. But when he came to consult this book, he was astonished to find that nothing was recorded against this man’s name but the date of his first employment—March 15.

“Had he hired him without a recommendation? He would not be likely to, yet the page was clear of all reference; only the name and the date. But the date! You have already noted its significance, and later he did, too. The day of the Ramsdell ball! The day of the great murder! As he recalled the incidents of that day he understood why the record of Wellgood’s name was unaccompanied by the usual reference. It had been a difficult day all round. The function was an important one, and the weather bad. There was, besides, an unusual shortage in his number of assistants. Two men had that very morning been laid up with sickness, and when this able-looking, self-confident Wellgood presented himself for immediate employment, he took him out of hand with the merest glance at what looked like a very satisfactory reference. Later, he had intended to look up this reference, which he had been careful to preserve by sticking it, along with other papers, on his spike-file. But in the distractions following the untoward events of the evening, he had neglected to do so, feeling perfectly satisfied with the man’s work and general behavior. Now it was a different thing. The man had left him summarily, and he felt impelled to hunt up the person who had recommended him and see whether this was the first time that Wellgood had repaid good treatment with bad. Running through the papers with which his file was now full, he found that the one he sought was not there. This roused him in good earnest, for he was certain that he had not removed it himself and there was no one else who had the right to do so. He suspected the culprit,—a young lad who occasionally had access to his desk. But this boy was no longer in the office. He had dismissed him for some petty fault the previous week, and it took him several days to find him again. Meantime his anger grew and when he finally came face to face with the lad, he accused him of the suspected trick with so much vehemence that the inevitable happened, and the boy confessed. This is what he acknowledged. He had taken the reference off the file, but only to give it to Wellgood himself, who had offered him money for it. When asked how much money, the boy admitted that the sum was ten dollars,—an extraordinary amount from a poor man for so simple a service, if the man merely wished to secure his reference for future use; so extraordinary that Mr. Jones grew more and more pertinent in his inquiries, eliciting finally what he surely could not have hoped for in the beginning,—the exact address of the party referred to in the paper he had stolen, and which, for some reason, the boy remembered. It was an uptown address, and, as soon as the caterer could leave his business, he took the elevated and proceeded to the specified street and number.

“Miss Van Arsdale, a surprise awaited him, and awaited us when he told the result of his search. The name attached to the recommendation had been—‘Hiram Sears, Steward.’ He did not know of any such man—perhaps you do—but when he reached the house from which the recommendation was dated, he saw that it was one of the great houses of New York, though he could not at the instant remember who lived there. But he soon found out. The first passer-by told him. Miss Van Arsdale, perhaps you can do the same. The number was—Eighty-sixth Street.”

“—!” I repeated, quite aghast. “Why, Mr. Fairbrother himself! The husband of—”

“Exactly so, and Hiram Sears, whose name you may have heard mentioned at the inquest, though for a very good reason he was not there in person, is his steward and general factotum.”

“Oh! and it was he who recommended Wellgood?”

“Yes.”

“And did Mr. Jones see him?”

“No. The house, you remember, is closed. Mr. Fairbrother, on leaving town, gave his servants a vacation. His steward he took with him,—that is, they started together. But we hear no mention made of him in our telegrams from Santa Fe. He does not seem to have followed Mr. Fairbrother into the mountains.”

“You say that in a peculiar way,” I remarked.

“Because it has struck us peculiarly. Where is Sears now? And why did he not go on with Mr. Fairbrother when he left home with every apparent intention of accompanying him to the Placide mine? Miss Van Arsdale, we were impressed with this fact when we heard of Mr. Fairbrother’s lonely trip from where he was taken ill to his mine outside of Santa Fe; but we have only given it its due importance since hearing what has come to us to-day.

“Miss Van Arsdale,” continued the inspector, as I looked up quickly, “I am going to show great confidence in you. I am going to tell you what our men have learned about this Sears. As I have said before, it is but forestalling the reporters by a day, and it may help you to understand why I sent you such peremptory orders to stop, when your whole heart was fixed on an attempt by which you hoped to right Mr. Durand. We can not afford to disturb so distinguished a person as the one you have under your eye, while the least hope remains of fixing this crime elsewhere. And we have such hope. This man, this Sears, is by no means the simple character one would expect from his position. Considering the short time we have had (it was only yesterday that Jones found his way into this office), we have unearthed some very interesting facts in his regard. His devotion to Mr. Fairbrother was never any secret, and we knew as much about that the day after the murder as we do now. But the feelings with which he regarded Mrs. Fairbrother—well, that is another thing—and it was not till last night we heard that the attachment which bound him to her was of the sort which takes no account of youth or age, fitness or unfitness. He was no Adonis, and old enough, we are told, to be her father; but for all that we have already found several persons who can tell strange stories of the persistence with which his eager old eyes would follow her whenever chance threw them together during the time she remained under her husband’s roof; and others who relate, with even more avidity, how, after her removal to apartments of her own, he used to spend hours in the adjoining park just to catch a glimpse of her figure as she crossed the sidewalk on her way to and from her carriage. Indeed, his senseless, almost senile passion for this magnificent beauty became a by-word in some mouths, and it only escaped being mentioned at the inquest from respect to Mr. Fairbrother, who had never recognized this weakness in his steward, and from its lack of visible connection with her horrible death and the stealing of her great jewel. Nevertheless, we have a witness now—it is astonishing how many witnesses we can scare up by a little effort, who never thought of coming forward themselves—who can swear to having seen him one night shaking his fist at her retreating figure as she stepped haughtily by him into her apartment house. This witness is sure that the man he saw thus gesticulating was Sears, and he is sure the woman was Mrs. Fairbrother. The only thing he is not sure of is how his own wife will feel when she hears that he was in that particular neighborhood on that particular evening, when he was evidently supposed to be somewhere else.” And the inspector laughed.

“Is the steward’s disposition a bad one.” I asked, “that this display of feeling should impress you so much?”

“I don’t know what to say about that yet. Opinions differ on this point. His friends speak of him as the mildest kind of a man who, without native executive skill, could not manage the great household he has in charge. His enemies, and we have unearthed a few, say, on the contrary, that they have never had any confidence in his quiet ways; that these were not in keeping with the fact or his having been a California miner in the early fifties.

“You can see I am putting you very nearly where we are ourselves. Nor do I see why I should not add that this passion of the seemingly subdued but really hot-headed steward for a woman, who never showed him anything but what he might call an insulting indifference, struck us as a clue to be worked up, especially after we received this answer to a telegram we sent late last night to the nurse who is caring for Mr. Fairbrother in New Mexico.”

He handed me a small yellow slip and I read:

“The steward left Mr. Fairbrother at El Moro. He has not heard from him since.

“ANNETTA LA SERRA

“For Abner Fairbrother.”

“At El Moro?” I cried. “Why, that was long enough ago.”

“For him to have reached New York before the murder. Exactly so, if he took advantage of every close connection.”

XIV. TRAPPED

I caught my breath sharply. I did not say anything. I felt that I did not understand the inspector sufficiently yet to speak. He seemed to be pleased with my reticence. At all events, his manner grew even kinder as he said:

“This Sears is a witness we must have. He is being looked for now, high and low, and we hope to get some clue to his whereabouts before night. That is, if he is in this city. Meanwhile, we are all glad—I am sure you are also—to spare so distinguished a gentleman as Mr. Grey the slightest annoyance.”

“And Mr. Durand? What of him in this interim?”

“He will have to await developments. I see no other way, my dear.”

It was kindly said, but my head drooped. This waiting was what was killing him and killing me. The inspector saw and gently patted my hand.

“Come,” said he, “you have head enough to see that it is never wise to force matters.” Then, possibly with an intention of rousing me, he remarked: “There is another small fact which may interest you. It concerns the waiter, Wellgood, recommended, as you will remember, by this Sears. In my talk with Jones it leaked out as a matter of small moment, and so it was to him, that this Wellgood was the waiter who ran and picked up the diamond after it fell from Mr. Grey’s hand.”

“Ah!”

“This may mean nothing—it meant nothing to Jones—but I inform you of it because there is a question I want to put to you in this connection. You smile.”

“Did I?” I meekly answered. “I do not know why.”

This was not true. I had been waiting to see why the inspector had so honored me with all these disclosures, almost with his thoughts. Now I saw. He desired something in return.

“You were on the scene at this very moment,” he proceeded, after a brief contemplation of my face, “and you must have seen this man when he lifted the jewel and handed it back to Mr. Grey. Did you remark his features?”

“No, sir; I was too far off; besides, my eyes were on Mr. Grey.” “That is a pity. I was in hopes you could satisfy me on a very important point.”

“What point is that, Inspector Dalzell?”

“Whether he answered the following description.” And, taking up another paper, he was about to read it aloud to me, when an interruption occurred. A man showed himself at the door, whom the inspector no sooner recognized than he seemed to forget me in his eagerness to interrogate him. Perhaps the appearance of the latter had something to do with it; he looked as if he had been running, or had been the victim of some extraordinary adventure. At all events, the inspector arose as he entered, and was about to question him when he remembered me, and, casting about for some means of ridding himself of my presence without injury to my feelings, he suddenly pushed open the door of an adjoining room and requested me to step inside while he talked a moment with this man.

Of course I went, but I cast him an appealing look as I did so. It evidently had its effect, for his expression changed as his hand fell on the doorknob. Would he snap the lock tight, and so shut me out from what concerned me as much as it did any one in the whole world? Or would he recognize my anxiety—the necessity I was under of knowing just the ground I was standing on—and let me hear what this man had to report?

I watched the door. It closed slowly, too slowly to latch. Would he catch it anew by the knob? No; he left it thus, and, while the crack was hardly perceptible, I felt confident that the least shake of the floor would widen it and give me the opportunity I sought. But I did not have to wait for this. The two men in the office I had just left began to speak, and to my unbounded relief were sufficiently intelligible, even now, to warrant me in giving them my fullest attention.

After some expressions of astonishment on the part of the inspector as to the plight in which the other presented himself, the latter broke out:

“I’ve just escaped death! I’ll tell you about that later. What I want to tell you now is that the man we want is in town. I saw him last night, or his shadow, which is the same thing. It was in the house in Eighty-sixth Street,—the house they all think closed. He came in with a key and—”

“Wait! You have him?”

“No. It’s a long story, sir—”

“Tell it!”

The tone was dry. The inspector was evidently disappointed.

“Don’t blame me till you hear,” said the other. “He is no common crook. This is how it was: You wanted the suspect’s photograph and a specimen of his writing. I knew no better place to look for them than in his own room in Mr. Fairbrother’s house. I accordingly got the necessary warrant and late last evening undertook the job. I went alone I was always an egotistical chap, more’s the pity—and with no further precaution than a passing explanation to the officer I met at the corner, I hastened up the block to the rear entrance on Eighty-seventh Street. There are three doors to the Fairbrother house, as you probably know. Two on Eighty-sixth Street (the large front one and a small one connecting directly with the turret stairs), and one on Eighty-seventh Street. It was to the latter I had a key. I do not think any one saw me go in. It was raining, and such people as went by were more concerned in keeping their umbrellas properly over their heads than in watching men skulking about in doorways.

“I got in, then, all right, and, being careful to close the door behind me, went up the first short flight of steps to what I knew must be the main hall. I had been given a plan of the interior, and I had studied it more or less before starting out, but I knew that I should get lost if I did not keep to the rear staircase, at the top of which I expected to find the steward’s room. There was a faint light in the house, in spite of its closed shutters and tightly-drawn shades; and, having a certain dread of using my torch, knowing my weakness for pretty things and how hard it would be for me to pass so many fine rooms without looking in, I made my way up stairs, with no other guide than the hand-rail. When I had reached what I took to be the third floor I stopped. Finding it very dark, I first listened—a natural instinct with us—then I lit up and looked about me.

“I was in a large hall, empty as a vault and almost as desolate. Blank doors met my eyes in all directions, with here and there an open passageway. I felt myself in a maze. I had no idea which was the door I sought, and it is not pleasant to turn unaccustomed knobs in a shut-up house at midnight, with the rain pouring in torrents and the wind making pandemonium in a half-dozen great chimneys.

“But it had to be done, and I went at it in regular order till I came to a little narrow one opening on the turret-stair. This gave me my bearings. Sears’ room adjoined the staircase. There was no difficulty in spotting the exact door now and, merely stopping to close the opening I had made to this little staircase, I crossed to this door and flung it open. I had been right in my calculations. It was the steward’s room, and I made at once for the desk.”

“And you found—?”

“Mostly locked drawers. But a key on my bunch opened some of these and my knife the rest. Here are the specimens of his handwriting which I collected. I doubt if you will get much out of them. I saw nothing compromising in the whole room, but then I hadn’t time to go through his trunks, and one of them looked very interesting,—old as the hills and—”

“You hadn’t time? Why hadn’t you time? What happened to cut it short?”

“Well, sir, I’ll tell you.” The tone in which this was said roused me if it did not the inspector. “I had just come from the desk which had disappointed me, and was casting a look about the room, which was as bare as my hand of everything like ornament—I might almost say comfort—when I heard a noise which was not that of swishing rain or even gusty wind—these had not been absent from my ears for a moment. I didn’t like that noise; it had a sneakish sound, and I shut my light off in a hurry. After that I crept hastily out of the room, for I don’t like a set-to in a trap.

“It was darker than ever now in the hall, or so it seemed, and as I backed away I came upon a jog in the wall, behind which I crept. For the sound I had heard was no fancy. Some one besides myself was in the house, and that some one was coming up the little turret-stair, striking matches as he approached. Who could it be? A detective from the district attorney’s office? I hardly thought so. He would have been provided with something better than matches to light his way. A burglar? No, not on the third floor of a house as rich as this. Some fellow on the force, then, who had seen me come in and, by some trick of his own, had managed to follow me? I would see. Meantime I kept my place behind the jog and watched, not knowing which way the intruder would go.

“Whoever he was, he was evidently astonished to see the turret door ajar, for he lit another match as he threw it open and, though I failed to get a glimpse of his figure, I succeeded in getting a very good one of his shadow. It was one to arouse a detective’s instinct at once. I did not say to myself, this is the man I want, but I did say, this is nobody from headquarters, and I steadied myself for whatever might turn up.

“The first thing that happened was the sudden going out of the match which had made this shadow visible. The intruder did not light another. I heard him move across the floor with the rapid step of one who knows his way well, and the next minute a gas-jet flared up in the steward’s room, and I knew that the man the whole force was looking for had trapped himself.

“You will agree that it was not my duty to take him then and there without seeing what he was after. He was thought to be in the eastern states, or south or west, and he was here; but why here? That is what I knew you would want to know, and it was just what I wanted to know myself. So I kept my place, which was good enough, and just listened, for I could not see.

“What was his errand? What did he want in this empty house at midnight? Papers first, and then clothes. I heard him at his desk, I heard him in the closet, and afterward pottering in the old trunk I had been so anxious to look into myself. He must have brought the key with him, for it was no time before I heard him throwing out the contents in a wild search for something he wanted in a great hurry. He found it sooner than you would believe, and began throwing the things back, when something happened. Expectedly or unexpectedly, his eye fell on some object which roused all his passions, and he broke into loud exclamations ending in groans. Finally he fell to kissing this object with a fervor suggesting rage, and a rage suggesting tenderness carried to the point of agony. I have never heard the like; my curiosity was so aroused that I was on the point of risking everything for a look, when he gave a sudden snarl and cried out, loud enough for me to hear: ‘Kiss what I’ve hated? That is as bad as to kill what I’ve loved.’ Those were the words. I am sure he said kiss and I am sure he said kill.”

“This is very interesting. Go on with your story. Why didn’t you collar him while he was in this mood? You would have won by the surprise.

“I had no pistol, sir, and he had. I heard him cock it. I thought he was going to take his own life, and held my breath for the report. But nothing like that was in his mind. Instead, he laid the pistol down and deliberately tore in two the object of his anger. Then with a smothered curse he made for the door and turret staircase.

“I was for following, but not till I had seen what he had destroyed in such an excess of feeling. I thought I knew, but I wanted to feel sure. So, before risking myself in the turret, I crept to the room he had left and felt about on the floor till I came upon these.”

“A torn photograph! Mrs. Fairbrother’s!”

“Yes. Have you not heard how he loved her? A foolish passion, but evidently sincere and—”

“Never mind comments, Sweetwater. Stick to facts.”

“I will, sir. They are interesting enough. After I had picked up these scraps I stole back to the turret staircase. And here I made my first break. I stumbled in the darkness, and the man below heard me, for the pistol clicked again. I did not like this, and had some thoughts of backing out of my job. But I didn’t. I merely waited till I heard his step again; then I followed.

“But very warily this time. It was not an agreeable venture. It was like descending into a well with possible death at the bottom. I could see nothing and presently could hear nothing but the almost imperceptible sliding of my own fingers down the curve of the wall, which was all I had to guide me. Had he stopped midway, and would my first intimation of his presence be the touch of cold steel or the flinging around me of two murderous arms? I had met with no break in the smooth surface of the wall, so could not have reached the second story. When I should get there the question would be whether to leave the staircase and seek him in the mazes of its great rooms, or to keep on down to the parlor floor and so to the street, whither he was possibly bound. I own that I was almost tempted to turn on my light and have done with it, but I remembered of how little use I should be to you lying in this well of a stairway with a bullet in me, and so I managed to compose myself and go on as I had begun. Next instant my fingers slipped round the edge of an opening, and I knew that the moment of decision had come. Realizing that no one can move so softly that he will not give away his presence in some way, I paused for the sound which I knew must come, and when a click rose from the depths of the hall before me I plunged into that hall and thus into the house proper.

“Here it was not so dark; yet I could make out none of the objects I now and then ran against. I passed a mirror (I hardly know how I knew it to be such), and in that mirror I seemed to see the ghost of a ghost flit by and vanish. It was too much. I muttered a suppressed oath and plunged forward, when I struck against a closing door. It flew open again and I rushed in, turning on my light in my extreme desperation, when, instead of hearing the sharp report of a pistol, as I expected, I saw a second door fall to before me, this time with a sound like the snap of a spring lock. Finding that this was so, and that all advance was barred that way, I wheeled hurriedly back toward the door by which I had entered the place, to find that that had fallen to simultaneously with the other, a single spring acting for both. I was trapped—a prisoner in the strangest sort of passageway or closet; and, as a speedy look about presently assured me, a prisoner with very little hope of immediate escape, for the doors were not only immovable, without even locks to pick or panels to break in, but the place was bare of windows, and the only communication which it could be said to have with the outside world at all was a shaft rising from the ceiling almost to the top of the house. Whether this served as a ventilator, or a means of lighting up the hole when both doors were shut, it was much too inaccessible to offer any apparent way of escape.

“Never was a man more thoroughly boxed in. As I realized how little chance there was of any outside interference, how my captor, even if he was seen leaving the house by the officer on duty, would be taken for myself and so allowed to escape, I own that I felt my position a hopeless one. But anger is a powerful stimulant, and I was mortally angry, not only with Sears, but with myself. So when I was done swearing I took another look around, and, finding that there was no getting through the walls, turned my attention wholly to the shaft, which would certainly lead me out of the place if I could only find means to mount it.

“And how do you think I managed to do this at last? A look at my bedraggled, lime-covered clothes may give you some idea. I cut a passage for myself up those perpendicular walls as the boy did up the face of the natural bridge in Virginia. Do you remember that old story in the Reader? It came to me like an inspiration as I stood looking up from below, and though I knew that I should have to work most of the way in perfect darkness, I decided that a man’s life was worth some risk, and that I had rather fall and break my neck while doing something than to spend hours in maddening inactivity, only to face death at last from slow starvation.

“I had a knife, an exceedingly good knife, in my pocket—and for the first few steps I should have the light of my electric torch. The difficulty (that is, the first difficulty) was to reach the shaft from the floor where I stood. There was but one article of furniture in the room, and that was something between a table and a desk. No chairs, and the desk was not high enough to enable me to reach the mouth of the shaft. If I could turn it on end there might be some hope. But this did not look feasible. However, I threw off my coat and went at the thing with a vengeance, and whether I was given superhuman power or whether the clumsy thing was not as heavy as it looked, I did finally succeed in turning it on its end close under the opening from which the shaft rose. The next thing was to get on its top. That seemed about as impossible as climbing the bare wall itself, but presently I bethought me of the drawers, and, though they were locked, I did succeed by the aid of my keys to get enough of them open to make for myself a very good pair of stairs.

“I could now see my way to the mouth of the shaft, but after that! Taking out my knife, I felt the edge. It was a good one, so was the point, but was it good enough to work holes in plaster? It depended somewhat upon the plaster. Had the masons, in finishing that shaft, any thought of the poor wretch who one day would have to pit his life against the hardness of the final covering? My first dig at it would tell. I own I trembled violently at the prospect of what that first test would mean to me, and wondered if the perspiration which I felt starting at every pore was the result of the effort I had been engaged in or just plain fear.

“Inspector, I do not intend to have you live with me through the five mortal hours which followed. I was enabled to pierce that plaster with my knife, and even to penetrate deep enough to afford a place for the tips of my fingers and afterward for the point of my toes, digging, prying, sweating, panting, listening, first for a sudden opening of the doors beneath, then for some shout or wicked interference from above as I worked my way up inch by inch, foot by foot, to what might not be safety after it was attained.

“Five hours—six. Then I struck something which proved to be a window; and when I realized this and knew that with but one more effort I should breathe freely again, I came as near falling as I had at any time before I began this terrible climb.

“Happily, I had some premonition of my danger, and threw myself into a position which held me till the dizzy minute passed. Then I went calmly on with my work, and in another half-hour had reached the window, which, fortunately for me, not only opened inward, but was off the latch. It was with a sense of inexpressible relief that I clambered through this window and for a brief moment breathed in the pungent odor of cedar. But it could have been only for a moment. It was three o’clock in the afternoon before I found myself again in the outer air. The only way I can account for the lapse of time is that the strain to which both body and nerve had been subjected was too much for even my hardy body and that I fell to the floor of the cedar closet and from a faint went into a sleep that lasted until two. I can easily account for the last hour because it took me that long to cut the thick paneling from the door of the closet. However, I am here now, sir, and in very much the same condition in which I left that house. I thought my first duty was to tell you that I had seen Hiram Sears in that house last night and put you on his track.”

I drew a long breath,—I think the inspector did. I had been almost rigid from excitement, and I don’t believe he was quite free from it either. But his voice was calmer than I expected when he finally said:

“I’ll remember this. It was a good night’s work.” Then the inspector put to him some questions, which seemed to fix the fact that Sears had left the house before Sweetwater did, after which he bade him send certain men to him and then go and fix himself up.

I believe he had forgotten me. I had almost forgotten myself.

XV. SEARS OR WELLGOOD

Not till the inspector had given several orders was I again summoned into his presence. He smiled as our eyes met, but did not allude, any more than I did, to what had just passed. Nevertheless, we understood each other.

When I was again seated, he took up the conversation where we had left it.

“The description I was just about to read to you,” he went on; “will you listen to it now?”

“Gladly,” said I; “it is Wellgood’s, I believe.”

He did not answer save by a curious glance from under his brows, but, taking the paper again from his desk, went on reading:

“A man of fifty-five looking like one of sixty. Medium height, insignificant features, head bald save for a ring of scanty dark hair. No beard, a heavy nose, long mouth and sleepy half-shut eyes capable of shooting strange glances. Nothing distinctive in face or figure save the depth of his wrinkles and a scarcely observable stoop in his right shoulder. Do you see Wellgood in that?” he suddenly asked.

“I have only the faintest recollection of his appearance,” was my doubtful reply. “But the impression I get from this description is not exactly the one I received of that waiter in the momentary glimpse I got of him.”

“So others have told me before;” he remarked, looking very disappointed. “The description is of Sears given me by a man who knew him well, and if we could fit the description of the one to that of the other, we should have it easy. But the few persons who have seen Wellgood differ greatly in their remembrance of his features, and even of his coloring. It is astonishing how superficially most people see a man, even when they are thrown into daily contact with him. Mr. Jones says the man’s eyes are gray, his hair a wig and dark, his nose pudgy, and his face without much expression. His land-lady, that his eyes are blue, his hair, whether wig or not, a dusty auburn, and his look quick and piercing,—a look which always made her afraid. His nose she don’t remember. Both agree, or rather all agree, that he wore no beard—Sears did, but a beard can be easily taken off—and all of them declare that they would know him instantly if they saw him. And so the matter stands. Even you can give me no definite description,—one, I mean, as satisfactory or unsatisfactory as this of Sears.”

I shook my head. Like the others, I felt that I should know him if I saw him, but I could go no further than that. There seemed to be so little that was distinctive about the man.

The inspector, hoping, perhaps, that all this would serve to rouse my memory, shrugged his shoulders and put the best face he could on the matter.

“Well, well,” said he, “we shall have to be patient. A day may make all the difference possible in our outlook. If we can lay hands on either of these men—”

He seemed to realize he had said a word too much, for he instantly changed the subject by asking if I had succeeded in getting a sample of Miss Grey’s writing. I was forced to say no; that everything had been very carefully put away. “But I do not know what moment I may come upon it,” I added. “I do not forget its importance in this investigation.”

“Very good. Those lines handed up to Mrs. Fairbrother from the walk outside are the second most valuable clue we possess.”

I did not ask him what the first was. I knew. It was the stiletto.

“Strange that no one has testified to that handwriting,” I remarked.

He looked at me in surprise.

“Fifty persons have sent in samples of writing which they think like it,” he observed. “Often of persons who never heard of the Fairbrothers. We have been bothered greatly with the business. You know little of the difficulties the police labor under.”

“I know too much,” I sighed.

He smiled and patted me on the hand.

“Go back to your patient,” he said. “Forget every other duty but that of your calling until you get some definite word from me. I shall not keep you in suspense one minute longer than is absolutely necessary.”

He had risen. I rose too. But I was not satisfied. I could not leave the room with my ideas (I might say with my convictions) in such a turmoil.

“Inspector,” said I, “you will think me very obstinate, but all you have told me about Sears, all I have heard about him, in fact,”—this I emphasized,—“does not convince me of the entire folly of my own suspicions. Indeed, I am afraid that, if anything, they are strengthened. This steward, who is a doubtful character, I acknowledge, may have had his reasons for wishing Mrs. Fairbrother’s death, may even have had a hand in the matter; but what evidence have you to show that he, himself, entered the alcove, struck the blow or stole the diamond? I have listened eagerly for some such evidence, but I have listened in vain.”

“I know,” he murmured, “I know. But it will come; at least I think so.”

This should have reassured me, no doubt, and sent me away quiet and happy. But something—the tenacity of a deep conviction, possibly—kept me lingering before the inspector and finally gave me the courage to say:

“I know I ought not to speak another word; that I am putting myself at a disadvantage in doing so; but I can not help it, Inspector; I can not help it when I see you laying such stress upon the few indirect clues connecting the suspicious Sears with this crime, and ignoring the direct clues we have against one whom we need not name.”

Had I gone too far? Had my presumption transgressed all bounds and would he show a very natural anger? No, he smiled instead, an enigmatical smile, no doubt, which I found it difficult to understand, but yet a smile.

“You mean,” he suggested, “that Sears’ possible connection with the crime can not eliminate Mr. Grey’s very positive one; nor can the fact that Wellgood’s hand came in contact with Mr. Grey’s, at or near the time of the exchange of the false stone with the real, make it any less evident who was the guilty author of this exchange?”

The inspector’s hand was on the door-knob, but he dropped it at this, and surveying me very quietly said:

“I thought that a few days spent at the bedside of Miss Grey in the society of so renowned and cultured a gentleman as her father would disabuse you of these damaging suspicions.”

“I don’t wonder that you thought so,” I burst out. “You would think so all the more, if you knew how kind he can be and what solicitude he shows for all about him. But I can not get over the facts. They all point, it seems to me, straight in one direction.”

“All? You heard what was said in this room—I saw it in your eye—how the man, who surprised the steward in his own room last night, heard him talking of love and death in connection with Mrs. Fairbrother. ‘To kiss what I hate! It is almost as bad as to kill what I love’—he said something like that.”

“Yes, I heard that. But did he mean that he had been her actual slayer? Could you convict him on those words?”

“Well, we shall find out. Then, as to Wellgood’s part in the little business, you choose to consider that it took place at the time the stone fell from Mr. Grey’s hand. What proof have you that the substitution you believe in was not made by him? He could easily have done it while crossing the room to Mr. Grey’s side.”

“Inspector!” Then hotly, as the absurdity of the suggestion struck me with full force: “He do this! A waiter, or as you think, Mr. Fairbrother’s steward, to be provided with so hard-to-come-by an article as this counterpart of a great stone? Isn’t that almost as incredible a supposition as any I have myself presumed to advance?”

“Possibly, but the affair is full of incredibilities, the greatest of which, to my mind, is the persistence with which you, a kind-hearted enough little woman, persevere in ascribing the deepest guilt to one you profess to admire and certainly would be glad to find innocent of any complicity with a great crime.”

I felt that I must justify myself.

“Mr. Durand has had no such consideration shown him,” said I.

“I know, my child, I know; but the cases differ. Wouldn’t it be well for you to see this and be satisfied with the turn which things have taken, without continuing to insist upon involving Mr. Grey in your suspicions?”

A smile took off the edge of this rebuke, yet I felt it keenly; and only the confidence I had in his fairness as a man and public official enabled me to say:

“But I am talking quite confidentially. And you have been so good to me, so willing to listen to all I had to say, that I can not help but speak my whole mind. It is my only safety valve. Remember how I have to sit in the presence of this man with my thoughts all choked up. It is killing me. But I think I should go back content if you will listen to one more suggestion I have to make. It is my last.”

“Say it I am nothing if not indulgent.”

He had spoken the word. Indulgent, that was it. He let me speak, probably had let me speak from the first, from pure kindness. He did not believe one little bit in my good sense or logic. But I was not to be deterred. I would empty my mind of the ugly thing that lay there. I would leave there no miserable dregs of doubt to ferment and work their evil way with me in the dead watches of the night, which I had yet to face. So I took him at his word.

“I only want to ask this. In case Sears is innocent of the crime, who wrote the warning and where did the assassin get the stiletto with the Grey arms chased into its handle? And the diamond? Still the diamond! You hint that he stole that, too. That with some idea of its proving useful to him on this gala occasion, he had provided himself with an imitation stone, setting and all,—he who has never shown, so far as we have heard, any interest in Mrs. Fairbrother’s diamond, only in Mrs. Fairbrother herself. If Wellgood is Sears and Sears the medium by which the false stone was exchanged for the real, then he made this exchange in Mr. Grey’s interests and not his own. But I don’t believe he had anything to do with it. I think everything goes to show that the exchange was made by Mr. Grey himself.”

“A second Daniel,” muttered the inspector lightly. “Go on, little lawyer!” But for all this attempt at banter on his part, I imagined that I saw the beginning of a very natural anxiety to close the conversation. I therefore hastened with what I had yet to say, cutting my words short and almost stammering in my eagerness.

“Remember the perfection of that imitation stone, a copy so exact that it extends to the setting. That shows plan—forgive me if I repeat myself—preparation, a knowledge of stones, a particular knowledge of this one. Mr. Fairbrother’s steward may have had the knowledge, but he would have been a fool to have used his knowledge to secure for himself a valuable he could never have found a purchaser for in any market. But a fancier—one who has his pleasure in the mere possession of a unique and invaluable gem—ah! that is different! He might risk a crime—history tells us of several.”

Here I paused to take breath, which gave the inspector chance to say:

“In other words, this is what you think. The Englishman, desirous of covering up his tracks, conceived the idea of having this imitation on hand, in case it might be of use in the daring and disgraceful undertaking you ascribe to him. Recognizing his own inability to do this himself, he delegated the task to one who in some way, he had been led to think, cherished a secret grudge against its present possessor—a man who had had some opportunity for seeing the stone and studying the setting. The copy thus procured, Mr. Grey went to the ball, and, relying on his own seemingly unassailable position, attacked Mrs. Fairbrother in the alcove and would have carried off the diamond, if he had found it where he had seen it earlier blazing on her breast. But it was not there. The warning received by her—a warning you ascribe to his daughter, a fact which is yet to be proved—had led her to rid herself of the jewel in the way Mr. Durand describes, and he found himself burdened with a dastardly crime and with nothing to show for it. Later, however, to his intense surprise and possible satisfaction, he saw that diamond in my hands, and, recognizing an opportunity, as he thought, of yet securing it, he asked to see it, held it for an instant, and then, making use of an almost incredible expedient for distracting attention, dropped, not the real stone but the false one, retaining the real one in his hand. This, in plain English, as I take it, is your present idea of the situation.”

Astonished at the clearness with which he read my mind, I answered: “Yes, Inspector, that is what was in my mind.”

“Good! then it is just as well that it is out. Your mind is now free and you can give it entirely to your duties.” Then, as he laid his hand on the door-knob, he added: “In studying so intently your own point of view, you seem to have forgotten that the last thing which Mr. Grey would be likely to do, under those circumstances, would be to call attention to the falsity of the gem upon whose similarity to the real stone he was depending. Not even his confidence in his own position, as an honored and highly-esteemed guest, would lead him to do that.”

“Not if he were a well-known connoisseur,” I faltered, “with the pride of one who has handled the best gems? He would know that the deception would be soon discovered and that it would not do for him to fail to recognize it for what it was, when the make-believe was in his hands.”

“Forced, my dear child, forced; and as chimerical as all the rest. It can not stand putting into words. I will go further,—you are a good girl and can bear to hear the truth from me. I don’t believe in your theory; I can’t. I have not been able to from the first, nor have any of my men; but if your ideas are true and Mr. Grey is involved in this matter, you will find that there has been more of a hitch about that diamond than you, in your simplicity, believe. If Mr. Grey were in actual possession of this valuable, he would show less care than you say he does. So would he if it were in Wellgood’s hands with his consent and a good prospect of its coming to him in the near future. But if it is in Wellgood’s hands without his consent, or any near prospect of his regaining it, then we can easily understand his present apprehensions and the growing uneasiness he betrays.”

“True,” I murmured.

“If, then,” the inspector pursued, giving me a parting glance not without its humor, probably not without something really serious underlying its humor, “we should find, in following up our present clue, that Mr. Grey has had dealings with this Wellgood or this Sears; or if you, with your advantages for learning the fact, should discover that he shows any extraordinary interest in either of them, the matter will take on a different aspect. But we have not got that far yet. At present our task is to find one or the other of these men. If we are lucky, we shall discover that the waiter and the steward are identical, in spite of their seemingly different appearance. A rogue, such as this Sears has shown himself to be, would be an adept at disguise.”

“You are right,” I acknowledged. “He has certainly the heart of a criminal. If he had no hand in Mrs. Fairbrother’s murder, he came near having one in that of your detective. You know what I mean. I could not help hearing, Inspector.”

He smiled, looked me steadfastly in the face for a moment, and then bowed me out.

The inspector told me afterward that, in spite of the cavalier manner with which he had treated my suggestions, he spent a very serious half-hour, head to head with the district attorney. The result was the following order to Sweetwater, the detective.

“You are to go to the St. Regis; make yourself solid there, and gradually, as you can manage it, work yourself into a position for knowing all that goes on in Room ——. If the gentleman (mind you, the gentleman; we care nothing about the women) should go out, you are to follow him if it takes you to—. We want to know his secret; but he must never know our interest in it and you are to be as silent in this matter as if possessed of neither ear nor tongue. I will add memory, for if you find this secret to be one in which we have no lawful interest, you are to forget it absolutely and for ever. You will understand why when you consult the St Regis register.”

But they expected nothing from it; absolutely nothing.

XVI. DOUBT

I prayed uncle that we might be driven home by the way of Eighty-sixth Street. I wanted to look at the Fairbrother house. I had seen it many times, but I felt that I should see it with new eyes after the story I had just heard in the inspector’s office. That an adventure of this nature could take place in a New York house taxed my credulity. I might have believed it of Paris, wicked, mysterious Paris, the home of intrigue and every redoubtable crime, but of our own homely, commonplace metropolis—the house must be seen for me to be convinced of the fact related.

Many of you know the building. It is usually spoken of with a shrug, the sole reason for which seems to be that there is no other just like it in the city. I myself have always considered it imposing and majestic; but to the average man it is too suggestive of Old-World feudal life to be pleasing. On this afternoon—a dull, depressing one—it looked undeniably heavy as we approached it; but interesting in a very new way to me, because of the great turret at one angle, the scene of that midnight descent of two men, each in deadly fear of the other, yet quailing not in their purpose,—the one of flight, the other of pursuit.

There was no railing in front of the house. It may have seemed an unnecessary safeguard to the audacious owner. Consequently, the small door in the turret opened directly upon the street, making entrance and exit easy enough for any one who had the key. But the shaft and the small room at the bottom—where were they? Naturally in the center of the great mass, the room being without windows.

It was, therefore, useless to look for it, and yet my eye ran along the peaks and pinnacles of the roof, searching for the skylight in which it undoubtedly ended. At last I espied it, and, my curiosity satisfied on this score, I let my eyes run over the side and face of the building for an open window or a lifted shade. But all were tightly closed and gave no more sign of life than did the boarded-up door. But I was not deceived by this. As we drove away, I thought how on the morrow there would be a regular procession passing through this street to see just the little I had seen to-day. The detective’s adventure was like to make the house notorious. For several minutes after I had left its neighborhood my imagination pictured room after room shut up from the light of day, but bearing within them the impalpable aura of those two shadows flitting through them like the ghosts of ghosts, as the detective had tellingly put it.

The heart has its strange surprises. Through my whole ride and the indulgence in these thoughts I was conscious of a great inner revulsion against all I had intimated and even honestly felt while talking with the inspector. Perhaps this is what this wise old official expected. He had let me talk, and the inevitable reaction followed. I could now see only Mr. Grey’s goodness and claims to respect, and began to hate myself that I had not been immediately impressed by the inspector’s views, and shown myself more willing to drop every suspicion against the august personage I had presumed to associate with crime. What had given me the strength to persist? Loyalty to my lover? His innocence had not been involved. Indeed, every word uttered in the inspector’s office had gone to prove that he no longer occupied a leading place in police calculations: that their eyes were turned elsewhere, and that I had only to be patient to see Mr. Durand quite cleared in their minds.

But was this really so? Was he as safe as that? What if this new clue failed? What if they failed to find Sears or lay hands on the doubtful Wellgood? Would Mr. Durand be released without a trial? Should we hear nothing more of the strange and to many the suspicious circumstances which linked him to this crime? It would be expecting too much from either police or official discrimination.

No; Mr. Durand would never be completely exonerated till the true culprit was found and all explanations made. I had therefore been simply fighting his battles when I pointed out what I thought to be the weak place in their present theory, and, sore as I felt in contemplation of my seemingly heartless action, I was not the unimpressionable, addle-pated nonentity I must have seemed to the inspector.

Yet my comfort was small and the effort it took to face Mr. Grey and my young patient was much greater than I had anticipated. I blushed as I approached to take my place at Miss Grey’s bedside, and, had her father been as suspicious of me at that moment as I was of him, I am sure that I should have fared badly in his thoughts.

But he was not on the watch for my emotions. He was simply relieved to see me back. I noticed this immediately, also that something had occurred during my absence which absorbed his thought and filled him with anxiety.

A Western Union envelope lay at his feet,—proof that he had just received a telegram. This, under ordinary circumstances, would not have occasioned me a second thought, such a man being naturally the recipient of all sorts of communications from all parts of the world; but at this crisis, with the worm of a half-stifled doubt still gnawing at my heart, everything that occurred to him took on importance and roused questions.

When he had left the room, Miss Grey nestled up to me with the seemingly ingenuous remark:

“Poor papa! something disturbs him. He will not tell me what. I suppose he thinks I am not strong enough to share his troubles. But I shall be soon. Don’t you see I am gaining every day?”

“Indeed I do,” was my hearty response. In face of such a sweet confidence and open affection doubt vanished and I was able to give all my thoughts to her.

“I wish papa felt as sure of this as you do,” she said. “For some reason he does not seem to take any comfort from my improvement. When Doctor Freligh says, ‘Well, well! we are getting on finely to-day,’ I notice that he does not look less anxious, nor does he even meet these encouraging words with a smile. Haven’t you noticed it? He looks as care-worn and troubled about me now as he did the first day I was taken sick. Why should he? Is it because he has lost so many children he can not believe in his good fortune at having the most insignificant of all left to him?”

“I do not know your father very well,” I protested; “and can not judge what is going on in his mind. But he must see that you are quite a different girl from what you were a week ago, and that, if nothing unforeseen happens, your recovery will only be a matter of a week or two longer.”

“Oh, how I love to hear you say that! To be well again! To read letters!” she murmured, “and to write them!” And I saw the delicate hand falter up to pinch the precious packet awaiting that happy hour. I did not like to discuss her father with her, so took this opportunity to turn the conversation aside into safer channels. But we had not proceeded far before Mr. Grey returned and, taking his stand at the foot of the bed, remarked, after a moment’s gloomy contemplation of his daughter’s face:

“You are better today, the doctor says,—I have just been telephoning to him. But do you feel well enough for me to leave you for a few days? There is a man I must see—must go to, if you have no dread of being left alone with your good nurse and the doctor’s constant attendance.”

Miss Grey looked startled. Doubtless she found it difficult to understand what man in this strange country could interest her father enough to induce him to leave her while he was yet laboring under such solicitude. But a smile speedily took the place of her look of surprised inquiry and she affectionately exclaimed:

“Oh, I haven’t the least dread in the world, not now. See, I can hold up my arms. Go, papa, go; it will give me a chance to surprise you with my good looks when you come back.”

He turned abruptly away. He was suffering from an emotion deeper than he cared to acknowledge. But he gained control over himself speedily and, coming back, announced with forced decision:

“I shall have to go to-night. I have no choice. Promise me that you will not go back in my absence; that you will strive to get well; that you will put all your mind into striving to get well.”

“Indeed, I will,” she answered, a little frightened by the feeling he showed. “Don’t worry so much. I have more than one reason for living, papa.”

He shook his head and went immediately to make his preparations for departure. His daughter gave one sob, then caught me by the hand.

“You look dumfounded,” said she. “But never mind, we shall get on very well together. I have the most perfect confidence in you.”

Was it my duty to let the inspector know that Mr. Grey anticipated absenting himself from the city for a few days? I decided that I would only be impressing my own doubts upon him after a rebuke which should have allayed them.

Yet, when Mr. Grey came to take his departure I wished that the inspector might have been a witness to his emotion, if only to give me one of his very excellent explanations. The parting was more like that of one who sees no immediate promise of return than of a traveler who intends to limit his stay to a few days. He looked her in the eyes and kissed her a dozen times, each time with an air of heartbreak which was good neither for her nor for himself, and when he finally tore himself away it was to look back at her from the door with an expression I was glad she did not see, or it would certainly have interfered with the promise she had made to concentrate all her energies on getting well.

What was at the root of his extreme grief at leaving her? Did he fear the person he was going to meet, or were his plans such as involved a much longer stay than he had mentioned? Did he even mean to return at all?

Ah, that was the question! Did he intend to return, or had I been the unconscious witness of a flight?

XVII. SWEETWATER IN A NEW ROLE

A few days later three men were closeted in the district attorney’s office. Two of them were officials—the district attorney himself, and our old friend, the inspector. The third was the detective, Sweetwater, chosen by them to keep watch on Mr. Grey.

Sweetwater had just come to town,—this was evident from the gripsack he had set down in a corner on entering, also from a certain tousled appearance which bespoke hasty rising and but few facilities for proper attention to his person. These details counted little, however, in the astonishment created by his manner. For a hardy chap he looked strangely nervous and indisposed, so much so that, after the first short greeting, the inspector asked him what was up, and if he had had another Fairbrother-house experience.

He replied with a decided no; that it was not his adventure which had upset him, but the news he had to bring.

Here he glanced at every door and window; and then, leaning forward over the table at which the two officials sat, he brought his head as nearly to them as possible and whispered five words.

They produced a most unhappy sensation. Both the men, hardened as they were by duties which soon sap the sensibilities, started and turned as pale as the speaker himself. Then the district attorney, with one glance at the inspector, rose and locked the door.

It was a prelude to this tale which I give, not as it came from his mouth, but as it was afterward related to me. The language, I fear, is mostly my own.

The detective had just been with Mr. Grey to the coast of Maine. Why there, will presently appear. His task had been to follow this gentleman, and follow him he did.

Mr. Grey was a very stately man, difficult of approach, and was absorbed, besides, by some overwhelming care. But this fellow was one in a thousand and somehow, during the trip, he managed to do him some little service, which drew the attention of the great man to himself. This done, he so improved his opportunity that the two were soon on the best of terms, and he learned that the Englishman was without a valet, and, being unaccustomed to move about without one, felt the awkwardness of his position very much. This gave Sweetwater his cue, and when he found that the services of such a man were wanted only during the present trip and for the handling of affairs quite apart from personal tendance upon the gentleman himself, he showed such an honest desire to fill the place, and made out to give such a good account of himself, that he found himself engaged for the work before reaching C—.

This was a great stroke of luck, he thought, but he little knew how big a stroke or into what a series of adventures it was going to lead him.

Once on the platform of the small station at which Mr. Grey had bidden him to stop, he noticed two things: the utter helplessness of the man in all practical matters, and his extreme anxiety to see all that was going on about him without being himself seen. There was method in this curiosity, too much method. Women did not interest him in the least. They could pass and repass without arousing his attention, but the moment a man stepped his way, he shrank from him only to betray the greatest curiosity concerning him the moment he felt it safe to turn and observe him. All of which convinced Sweetwater that the Englishman’s errand was in connection with a man whom he equally dreaded and desired to meet.

Of this he was made absolutely certain a little later. As they were leaving the depot with the rest of the arrivals, Mr. Grey said:

“I want you to get me a room at a very quiet hotel. This done, you are to hunt up the man whose name you will find written in this paper, and when you have found him, make up your mind how it will be possible for me to get a good look at him without his getting any sort of a look at me. Do this and you will earn a week’s salary in one day.”

Sweetwater, with his head in air and his heart on fire—for matters were looking very promising indeed—took the paper and put it in his pocket; then he began to hunt for a hotel. Not till he had found what he wished, and installed the Englishman in his room, did he venture to open the precious memorandum and read the name he had been speculating over for an hour. It was not the one he had anticipated, but it came near to it. It was that of James Wellgood.

Satisfied now that he had a ticklish matter to handle, he prepared for it, with his usual enthusiasm and circumspection.

Sauntering out into the street, he strolled first toward the post-office. The train on which he had just come had been a mail-train, and he calculated that he would find half the town there.

His calculation was a correct one. The store was crowded with people. Taking his place in the line drawn up before the post-office window, he awaited his turn, and when it came shouted out the name which was his one talisman—James Wellgood.

The man behind the boxes was used to the name and reached out a hand toward a box unusually well stacked, but stopped half-way there and gave Sweetwater a sharp look.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“A stranger,” that young man put in volubly, “looking for James Wellgood. I thought, perhaps, you could tell me where to find him. I see that his letters pass through this office.”

“You’re taking up another man’s time,” complained the postmaster. He probably alluded to the man whose elbow Sweetwater felt boring into his back. “Ask Dick over there; he knows him.”

The detective was glad enough to escape and ask Dick. But he was better pleased yet when Dick—a fellow with a squint whose hand was always in the sugar—told him that Mr. Wellgood would probably be in for his mail in a few moments. “That is his buggy standing before the drug-store on the opposite side of the way.”

So! he had netted Jones’ quondam waiter at the first cast! “Lucky!” was what he said to himself, “still lucky!”

Sauntering to the door, he watched for the owner of that buggy. He had learned, as such fellows do, that there was a secret hue and cry after this very man by the New York police; that he was supposed by some to be Sears himself. In this way he would soon be looking upon the very man whose steps he had followed through the Fairbrother house a few nights before, and through whose resolute action he had very nearly run the risk of a lingering death from starvation.

“A dangerous customer,” thought he. “I wonder if my instinct will go so far as to make me recognize his presence. I shouldn’t wonder. It has served me almost as well as that many times before.”

It appeared to serve him now, for when the man finally showed himself on the cross-walk separating the two buildings he experienced a sudden indecision not unlike that of dread, and there being nothing in the man’s appearance to warrant apprehension, he took it for the instinctive recognition it undoubtedly was.

He therefore watched him narrowly and succeeded in getting one glance from his eye. It was enough. The man was commonplace,—commonplace in feature, dress and manner, but his eye gave him away. There was nothing commonplace in that. It was an eye to beware of.

He had taken in Sweetwater as he passed, but Sweetwater was of a commonplace type, too, and woke no corresponding dread in the other’s mind; for he went whistling into the store, from which he presently reissued with a bundle of mail in his hand. The detective’s first instinct was to take him into custody as a suspect much wanted by the New York police; but reason assured him that he not only had no warrant for this, but that he would better serve the ends of justice by following out his present task of bringing this man and the Englishman together and watching the result. But how, with the conditions laid on him by Mr. Grey, was this to be done? He knew nothing of the man’s circumstances or of his position in the town. How, then, go to work to secure his cooperation in a scheme possibly as mysterious to him as it was to himself? He could stop this stranger in mid-street, with some plausible excuse, but it did not follow that he would succeed in luring him to the hotel where Mr. Grey could see him. Wellgood, or, as he believed, Sears, knew too much of life to be beguiled by any open clap-trap, and Sweetwater was obliged to see him drive off without having made the least advance in the purpose engrossing him.

But that was nothing. He had all the evening before him, and reentering the store, he took up his stand near the sugar barrel. He had perceived that in the pauses of weighing and tasting, Dick talked; if he were guided with suitable discretion, why should he not talk of Wellgood?

He was guided, and he did talk and to some effect. That is, he gave information of the man which surprised Sweetwater. If in the past and in New York he had been known as a waiter, or should I say steward, he was known here as a manufacturer of patent medicine designed to rejuvenate the human race. He had not been long in town and was somewhat of a stranger yet, but he wouldn’t be so long. He was going to make things hum, he was. Money for this, money for that, a horse where another man would walk, and mail—well, that alone would make this post-office worth while. Then the drugs ordered by wholesale. Those boxes over there were his, ready to be carted out to his manufactory. Count them, some one, and think of the bottles and bottles of stuff they stand for. If it sells as he says it will—then he will soon be rich: and so on, till Sweetwater brought the garrulous Dick to a standstill by asking whether Wellgood had been away for any purpose since he first came to town. He received the reply that he had just come home from New York, where he had been for some articles needed in his manufactory. Sweetwater felt all his convictions confirmed, and ended the colloquy with the final question:

“And where is his manufactory? Might be worth visiting, perhaps.”

The other made a gesture, said something about northwest and rushed to help a customer. Sweetwater took the opportunity to slide away. More explicit directions could easily be got elsewhere, and he felt anxious to return to Mr. Grey and discover, if possible, whether it would prove as much a matter of surprise to him as to Sweetwater himself that the man who answered to the name of Wellgood was the owner of a manufactory and a barrel or two of drugs, out of which he proposed to make a compound that would rob the doctors of their business and make himself and this little village rich.

Sweetwater made only one stop on his way to Mr. Grey’s hotel rooms, and that was at the stables. Here he learned whatever else there was to know, and, armed with definite information, he appeared before Mr. Grey, who, to his astonishment, was dining in his own room.

He had dismissed the waiter and was rather brooding than eating. He looked up eagerly, however, when Sweetwater entered, and asked what news.

The detective, with some semblance of respect, answered that he had seen Wellgood, but that he had been unable to detain him or bring him within his employer’s observation.

“He is a patent-medicine man,” he then explained, “and manufactures his own concoctions in a house he has rented here on a lonely road some half-mile out of town.”

“Wellgood does? the man named Wellgood?” Mr. Grey exclaimed with all the astonishment the other secretly expected.

“Yes; Wellgood, James Wellgood. There is no other in town.”

“How long has this man been here?” the statesman inquired, after a moment of apparently great discomfiture.

“Just twenty-four hours, this time. He was here once before, when he rented the house and made all his plans.”

“Ah!”

Mr. Grey rose precipitately. His manner had changed.

“I must see him. What you tell me makes it all the more necessary for me to see him. How can you bring it about?”

“Without his seeing you?” Sweetwater asked.

“Yes, yes; certainly without his seeing me. Couldn’t you rap him up at his own door, and hold him in talk a minute, while I looked on from the carriage or whatever vehicle we can get to carry us there? The least glimpse of his face would satisfy me. That is, to-night.”

“I’ll try,” said Sweetwater, not very sanguine as to the probable result of this effort.

Returning to the stables, he ordered the team. With the last ray of the sun they set out, the reins in Sweetwater’s hands.

They headed for the coast-road.

XVIII. THE CLOSED DOOR

The road was once the highway, but the tide having played so many tricks with its numberless bridges a new one had been built farther up the cliff, carrying with it the life and business of the small town. Many old landmarks still remained—shops, warehouses and even a few scattered dwellings. But most of these were deserted, and those that were still in use showed such neglect that it was very evident the whole region would soon be given up to the encroaching sea and such interests as are inseparable from it.

The hour was that mysterious one of late twilight, when outlines lose their distinctness and sea and shore melt into one mass of uniform gray. There was no wind and the waves came in with a soft plash, but so near to the level of the road that it was evident, even to these strangers, that the tide was at its height and would presently begin to ebb.

Soon they had passed the last forsaken dwelling, and the town proper lay behind them. Sand and a few rocks were all that lay between them now and the open stretch of the ocean, which, at this point, approached the land in a small bay, well-guarded on either side by embracing rocky heads. This was what made the harbor at C—.

It was very still. They passed one team and only one. Sweetwater looked very sharply at this team and at its driver, but saw nothing to arouse suspicion. They were now a half-mile from C—, and, seemingly, in a perfectly desolate region.

“A manufactory here!” exclaimed Mr. Grey. It was the first word he had uttered since starting.

“Not far from here,” was Sweetwater’s equally laconic reply; and, the road taking a turn almost at the moment of his speaking, he leaned forward and pointed out a building standing on the right-hand side of the road, with its feet in the water. “That’s it.” said he. “They described it well enough for me to know it when I see it. Looks like a robber’s hole at this time of night,” he laughed; “but what can you expect from a manufactory of patent medicine?”

Mr. Grey was silent. He was looking very earnestly at the building.

“It is larger than I expected,” he remarked at last.

Sweetwater himself was surprised, but as they advanced and their point of view changed they found it to be really an insignificant structure, and Mr. Wellgood’s portion of it more insignificant still.

In reality it was a collection of three stores under one roof: two of them were shut up and evidently unoccupied, the third showed a lighted window. This was the manufactory. It occupied the middle place and presented a tolerably decent appearance. It showed, besides the lighted lamp I have mentioned, such signs of life as a few packing-boxes tumbled out on the small platform in front, and a whinnying horse attached to an empty buggy, tied to a post on the opposite side of the road.

“I’m glad to see the lamp,” muttered Sweetwater. “Now, what shall we do? Is it light enough for you to see his face, if I can manage to bring him to the door?”

Mr. Grey seemed startled.

“It’s darker than I thought,” said he. “But call the man and if I can not see him plainly, I’ll shout to the horse to stand, which you will take as a signal to bring this Wellgood nearer. But do not be surprised if I ride off before he reaches the buggy. I’ll come back again and take you up farther down the road.”

“All right, sir,” answered Sweetwater, with a side glance at the speaker’s inscrutable features. “It’s a go!” And leaping to the ground he advanced to the manufactory door and knocked loudly.

No one appeared.

He tried the latch; it lifted, but the door did not open; it was fastened from within.

“Strange!” he muttered, casting a glance at the waiting horse and buggy, then at the lighted window, which was on the second floor directly over his head. “Guess I’ll sing out.”

Here he shouted the man’s name. “Wellgood! I say, Wellgood!”

No response to this either.

“Looks bad!” he acknowledged to himself; and, taking a step back, he looked up at the window.

It was closed, but there was neither shade nor curtain to obstruct the view.

“Do you see anything?” he inquired of Mr. Grey, who sat with his eye at the small window in the buggy top.

“Nothing.”

“No movement in the room above? No shadow at the window?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, it’s confounded strange!” And he went back, still calling Wellgood.

The tied-up horse whinnied, and the waves gave a soft splash and that was all,—if I except Sweetwater’s muttered oath.

Coming back, he looked again at the window, then, with a gesture toward Mr. Grey, turned the corner of the building and began to edge himself along its side in an endeavor to reach the rear and see what it offered. But he came to a sudden standstill. He found himself on the edge of the bank before he had taken twenty steps. Yet the building projected on, and he saw why it had looked so large from a certain point of the approach. Its rear was built out on piles, making its depth even greater than the united width of the three stores. At low tide this might be accessible from below, but just now the water was almost on a level with the top of the piles, making all approach impossible save by boat.

Disgusted with his failure, Sweetwater returned to the front, and, finding the situation unchanged, took a new resolve. After measuring with his eye the height of the first story, he coolly walked over to the strange horse, and, slipping his bridle, brought it back and cast it over a projection of the door; by its aid he succeeded in climbing up to the window, which was the sole eye to the interior.

Mr. Grey sat far back in his buggy, watching every movement.

There were no shades at the window, as I have before said, and, once Sweetwater’s eye had reached the level of the sill, he could see the interior without the least difficulty. There was nobody there. The lamp burned on a great table littered with papers, but the rude cane-chair before it was empty, and so was the room. He could see into every corner of it and there was not even a hiding-place where anybody could remain concealed. Sweetwater was still looking, when the lamp, which had been burning with considerable smoke, flared up and went out. Sweetwater uttered an ejaculation, and, finding himself face to face with utter darkness, slid from his perch to the ground.

Approaching Mr. Grey for the second time, he said:

“I can not understand it. The fellow is either lying low, or he’s gone out, leaving his lamp to go out, too. But whose is the horse—just excuse me while I tie him up again. It looks like the one he was driving to-day. It is the one. Well, he won’t leave him here all night. Shall we lie low and wait for him to come and unhitch this animal? Or do you prefer to return to the hotel?”

Mr. Grey was slow in answering. Finally he said:

“The man may suspect our intention. You can never tell anything about such fellows as he. He may have caught some unexpected glimpse of me or simply heard that I was in town. If he’s the man I think him, he has reasons for avoiding me which I can very well understand. Let us go back,—not to the hotel, I must see this adventure through tonight,—but far enough for him to think we have given up all idea of routing him out to-night. Perhaps that is all he is waiting for. You can steal back—”

“Excuse me,” said Sweetwater, “but I know a better dodge than that. We’ll circumvent him. We passed a boat-house on our way down here. I’ll just drive you up, procure a boat, and bring you back here by water. I don’t believe that he will expect that, and if he is in the house we shall see him or his light.”

“Meanwhile he can escape by the road.”

“Escape? Do you think he is planning to escape?”

The detective spoke with becoming surprise and Mr. Grey answered without apparent suspicion.

“It is possible if he suspects my presence in the neighborhood.”

“Do you want to stop him?”

“I want to see him.”

“Oh, I remember. Well, sir, we will drive on,—that is, after a moment.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Oh, nothing. You said you wanted to see the man before he escaped.”

“Yes, but—”

“And that he might escape by the road.”

“Yes—”

“Well, I was just making that a little bit impracticable. A small pebble in the keyhole and—why, see now, his horse is walking off! Gee! I must have fastened him badly. I shouldn’t wonder if he trotted all the way to town. But it can’t be helped. I can not be supposed to race after him. Are you ready now, sir? I’ll give another shout, then I’ll get in.” And once more the lonely region about echoed with the cry: “Wellgood! I say, Wellgood!”

There was no answer, and the young detective, masking for the nonce as Mr. Grey’s confidential servant, jumped into the buggy, and turned the horse’s head toward C—.

XIX. THE FACE

The moon was well up when the small boat in which our young detective was seated with Mr. Grey appeared in the bay approaching the so-called manufactory of Wellgood. The looked-for light on the waterside was not there. All was dark except where the windows reflected the light of the moon.

This was a decided disappointment to Sweetwater, if not to Mr. Grey. He had expected to detect signs of life in this quarter, and this additional proof of Wellgood’s absence from home made it look as if they had come out on a fool’s errand and might much better have stuck to the road.

“No promise there,” came in a mutter from his lips. “Shall I row in, sir, and try to make a landing?”

“You may row nearer. I should like a closer view. I don’t think we shall attract any attention. There are more boats than ours on the water.”

Sweetwater was startled. Looking round, he saw a launch, or some such small steamer, riding at anchor not far from the mouth of the bay. But that was not all. Between it and them was a rowboat like their own, resting quietly in the wake of the moon.

“I don’t like so much company,” he muttered. “Something’s brewing; something in which we may not want to take a part.”

“Very likely,” answered Mr. Grey grimly. “But we must not be deterred—not till I have seen—” the rest Sweetwater did not hear. Mr. Grey seemed to remember himself. “Row nearer,” he now bade. “Get under the shadow of the rocks if you can. If the boat is for him, he will show himself. Yet I hardly see how he can board from that bank.”

It did not look feasible. Nevertheless, they waited and watched with much patience for several long minutes. The boat behind them did not advance, nor was any movement discernible in the direction of the manufactory. Another short period, then suddenly a light flashed from a window high up in the central gable, sparkled for an instant and was gone. Sweetwater took it for a signal and, with a slight motion of the wrist, began to work his way in toward shore till they lay almost at the edge of the piles.

“Hark!”

It was Sweetwater who spoke.

Both listened, Mr. Grey with his head turned toward the launch and Sweetwater with his eye on the cavernous space, sharply outlined by the piles, which the falling tide now disclosed under each contiguous building. Goods had been directly shipped from these stores in the old days. This he had learned in the village. How shipped he had not been able to understand from his previous survey of the building. But he thought he could see now. At low tide, or better, at half-tide, access could be got to the floor of the extension and, if this floor held a trap, the mystery would be explainable. So would be the hovering boat—the signal-light and—yes! this sound overheard of steps on a rattling planking.

“I hear nothing,” whispered Mr. Grey from the other end. “The boat is still there, but not a man has dipped an oar.”

“They will soon,” returned Sweetwater as a smothered sound of clanking iron reached his ears from the hollow spaces before him. “Duck your head, sir; I’m going to row in under this portion of the house.”

Mr. Grey would have protested and with very good reason. There was scarcely a space of three feet between them and the boards overhead. But Sweetwater had so immediately suited action to word that he had no choice.

They were now in utter darkness, and Mr. Grey’s thoughts must have been peculiar as he crouched over the stern, hardly knowing what to expect or whether this sudden launch into darkness was for the purpose of flight or pursuit. But enlightenment came soon. The sound of a man’s tread in the building above was every moment becoming more perceptible, and while wondering, possibly, at his position, Mr. Grey naturally turned his head as nearly as he could in the direction of these sounds, and was staring with blank eyes into the darkness, when Sweetwater, leaning toward him, whispered:

“Look up! There’s a trap. In a minute he’ll open it. Mark him, but don’t breathe a word, and I’ll get you out of this all right.”

Mr. Grey attempted some answer, but it was lost in the prolonged creak of slowly-moving hinges somewhere over their heads. Spaces, which had looked dark, suddenly looked darker; hearing was satisfied, but not the eye. A man’s breath panting with exertion testified to a near-by presence; but that man was working without a light in a room with shuttered windows, and Mr. Grey probably felt that he knew very little more than before, when suddenly, most unexpectedly, to him at least, a face started out of that overhead darkness; a face so white, with every feature made so startlingly distinct by the strong light Sweetwater had thrown upon it, that it seemed the only thing in the world to the two men beneath. In another moment it had vanished, or rather the light which had revealed it.

“What’s that? Are you there?” came down from above in hoarse and none too encouraging tones.

There was none to answer; Sweetwater, with a quick pull on the oars, had already shot the boat out of its dangerous harbor.

XX. MOONLIGHT—AND A CLUE

“Are you satisfied? Have you got what you wanted?” asked Sweetwater, when they were well away from the shore and the voice they had heard calling at intervals from the chasm they had left.

“Yes. You’re a good fellow. It could not have been better managed.” Then, after a pause too prolonged and thoughtful to please Sweetwater, who was burning with curiosity if not with some deeper feeling: “What was that light you burned? A match?”

Sweetwater did not answer. He dared not. How speak of the electric torch he as a detective carried in his pocket? That would be to give himself away. He therefore let this question slip by and put in one of his own.

“Are you ready to go back now, sir? Are we all done here?” This with his ear turned and his eye bent forward; for the adventure they had interrupted was not at an end, whether their part in it was or not.

Mr. Grey hesitated, his glances following those of Sweetwater.

“Let us wait,” said he, in a tone which surprised Sweetwater. “If he is meditating an escape, I must speak to him before he reaches the launch. At all hazards,” he added after another moment’s thought.

“All right, sir—How do you propose—”

His words were interrupted by a shrill whistle from the direction of the bank. Promptly, and as if awaiting this signal, the two men in the rowboat before them dipped their oars and pulled for the shore, taking the direction of the manufactory.

Sweetwater said nothing, but held himself in readiness.

Mr. Grey was equally silent, but the lines of his face seemed to deepen in the moonlight as the boat, gliding rapidly through the water, passed them within a dozen boat-lengths and slipped into the opening under the manufactory building.

“Now row!” he cried. “Make for the launch. We’ll intercept them on their return.”

Sweetwater, glowing with anticipation, bent to his work. The boat beneath them gave a bound and in a few minutes they were far out on the waters of the bay.

“They’re coming!” he whispered eagerly, as he saw Mr. Grey looking anxiously back. “How much farther shall I go?”

“Just within hailing distance of the launch,” was Mr. Grey’s reply.

Sweetwater, gaging the distance with a glance, stopped at the proper point and rested on his oars. But his thoughts did not rest. He realized that he was about to witness an interview whose importance he easily recognized. How much of it would he hear? What would be the upshot and what was his full duty in the case? He knew that this man Wellgood was wanted by the New York police, but he was possessed with no authority to arrest him, even if he had the power.

“Something more than I bargained for,” he inwardly commented. “But I wanted excitement, and now I have got it. If only I can keep my head level, I may get something out of this, if not all I could wish.”

Meantime the second boat was very nearly on them. He could mark the three figures and pick out Wellgood’s head from among the rest. It had a resolute air; the face on which, to his evident discomfiture, the moon shone, wore a look which convinced the detective that this was no patent-medicine manufacturer, nor even a caterer’s assistant, but a man of nerve and resources, the same, indeed, whom he had encountered in Mr. Fairbrother’s house, with such disastrous, almost fatal, results to himself.

The discovery, though an unexpected one, did not lessen his sense of the extreme helplessness of his own position. He could witness, but he could not act; follow Mr. Grey’s orders, but indulge in none of his own. The detective must continue to be lost in the valet, though it came hard and woke a sense of shame in his ambitious breast.

Meanwhile Wellgood had seen them and ordered his men to cease rowing.

“Give way, there,” he shouted. “We’re for the launch and in a hurry.”

“There’s some one here who wants to speak to you, Mr. Wellgood,” Sweetwater called out, as respectfully as he could. “Shall I mention your name?” he asked of Mr. Grey.

“No, I will do that myself.” And raising his voice, he accosted the other with these words: “I am the man, Percival Grey, of Darlington Manor, England. I should like to say a word to you before you embark.”

A change, quick as lightning and almost as dangerous, passed over the face Sweetwater was watching with such painful anxiety; but as the other added nothing to his words and seemed to be merely waiting, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered an order to his rowers to proceed.

In another moment the sterns of the two small craft swung together, but in such a way that, by dint of a little skilful manipulation on the part of Wellgood’s men, the latter’s back was toward the moon.

Mr. Grey leaned toward Wellgood, and his face fell into shadow also.

“Bah!” thought the detective, “I should have managed that myself. But if I can not see I shall at least hear.”

But he deceived himself in this. The two men spoke in such low whispers that only their intensity was manifest. Not a word came to Sweetwater’s ears.

“Bah!” he thought again, “this is bad.”

But he had to swallow his disappointment, and more. For presently the two men, so different in culture, station and appearance, came, as it seemed, to an understanding, and Wellgood, taking his hand from his breast, fumbled in one of his pockets and drew out something which he handed to Mr. Grey.

This made Sweetwater start and peer with still greater anxiety at every movement, when to his surprise both bent forward, each over his own knee, doing something so mysterious he could get no clue to its nature till they again stretched forth their hands to each other and he caught the gleam of paper and realized that they were exchanging memoranda or notes.

These must have been important, for each made an immediate endeavor to read his slip by turning it toward the moon’s rays. That both were satisfied was shown by their after movements. Wellgood put his slip into his pocket, and without further word to Mr. Grey motioned his men to row away. They did so with a will, leaving a line of silver in their wake. Mr. Grey, on the contrary, gave no orders. He still held his slip and seemed to be dreaming. But his eye was on the shore, and he did not even turn when sounds from the launch denoted that she was under way.

Sweetwater; looking at this morsel of paper with greedy eyes, dipped his oars and began pulling softly toward that portion of the beach where a small and twinkling light defined the boat-house. He hoped Mr. Grey would speak, hoped that in some way, by some means, he might obtain a clue to his patron’s thoughts. But the English gentleman sat like an image and did not move till a slight but sudden breeze, blowing in-shore, seized the paper in his hand and carried it away, past Sweetwater, who vainly sought to catch it as it went fluttering by, into the water ahead, where it shone for a moment, then softly disappeared.

Sweetwater uttered a cry, so did Mr. Grey.

“Is it anything you wanted?” called out the former, leaning over the bow of the boat and making a dive at the paper with his oar.

“Yes; but if it’s gone, it’s gone,” returned the other with some feeling. “Careless of me, very careless,—but I was thinking of—”

He stopped; he was greatly agitated, but he did not encourage Sweetwater in any further attempts to recover the lost memorandum. Indeed, such an effort would have been fruitless; the paper was gone, and there was nothing left for them but to continue their way. As they did so it would have been hard to tell in which breast chagrin mounted higher. Sweetwater had lost a clue in a thousand, and Mr. Grey—well, no one knew what he had lost. He said nothing and plainly showed by his changed manner that he was in haste to land now and be done with this doubtful adventure.

When they reached the boat-house Mr. Grey left Sweetwater to pay for the boat and started at once for the hotel.

The man in charge had the bow of the boat in hand, preparatory to pulling it up on the boards. As Sweetwater turned toward him he caught sight of the side of the boat, shining brightly in the moonlight. He gave a start and, with a muttered ejaculation, darted forward and picked off a small piece of paper from the dripping keel. It separated in his hand and a part of it escaped him, but the rest he managed to keep by secreting it in his palm, where it still clung, wet and possibly illegible, when he came upon Mr. Grey again in the hotel office.

“Here’s your pay,” said that gentleman, giving him a bill. “I am very glad I met you. You have served me remarkably well.”

There was an anxiety in his face and a hurry in his movements which struck Sweetwater.

“Does this mean that you are through with me?” asked Sweetwater. “That you have no further call for my services?”

“Quite so,” said the gentleman. “I’m going to take the train to-night. I find that I still have time.”

Sweetwater began to look alive.

Uttering hasty thanks, he rushed away to his own room and, turning on the gas, peeled off the morsel of paper which had begun to dry on his hand. If it should prove to be the blank end! If the written part were the one which had floated off! Such disappointments had fallen to his lot! He was not unused to them.

But he was destined to better luck this time. The written end had indeed disappeared, but there was one word left, which he had no sooner read than he gave a low cry and prepared to leave for New York on the same train as Mr. Grey.

The word was—diamond.

XXI. GRIZEL! GRIZEL!

I indulged in some very serious thoughts after Mr. Grey’s departure. A fact was borne in upon me to which I had hitherto closed my prejudiced eyes, but which I could no longer ignore, whatever confusion it brought or however it caused me to change my mind on a subject which had formed one of the strongest bases to the argument by which I had sought to save Mr. Durand. Miss Grey cherished no such distrust of her father as I, in my ignorance of their relations, had imputed to her in the early hours of my ministrations. This you have already seen in my account of their parting. Whatever his dread, fear or remorse, there was no evidence that she felt toward him anything but love and confidence: but love and confidence from her to him were in direct contradiction to the doubts I had believed her to have expressed in the half-written note handed to Mrs. Fairbrother in the alcove. Had I been wrong, then, in attributing this scrawl to her? It began to look so. Though forbidden to allow her to speak on the one tabooed subject, I had wit enough to know that nothing would keep her from it, if the fate of Mrs. Fairbrother occupied any real place in her thoughts.

Yet when the opportunity was given me one morning of settling this fact beyond all doubt, I own that my main feeling was one of dread. I feared to see this article in my creed destroyed, lest I should lose confidence in the whole. Yet conscience bade me face the matter boldly, for had I not boasted to myself that my one desire was the truth?

I allude to the disposition which Miss Grey showed on the morning of the third day to do a little surreptitious writing. You remember that a specimen of her handwriting had been asked for by the inspector, and once had been earnestly desired by myself. Now I seemed likely to have it, if I did not open my eyes too widely to the meaning of her seemingly chance requests. A little pencil dangled at the end of my watch-chain. Would I let her see it, let her hold it in her hand for a minute? it was so like one she used to have. Of course I took it off, of course I let her retain it a little while in her hand. But the pencil was not enough. A few minutes later she asked for a book to look at—I sometimes let her look at pictures. But the book bothered her—she would look at it later; would I give her something to mark the place—that postal over there. I gave her the postal. She put it in the book and I, who understood her thoroughly, wondered what excuse she would now find for sending me into the other room. She found one very soon, and with a heavily-beating heart I left her with that pencil and postal. A soft laugh from her lips drew me back. She was holding up the postal.

“See! I have written a line to him! Oh, you good, good nurse, to let me! You needn’t look so alarmed. It hasn’t hurt me one bit.”

I knew that it had not; knew that such an exertion was likely to be more beneficial than hurtful to her, or I should have found some excuse for deterring her. I endeavored to make my face more natural. As she seemed to want me to take the postal in my hand I drew near and took it.

“The address looks very shaky,” she laughed. “I think you will have to put it in an envelope.”

I looked at it,—I could not help it,—her eye was on me, and I could not even prepare my mind for the shock of seeing it like or totally unlike the writing of the warning. It was totally unlike; so distinctly unlike that it was no longer possible to attribute those lines to her which, according to Mr. Durand’s story, had caused Mrs. Fairbrother to take off her diamond.

“Why, why!” she cried. “You actually look pale. Are you afraid the doctor will scold us? It hasn’t hurt me nearly so much as lying here and knowing what he would give for one word from me.”

“You are right, and I am foolish,” I answered with all the spirit left in me. “I should be glad—I am glad that you have written these words. I will copy the address on an envelope and send it out in the first mail.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, giving me back my pencil with a sly smile. “Now I can sleep. I must have roses in my cheeks when papa comes home.”

And she bade fair to have ruddier roses than myself, for conscience was working havoc in my breast. The theory I had built up with such care, the theory I had persisted in urging upon the inspector in spite of his rebuke, was slowly crumbling to pieces in my mind with the falling of one of its main pillars. With the warning unaccounted for in the manner I have stated, there was a weakness in my argument which nothing could make good. How could I tell the inspector, if ever I should be so happy or so miserable as to meet his eye again? Humiliated to the dust, I could see no worth now in any of the arguments I had advanced. I flew from one extreme to the other, and was imputing perfect probity to Mr. Grey and an honorable if mysterious reason for all his acts, when the door opened and he came in. Instantly my last doubt vanished. I had not expected him to return so soon.

He was glad to be back; that I could see, but there was no other gladness in him. I had looked for some change in his manner and appearance,—that is, if he returned at all,—but the one I saw was not a cheerful one, even after he had approached his daughter’s bedside and found her greatly improved. She noticed this and scrutinized him strangely. He dropped his eyes and turned to leave the room, but was stopped by her loving cry; he came back and leaned over her.

“What is it, father? You are fatigued, worried—”

“No, no, quite well,” he hastily assured her. “But you! are you as well as you seem?”

“Indeed, yes. I am gaining every day. See! see! I shall soon be able to sit up. Yesterday I read a few words.”

He started, with a side glance at me which took in a table near by on which a little book was lying.

“Oh, a book?”

“Yes, and—and Arthur’s letters.”

The father flushed, lifted himself, patted her arm tenderly and hastened into another room.

Miss Grey’s eyes followed him longingly, and I heard her give utterance to a soft sigh. A few hours before, this would have conveyed to my suspicious mind deep and mysterious meanings; but I was seeing everything now in a different light, and I found myself no longer inclined either to exaggerate or to misinterpret these little marks of filial solicitude. Trying to rejoice over the present condition of my mind, I was searching in the hidden depths of my nature for the patience of which I stood in such need, when every thought and feeling were again thrown into confusion by the receipt of another communication from the inspector, in which he stated that something had occurred to bring the authorities round to my way of thinking and that the test with the stiletto was to be made at once.

Could the irony of fate go further! I dropped the letter half read, querying if it were my duty to let the inspector know of the flaw I had discovered in my own theory, before I proceeded with the attempt I had suggested when I believed in its complete soundness. I had not settled the question when I took the letter up again. Re-reading its opening sentence, I was caught by the word “something.” It was a very indefinite one, yet was capable of covering a large field. It must cover a large field, or it could not have produced such a change in the minds of these men, conservative from principle and in this instance from discretion. I would be satisfied with that word something and quit further thinking. I was weary of it. The inspector was now taking the initiative, and I was satisfied to be his simple instrument and no more. Arrived at this conclusion, however, I read the rest of the letter. The test was to go on, but under different conditions. It was no longer to be made at my own discretion and in the up-stairs room; it was to be made at luncheon hour and in Mr. Grey’s private dining-room, where, if by any chance Mr. Grey found himself outraged by the placing of this notorious weapon beside his plate, the blame could be laid on the waiter, who, mistaking his directions, had placed it on Mr. Grey’s table when it was meant for Inspector Dalzell’s, who was lunching in the adjoining room. It was I, however, who was to do the placing. With what precautions and under what circumstances will presently appear.

Fortunately, the hour set was very near. Otherwise I do not know how I could have endured the continued strain of gazing on my patient’s sweet face, looking up at me from her pillow, with a shadow over its beauty which had not been there before her father’s return.

And that father! I could hear him pacing the library floor with a restlessness that struck me as being strangely akin to my own inward anguish of impatience and doubt. What was he dreading? What was it I had seen darkening his face and disturbing his manner, when from time to time he pushed open the communicating door and cast an anxious glance our way, only to withdraw again without uttering a word. Did he realize that a crisis was approaching, that danger menaced him, and from me? No, not the latter, for his glance never strayed to me, but rested solely on his daughter. I was, therefore, not connected with the disturbance in his thoughts. As far as that was concerned I could proceed fearlessly; I had not him to dread, only the event. That I did dread, as any one must who saw Miss Grey’s face during these painful moments and heard that restless tramp in the room beyond.

At last the hour struck,—the hour at which Mr. Grey always descended to lunch. He was punctuality itself, and under ordinary circumstances I could depend upon his leaving the room within five minutes of the stroke of one. But would he be as prompt to-day? Was he in the mood for luncheon? Would he go down stairs at all? Yes, for the tramp, tramp stopped; I heard him approaching his daughter’s door for a last look in and managed to escape just in time to procure what I wanted and reach the room below before he came.

My opportunity was short, but I had time to see two things: first, that the location of his seat had been changed so that his back was to the door leading into the adjoining room; secondly, that this door was ajar. The usual waiter was in the room and showed no surprise at my appearance, I having been careful to have it understood that hereafter Miss Grey’s appetite was to be encouraged by having her soup served from her father’s table by her father’s own hands, and that I should be there to receive it.

“Mr. Grey is coming,” said I, approaching the waiter and handing him the stiletto loosely wrapped in tissue paper. “Will you be kind enough to place this at his plate, just as it is? A man gave it to me for Mr. Grey; said we were to place it there.”

The waiter, suspecting nothing, did as he was bidden, and I had hardly time to catch up the tray laden with dishes, which I saw awaiting me on a side-table, when Mr. Grey came in and was ushered to his seat.

The soup was not there, but I advanced with my tray and stood waiting; not too near, lest the violent beating of my heart should betray me. As I did so the waiter disappeared and the door behind us opened. Though Mr. Grey’s eye had fallen on the package, and I saw him start, I darted one glance at the room thus disclosed, and saw that it held two tables. At one, the inspector and some one I did not know sat eating; at the other a man alone, whose back was to us all, and who seemingly was entirely disconnected with the interests of this tragic moment. All this I saw in an instant,—the next my eyes were fixed on Mr. Grey’s face.

He had reached out his hand to the package and his features showed an emotion I hardly understood.

“What’s this?” he murmured, feeling it with wonder, I should almost say anger. Suddenly he pulled off the wrapper, and my heart stood still in expectancy. If he quailed—and how could he help doing so if guilty—what a doubt would be removed from my own breast, what an impediment from police action! But he did not quail; he simply uttered an exclamation of intense anger, and laid the weapon back on the table without even taking the precaution of covering it up. I think he muttered an oath, but there was no fear in it, not a particle.

My disappointment was so great, my humiliation so unbounded, that, forgetting myself in my dismay, I staggered back and let the tray with all its contents slip from my hands. The crash that followed stopped Mr. Grey in the act of rising. But it did something more. It awoke a cry from the adjoining room which I shall never forget. While we both started and turned to see from whom this grievous sound had sprung, a man came stumbling toward us with his hands before his eyes and this name wild on his lips:

“Grizel! Grizel!”

Mrs. Fairbrother’s name! and the man—

XXII. GUILT

Was he Wellgood? Sears? Who? A lover of the woman certainly; that was borne in on us by the passion of his cry:

“Grizel! Grizel!”

But how here? and why such fury in Mr. Grey’s face and such amazement in that of the inspector?

This question was not to be answered offhand. Mr. Grey, advancing, laid a finger on the man’s shoulder. “Come,” said he, “we will have our conversation in another room.”

The man, who, in dress and appearance looked oddly out of place in those gorgeous rooms, shook off the stupor into which he had fallen and started to follow the Englishman. A waiter crossed their track with the soup for our table. Mr. Grey motioned him aside.

“Take that back,” said he. “I have some business to transact with this gentleman before I eat. I’ll ring when I want you.”

Then they entered where I was. As the door closed I caught sight of the inspector’s face turned earnestly toward me. In his eyes I read my duty, and girded up my heart, as it were, to meet—what? In that moment it was impossible to tell.

The next enlightened me. With a total ignoring of my presence, due probably to his great excitement, Mr. Grey turned on his companion the moment he had closed the door and, seizing him by the collar, cried:

“Fairbrother, you villain, why have you called on your wife like this? Are you murderer as well as thief?”

Fairbrother! this man? Then who was he who was being nursed back to life on the mountains beyond Santa Fe? Sears? Anything seemed possible in that moment.

Meanwhile, dropping his hand from the other’s throat as suddenly as he had seized it, Mr. Grey caught up the stiletto from the table where he had flung it, crying: “Do you recognize this?”

Ah, then I saw guilt!

In a silence worse than any cry, this so-called husband of the murdered woman, the man on whom no suspicion had fallen, the man whom all had thought a thousand miles away at the time of the deed, stared at the weapon thrust under his eyes, while over his face passed all those expressions of fear, abhorrence and detected guilt which, fool that I was, I had expected to see reflected in response to the same test in Mr. Grey’s equable countenance.

The surprise and wonder of it held me chained to the spot. I was in a state of stupefaction, so that I scarcely noted the broken fragments at my feet. But the intruder noticed them. Wrenching his gaze from the stiletto which Mr. Grey continued to hold out, he pointed to the broken cup and saucer, muttering:

“That is what startled me into this betrayal—the noise of breaking china. I can not bear it since—”

He stopped, bit his lip and looked around him with an air of sudden bravado.

“Since you dropped the cups at your wife’s feet in Mr. Ramsdell’s alcove,” finished Mr. Grey with admirable self-possession.

“I see that explanations from myself are not in order,” was the grim retort, launched with the bitterest sarcasm. Then as the full weight of his position crushed in on him, his face assumed an aspect startling to my unaccustomed eyes, and, thrusting his hand into his pocket he drew forth a small box which he placed in Mr. Grey’s hands.

“The Great Mogul,” he declared simply.

It was the first time I had heard this diamond so named.

Without a word that gentleman opened the box, took one look at the contents, assumed a satisfied air, and carefully deposited the recovered gem in his own pocket. As his eyes returned to the man before him, all the passion of the latter burst forth.

“It was not for that I killed her!” cried he. “It was because she defied me and flaunted her disobedience in my very face. I would do it again, yet—”

Here his voice broke and it was in a different tone and with a total change of manner he added: “You stand appalled at my depravity. You have not lived my life.” Then quickly and with a touch of sullenness: “You suspected me because of the stiletto. It was a mistake, using that stiletto. Otherwise, the plan was good. I doubt if you know now how I found my way into the alcove, possibly under your very eyes; certainly, under the eyes of many who knew me.”

“I do not. It is enough that you entered it; that you confess your guilt.”

Here Mr. Grey stretched his hand toward the electric button.

“No, it is not enough.” The tone was fierce, authoritative. “Do not ring the bell, not yet. I have a fancy to tell you how I managed that little affair.”

Glancing about, he caught up from a near-by table a small brass tray. Emptying it of its contents, he turned on us with drawn-down features and an obsequious air so opposed to his natural manner that it was as if another man stood before us.

“Pardon my black tie,” he muttered, holding out the tray toward Mr. Grey.

Wellgood!

The room turned with me. It was he, then, the great financier, the multimillionaire, the husband of the magnificent Grizel, who had entered Mr. Ramsdell’s house as a waiter!

Mr. Grey did not show surprise, but he made a gesture, when instantly the tray was thrown aside and the man resumed his ordinary aspect.

“I see you understand me,” he cried. “I who have played host at many a ball, passed myself off that night as one of the waiters. I came and went and no one noticed me. It is such a natural sight to see a waiter passing ices that my going in and out of the alcove did not attract the least attention. I never look at waiters when I attend balls. I never look higher than their trays. No one looked at me higher than my tray. I held the stiletto under the tray and when I struck her she threw up her hands and they hit the tray and the cups fell. I have never been able to bear the sound of breaking china since. I loved her—”

A gasp and he recovered himself.

“That is neither here nor there,” he muttered. “You summoned me under threat to present myself at your door to-day. I have done so. I meant to restore you your diamond, simply. It has become worthless to me. But fate exacted more. Surprise forced my secret from me. That young lady with her damnable awkwardness has put my head in a noose. But do not think to hold it there. I did not risk this interview without precautions, I assure you, and when I leave this hotel it will be as a free man.”

With one of his rapid changes, wonderful and inexplicable to me at the moment, he turned toward me with a bow, saying courteously enough:

“We will excuse the young lady.”

Next moment the barrel of a pistol gleamed in his hand.

The moment was critical. Mr. Grey stood directly in the line of fire, and the audacious man who thus held him at his mercy was scarcely a foot from the door leading into the hall. Marking the desperation of his look and the steadiness of his finger on the trigger, I expected to see Mr. Grey recoil and the man escape. But Mr. Grey held his own, though he made no move, and did not venture to speak. Nerved by his courage, I summoned up all my own. This man must not escape, nor must Mr. Grey suffer. The pistol directed against him must be diverted to myself. Such amends were due one whose good name I had so deeply if secretly insulted. I had but to scream, to call out for the inspector, but a remembrance of the necessity we were now under of preserving our secret, of keeping from Mr. Grey the fact that he had been under surveillance, was even at that moment surrounded by the police, deterred me, and I threw myself toward the bell instead, crying out that I would raise the house if he moved, and laid my finger on the button.

The pistol swerved my way. The face above it smiled. I watched that smile. Before it broadened to its full extent, I pressed the button.

Fairbrother stared, dropped his pistol, and burst forth with these two words:

“Brave girl!”

The tone I can never convey.

Then he made for the door.

As he laid his hand on the knob, he called back:

“I have been in worse straits than this!”

But he never had; when he opened the door, he found himself face to face with the inspector.

XXIII. THE GREAT MOGUL

Later, it was all explained. Mr. Grey, looking like another man, came into the room where I was endeavoring to soothe his startled daughter and devour in secret my own joy. Taking the sweet girl in his arms, he said, with a calm ignoring of my presence, at which I secretly smiled:

“This is the happiest moment of my existence, Helen. I feel as if I had recovered you from the brink of the grave.”

“Me? Why, I have never been so ill as that.”

“I know; but I have felt as if you were doomed ever since I heard, or thought I heard, in this city, and under no ordinary circumstances, the peculiar cry which haunts our house on the eve of any great misfortune. I shall not apologize for my fears; you know that I have good cause for them, but to-day, only to-day, I have heard from the lips of the most arrant knave I have ever known, that this cry sprang from himself with intent to deceive me. He knew my weakness; knew the cry; he was in Darlington Manor when Cecilia died; and, wishing to startle me into dropping something which I held, made use of his ventriloquial powers (he had been a mountebank once, poor wretch!) and with such effect, that I have not been a happy man since, in spite of your daily improvement and continued promise of recovery. But I am happy now, relieved and joyful; and this miserable being,—would you like to hear his story? Are you strong enough for anything so tragic? He is a thief and a murderer, but he has feelings, and his life has been a curious one, and strangely interwoven with ours. Do you care to hear about it? He is the man who stole our diamond.”

My patient uttered a little cry.

“Oh, tell me,” she entreated, excited, but not unhealthfully; while I was in an anguish of curiosity I could with difficulty conceal.

Mr. Grey turned with courtesy toward me and asked if a few family details would bore me. I smiled and assured him to the contrary. At which he settled himself in the chair he liked best and began a tale which I will permit myself to present to you complete and from other points of view than his own.

Some five years before, one of the great diamonds of the world was offered for sale in an Eastern market. Mr. Grey, who stopped at no expense in the gratification of his taste in this direction, immediately sent his agent to Egypt to examine this stone. If the agent discovered it to be all that was claimed for it, and within the reach of a wealthy commoner’s purse, he was to buy it. Upon inspection, it was found to be all that was claimed, with one exception. In the center of one of the facets was a flaw, but, as this was considered to mark the diamond, and rather add to than detract from its value as a traditional stone with many historical associations, it was finally purchased by Mr. Grey and placed among his treasures in his manor-house in Kent. Never a suspicious man, he took delight in exhibiting this acquisition to such of his friends and acquaintances as were likely to feel any interest in it, and it was not an uncommon thing for him to allow it to pass from hand to hand while he pottered over his other treasures and displayed this and that to such as had no eyes for the diamond.

It was after one such occasion that he found, on taking the stone in his hand to replace it in the safe he had had built for it in one of his cabinets, that it did not strike his eye with its usual force and brilliancy, and, on examining it closely, he discovered the absence of the telltale flaw. Struck with dismay, he submitted it to a still more rigid inspection, when he found that what he held was not even a diamond, but a worthless bit of glass, which had been substituted by some cunning knave for his invaluable gem.

For the moment his humiliation almost equaled his sense of loss; he had been so often warned of the danger he ran in letting so priceless an object pass around under all eyes but his own. His wife and friends had prophesied some such loss as this, not once, but many times, and he had always laughed at their fears, saying that he knew his friends, and there was not a scamp amongst them. But now he saw it proved that even the intuition of a man well-versed in human nature is not always infallible, and, ashamed of his past laxness and more ashamed yet of the doubts which this experience called up in regard to all his friends, he shut up the false stone with his usual care and buried his loss in his own bosom, till he could sift his impressions and recall with some degree of probability the circumstances under which this exchange could have been made.

It had not been made that evening. Of this he was positive. The only persons present on this occasion were friends of such standing and repute that suspicion in their regard was simply monstrous. When and to whom, then, had he shown the diamond last? Alas, it had been a long month since he had shown the jewel. Cecilia, his youngest daughter, had died in the interim; therefore his mind had not been on jewels. A month! time for his precious diamond to have been carried back to the East! Time for it to have been recut! Surely it was lost to him for ever, unless he could immediately locate the person who had robbed him of it.

But this promised difficulties. He could not remember just what persons he had entertained on that especial day in his little hall of cabinets, and, when he did succeed in getting a list of them from his butler, he was by no means sure that it included the full number of his guests. His own memory was execrable, and, in short, he had but few facts to offer to the discreet agent sent up from Scotland Yard one morning to hear his complaint and act secretly in his interests. He could give him carte blanche to carry on his inquiries in the diamond market, but little else. And while this seemed to satisfy the agent, it did not lead to any gratifying result to himself, and he had thoroughly made up his mind to swallow his loss and say nothing about it, when one day a young cousin of his, living in great style in an adjoining county, informed him that in some mysterious way he had lost from his collection of arms a unique and highly-prized stiletto of Italian workmanship.

Startled by this coincidence, Mr. Grey ventured upon a question or two, which led to his cousin’s confiding to him the fact that this article had disappeared after a large supper given by him to a number of friends and gentlemen from London. This piece of knowledge, still further coinciding with his own experience, caused Mr. Grey to ask for a list of his guests, in the hope of finding among them one who had been in his own house.

His cousin, quite unsuspicious of the motives underlying this request, hastened to write out this list, and together they pored over the names, crossing out such as were absolutely above suspicion. When they had reached the end of the list, but two names remained uncrossed. One was that of a rattle-pated youth who had come in the wake of a highly reputed connection of theirs, and the other that of an American tourist who gave all the evidences of great wealth and had presented letters to leading men in London which had insured him attentions not usually accorded to foreigners. This man’s name was Fairbrother, and, the moment Mr. Grey heard it, he recalled the fact that an American with a peculiar name, but with a reputation for wealth, had been among his guests on the suspected evening.

Hiding the effect produced upon him by this discovery, he placed his finger on this name and begged his cousin to look up its owner’s antecedents and present reputation in America; but, not content with this, he sent his own agent over to New York—whither, as he soon learned, this gentleman had returned. The result was an apparent vindication of the suspected American. He was found to be a well-known citizen of the great metropolis, moving in the highest circles and with a reputation for wealth won by an extraordinary business instinct.

To be sure, he had not always enjoyed these distinctions. Like many another self-made man, he had risen from a menial position in a Western mining camp, to be the owner of a mine himself, and so up through the various gradations of a successful life to a position among the foremost business men of New York. In all these changes he had maintained a name for honest, if not generous, dealing. He lived in great style, had married and was known to have but one extravagant fancy. This was for the unique and curious in art,—a taste which, if report spoke true, cost him many thousands each year.

This last was the only clause in the report which pointed in any way toward this man being the possible abstractor of the Great Mogul, as Mr. Grey’s famous diamond was called, and the latter was too just a man and too much of a fancier in this line himself to let a fact of this kind weigh against the favorable nature of the rest. So he recalled his agent, double-locked his cabinets and continued to confine his display of valuables to articles which did not suggest jewels. Thus three years passed, when one day he heard mention made of a wonderful diamond which had been seen in New York. From its description he gathered that it must be the one surreptitiously abstracted from his cabinet, and when, after some careful inquiries, he learned that the name of its possessor was Fairbrother, he awoke to his old suspicions and determined to probe this matter to the bottom. But secretly. He still had too much consideration to attack a man in high position without full proof.

Knowing of no one he could trust with so delicate an inquiry as this had now become, he decided to undertake it himself, and for this purpose embraced the first opportunity to cross the water. He took his daughter with him because he had resolved never to let his one remaining child out of his sight. But she knew nothing of his plans or reason for travel. No one did. Indeed, only his lawyer and the police were aware of the loss of his diamond.

His first surprise on landing was to learn that Mr. Fairbrother, of whose marriage he had heard, had quarreled with his wife and that, in the separation which had occurred, the diamond had fallen to her share and was consequently in her possession at the present moment.

This changed matters, and Mr. Grey’s only thought now was to surprise her with the diamond on her person and by one glance assure himself that it was indeed the Great Mogul. Since Mrs. Fairbrother was reported to be a beautiful woman and a great society belle, he saw no reason why he should not meet her publicly, and that very soon. He therefore accepted invitations and attended theaters and balls, though his daughter had suffered from her voyage and was not able to accompany him. But alas! he soon learned that Mrs. Fairbrother was never seen with her diamond and, one evening after an introduction at the opera, that she never talked about it. So there he was, balked on the very threshold of his enterprise, and, recognizing the fact, was preparing to take his now seriously ailing daughter south, when he received an invitation to a ball of such a select character that he decided to remain for it, in the hope that Mrs. Fairbrother would be tempted to put on all her splendor for so magnificent a function and thus gratify him with a sight of his own diamond. During the days that intervened he saw her several times and very soon decided that, in spite of her reticence in regard to this gem, she was not sufficiently in her husband’s confidence to know the secret of its real ownership. This encouraged him to attempt piquing her into wearing the diamond on this occasion. He talked of precious stones and finally of his own, declaring that he had a connoisseur’s eye for a fine diamond, but had seen none as yet in America to compete with a specimen or two he had in his own cabinets. Her eye flashed at this and, though she said nothing, he felt sure that her presence at Mr. Ramsdell’s house would be enlivened by her great jewel.

So much for Mr. Grey’s attitude in this matter up to the night of the ball. It is interesting enough, but that of Abner Fairbrother is more interesting still and much more serious.

His was indeed the hand which had abstracted the diamond from Mr. Grey’s collection. Under ordinary conditions he was an honest man. He prized his good name and would not willingly risk it, but he had little real conscience, and once his passions were aroused nothing short of the object desired would content him. At once forceful and subtle, he had at his command infinite resources which his wandering and eventful life had heightened almost to the point of genius. He saw this stone, and at once felt an inordinate desire to possess it. He had coveted other men’s treasures before, but not as he coveted this. What had been longing in other cases was mania in this. There was a woman in America whom he loved. She was beautiful and she was splendor-loving. To see her with this glory on her breast would be worth almost any risk which his imagination could picture at the moment. Before the diamond had left his hand he had made up his mind to have it for his own. He knew that it could not be bought, so he set about obtaining it by an act he did not hesitate to acknowledge to himself as criminal. But he did not act without precautions. Having a keen eye and a proper sense or size and color, he carried away from his first view of it a true image of the stone, and when he was next admitted to Mr. Grey’s cabinet room he had provided the means for deceiving the owner whose character he had sounded.

He might have failed in his daring attempt if he had not been favored by a circumstance no one could have foreseen. A daughter of the house, Cecilia by name, lay critically ill at the time, and Mr. Grey’s attention was more or less distracted. Still the probabilities are that he would have noticed something amiss with the stone when he came to restore it to its place, if, just as he took it in his hand, there had not risen in the air outside a weird and wailing cry which at once seized upon the imagination of the dozen gentlemen present, and so nearly prostrated their host that he thrust the box he held unopened into the safe and fell upon his knees, a totally unnerved man, crying:

“The banshee! the banshee! My daughter will die!”

Another hand than his locked the safe and dropped the key into the distracted father’s pocket.

Thus a superhuman daring conjoined with a special intervention of fate had made the enterprise a successful one; and Fairbrother, believing more than ever in his star, carried this invaluable jewel back with him to New York. The stiletto—well, the taking of that was a folly, for which he had never ceased to blush. He had not stolen it; he would not steal so inconsiderable an object. He had merely put it in his pocket when he saw it forgotten, passed over, given to him, as it were. That the risk, contrary to that involved in the taking of the diamond, was far in excess of the gratification obtained, he realized almost immediately, but, having made the break, and acquired the curio, he spared himself all further thought or the consequences, and presently resumed his old life in New York, none the worse, to all appearances, for these escapades from virtue and his usual course of fair and open dealing.

But he was soon the worse from jealousy of the wife which his new possession had possibly won for him. She had answered all his expectations as mistress of his home and the exponent of his wealth; and for a year, nay, for two, he had been perfectly happy. Indeed, he had been more than that; he had been triumphant, especially on that memorable evening when, after a cautious delay of months, he had dared to pin that unapproachable sparkler to her breast and present her thus bedecked to the smart set—her whom his talents, and especially his far-reaching business talents, had made his own.

Recalling the old days of barter and sale across the pine counter in Colorado, he felt that his star rode high, and for a time was satisfied with his wife’s magnificence and the prestige she gave his establishment. But pride is not all, even to a man of his daring ambition. Gradually he began to realize, first, that she was indifferent to him, next, that she despised him, and, lastly, that she hated him. She had dozens at her feet, any of whom was more agreeable to her than her own husband; and, though he could not put his finger on any definite fault, he soon wearied of a beauty that only glowed for others, and made up his mind to part with her rather than let his heart be eaten out by unappeasable longing for what his own good sense told him would never be his.

Yet, being naturally generous, he was satisfied with a separation, and, finding it impossible to think of her as other than extravagantly fed, waited on and clothed, he allowed her a good share of his fortune with the one proviso, that she should not disgrace him. But the diamond she stole, or rather carried off in her naturally high-handed manner with the rest of her jewels. He had never given it to her. She knew the value he set on it, but not how he came by it, and would have worn it quite freely if he had not very soon given her to understand that the pleasure of doing so ceased when she left his house. As she could not be seen with it without occasioning public remark, she was forced, though much against her will, to heed his wishes, and enjoy its brilliancy in private. But once, when he was out of town, she dared to appear with this fortune on her breast, and again while on a visit West,—and her husband heard of it.

Mr. Fairbrother had had the jewel set to suit him, not in Florence, as Sears had said, but by a skilful workman he had picked up in great poverty in a remote corner of Williamsburg. Always in dread of some complication, he had provided himself with a second facsimile in paste, this time of an astonishing brightness, and this facsimile he had had set precisely like the true stone. Then he gave the workman a thousand dollars and sent him back to Switzerland. This imitation in paste he showed nobody, but he kept it always in his pocket; why, he hardly knew. Meantime, he had one confidant, not of his crime, but of his sentiments toward his wife, and the determination he had secretly made to proceed to extremities if she continued to disobey him.

This was a man of his own age or older, who had known him in his early days, and had followed all his fortunes. He had been the master of Fairbrother then, but he was his servant now, and as devoted to his interests as if they were his own,—which, in a way, they were. For eighteen years he had stood at the latter’s right hand, satisfied to look no further, but, for the last three, his glances had strayed a foot or two beyond his master, and taken in his master’s wife.

The feelings which this man had for Mrs. Fairbrother were peculiar. She was a mere adjunct to her great lord, but she was a very gorgeous one, and, while he could not imagine himself doing anything to thwart him whose bread he ate, and to whose rise he had himself contributed, yet if he could remain true to him without injuring he; he would account himself happy. The day came when he had to decide between them, and, against all chances, against his own preconceived notion of what he would do under these circumstances, he chose to consider her.

This day came when, in the midst of growing complacency and an intense interest in some new scheme which demanded all his powers, Abner Fairbrother learned from the papers that Mr. Grey, of English Parliamentary fame, had arrived in New York on an indefinite visit. As no cause was assigned for the visit beyond a natural desire on the part of this eminent statesman to see this great country, Mr. Fairbrother’s fears reached a sudden climax, and he saw himself ruined and for ever disgraced if the diamond now so unhappily out of his hands should fall under the eyes of its owner, whose seeming quiet under its loss had not for a moment deceived him. Waiting only long enough to make sure that the distinguished foreigner was likely to accept social attentions, and so in all probability would be brought in contact with Mrs. Fairbrother, he sent her by his devoted servant a peremptory message, in which he demanded back his diamond; and, upon her refusing to heed this, followed it up by another, in which he expressly stated that if she took it out of the safe deposit in which he had been told she was wise enough to keep it, or wore it so much as once during the next three months, she would pay for her presumption with her life.

This was no idle threat, though she chose to regard it as such, laughing in the old servant’s face and declaring that she would run the risk if the notion seized her. But the notion did not seem to seize her at once, and her husband was beginning to take heart, when he heard of the great ball about to be given by the Ramsdells and realized that if she were going to be tempted to wear the diamond at all, it would be at this brilliant function given in honor of the one man he had most cause to fear in the whole world.

Sears, seeing the emotion he was under, watched him closely. They had both been on the point of starting for New Mexico to visit a mine in which Mr. Fairbrother was interested, and he waited with inconceivable anxiety to see if his master would change his plans. It was while he was in this condition of mind that he was seen to shake his fist at Mrs. Fairbrother’s passing figure; a menace naturally interpreted as directed against her, but which, if we know the man, was rather the expression of his anger against the husband who could rebuke and threaten so beautiful a creature. Meanwhile, Mr. Fairbrother’s preparations went on and, three weeks before the ball, they started. Mr. Fairbrother had business in Chicago and business in Denver. It was two weeks and more before he reached La Junta. Sears counted the days. At La Junta they had a long conversation; or rather Mr. Fairbrother talked and Sears listened. The sum of what he said was this: He had made up his mind to have back his diamond. He was going to New York to get it. He was going alone, and as he wished no one to know that he had gone or that his plans had been in any way interrupted, the other was to continue on to El Moro, and, passing himself off as Fairbrother, hire a room at the hotel and shut himself up in it for ten days on any plea his ingenuity might suggest. If at the end of that time Fairbrother should rejoin him, well and good. They would go on together to Santa Fe. But if for any reason the former should delay his return, then Sears was to exercise his own judgment as to the length of time he should retain his borrowed personality; also as to the advisability of pushing on to the mine and entering on the work there, as had been planned between them.

Sears knew what all this meant. He understood what was in his master’s mind, as well as if he had been taken into his full confidence, and openly accepted his part of the business with seeming alacrity, even to the point of supplying Fairbrother with suitable references as to the ability of one James Wellgood to fill a waiter’s place at fashionable functions. It was not the first he had given him. Seventeen years before he had written the same, minus the last phrase. That was when he was the master and Fairbrother the man. But he did not mean to play the part laid out for him, for all his apparent acquiescence. He began by following the other’s instructions. He exchanged clothes with him and other necessaries, and took the train for La Junta at or near the time that Fairbrother started east. But once at El Moro—once registered there as Abner Fairbrother from New York—he took a different course from the one laid out for him,—a course which finally brought him into his master’s wake and landed him at the same hour in New York.

This is what he did. Instead of shutting himself up in his room he expressed an immediate desire to visit some neighboring mines, and, procuring a good horse, started off at the first available moment. He rode north, lost himself in the mountains, and wandered till he found a guide intelligent enough to lend himself to his plans. To this guide he confided his horse for the few days he intended to be gone, paying him well and promising him additional money if, during his absence, he succeeded in circulating the report that he, Abner Fairbrother, had gone deep into the mountains, bound for such and such a camp.

Having thus provided an alibi, not only for himself, but for his master, too, in case he should need it, he took the direct road to the nearest railway station, and started on his long ride east. He did not expect to overtake the man he had been personating, but fortune was kinder than is usual in such cases, and, owing to a delay caused by some accident to a freight train, he arrived in Chicago within a couple of hours of Mr. Fairbrother, and started out of that city on the same train. But not on the same car. Sears had caught a glimpse of Fairbrother on the platform, and was careful to keep out of his sight. This was easy enough. He bought a compartment in the sleeper and stayed in it till they arrived at the Grand Central Station. Then he hastened out and, fortune favoring him with another glimpse of the man in whose movements he was so interested, followed him into the streets.

Fairbrother had shaved off his beard before leaving El Moro. Sears had shaved his off on the train. Both were changed, the former the more, owing to a peculiarity of his mouth which up till now he had always thought best to cover. Sears, therefore, walked behind him without fear, and was almost at his heels when this owner of one of New York’s most notable mansions, entered, with a spruce air, the doors of a prominent caterer.

Understanding the plot now, and having everything to fear for his mistress, he walked the streets for some hours in a state of great indecision. Then he went up to her apartment. But he had no sooner come within sight of it than a sense of disloyalty struck him and he slunk away, only to come sidling back when it was too late and she had started for the ball.

Trembling with apprehension, but still strangely divided in his impulses, wishing to serve master and mistress both, without disloyalty to the one or injury to the other, he hesitated and argued with himself, till his fears for the latter drove him to Mr. Ramsdell’s house.

The night was a stormy one. The heaviest snow of the season was falling with a high gale blowing down the Sound. As he approached the house, which, as we know, is one of the modern ones in the Riverside district, he felt his heart fail him. But as he came nearer and got the full effect of glancing lights, seductive music, and the cheery bustle of crowding carriages, he saw in his mind’s eye such a picture of his beautiful mistress, threatened, unknown to herself, in a quarter she little realized, that he lost all sense of what had hitherto deterred him. Making then and there his great choice, he looked about for the entrance, with the full intention of seeing and warning her.

But this, he presently perceived, was totally impracticable. He could neither go to her nor expect her to come to him; meanwhile, time was passing, and if his master was there—The thought made his head dizzy, and, situated as he was, among the carriages, he might have been run over in his confusion if his eyes had not suddenly fallen on a lighted window, the shade of which had been inadvertently left up.

Within this window, which was only a few feet above his head, stood the glowing image of a woman clad in pink and sparkling with jewels. Her face was turned from him, but he recognized her splendor as that of the one woman who could never be too gorgeous for his taste; and, alive to this unexpected opportunity, he made for this window with the intention of shouting up to her and so attracting her attention.

But this proved futile, and, driven at last to the end of his resources, he tore out a slip of paper from his note-book and, in the dark and with the blinding snow in his eyes, wrote the few broken sentences which he thought would best warn her, without compromising his master. The means he took to reach her with this note I have already related. As soon as he saw it in her hands he fled the place and took the first train west. He was in a pitiable condition, when, three days later, he reached the small station from which he had originally set out. The haste, the exposure, the horror of the crime he had failed to avert, had undermined his hitherto excellent constitution, and the symptoms of a serious illness were beginning to make themselves manifest. But he, like his indomitable master, possessed a great fund of energy and willpower. He saw that if he was to save Abner Fairbrother (and now that Mrs. Fairbrother was dead, his old master was all the world to him) he must make Fairbrother’s alibi good by carrying on the deception as planned by the latter, and getting as soon as possible to his camp in the New Mexico mountains. He knew that he would have strength to do this and he went about it without sparing himself.

Making his way into the mountains, he found the guide and his horse at the place agreed upon and, paying the guide enough for his services to insure a quiet tongue, rode back toward El Moro where he was met and sent on to Santa Fe as already related.

Such is the real explanation of the well-nigh unintelligible scrawl found in Mrs. Fairbrother’s hand after her death. As to the one which left Miss Grey’s bedside for this same house, it was, alike in the writing and sending, the loving freak of a very sick but tender-hearted girl. She had noted the look with which Mr. Grey had left her, and, in her delirious state, thought that a line in her own hand would convince him of her good condition and make it possible for him to enjoy the evening. She was, however, too much afraid of her nurse to write it openly, and though we never found that scrawl, it was doubtless not very different in appearance from the one with which I had confounded it. The man to whom it was intrusted stopped for too many warming drinks on his way for it ever to reach Mr. Ramsdell’s house. He did not even return home that night, and when he did put in an appearance the next morning, he was dismissed.

This takes me back to the ball and Mrs. Fairbrother. She had never had much fear of her husband till she received his old servant’s note in the peculiar manner already mentioned. This, coming through the night and the wet and with all the marks of hurry upon it, did impress her greatly and led her to take the first means which offered of ridding herself of her dangerous ornament. The story of this we know.

Meanwhile, a burning heart and a scheming brain were keeping up their deadly work a few paces off under the impassive aspect and active movements of the caterer’s newly-hired waiter. Abner Fairbrother, whose real character no one had ever been able to sound, unless it was the man who had known him in his days of struggle, was one of those dangerous men who can conceal under a still brow and a noiseless manner the most violent passions and the most desperate resolves. He was angry with his wife, who was deliberately jeopardizing his good name, and he had come there to kill her if he found her flaunting the diamond in Mr. Grey’s eyes; and though no one could have detected any change in his look and manner as he passed through the room where these two were standing, the doom of that fair woman was struck when he saw the eager scrutiny and indescribable air of recognition with which this long-defrauded gentleman eyed his own diamond.

He had meant to attack her openly, seize the diamond, fling it at Mr. Grey’s feet, and then kill himself. That had been his plan. But when he found, after a round or two among the guests, that nobody looked at him, and nobody recognized the well-known millionaire in the automaton-like figure with the formally-arranged whiskers and sleekly-combed hair, colder purposes intervened, and he asked himself if it would not be possible to come upon her alone, strike his blow, possess himself of the diamond, and make for parts unknown before his identity could be discovered. He loved life even without the charm cast over it by this woman. Its struggles and its hard-bought luxuries fascinated him. If Mr. Grey suspected him, why, Mr. Grey was English, and he a resourceful American. If it came to an issue, the subtle American would win if Mr. Grey were not able to point to the flaw which marked this diamond as his own. And this, Fairbrother had provided against, and would succeed in if he could hold his passions in check and be ready with all his wit when matters reached a climax.

Such were the thoughts and such the plans of the quiet, attentive man who, with his tray laden with coffee and ices, came and went an unnoticed unit among twenty other units similarly quiet and similarly attentive. He waited on lady after lady, and when, on the reissuing of Mr. Durand from the alcove, he passed in there with his tray and his two cups of coffee, nobody heeded and nobody remembered.

It was all over in a minute, and he came out, still unnoted, and went to the supper-room for more cups of coffee. But that minute had set its seal on his heart for ever. She was sitting there alone with her side to the entrance, so that he had to pass around in order to face her. Her elegance and a certain air she had of remoteness from the scene of which she was the glowing center when she smiled, awed him and made his hand loosen a little on the slender stiletto he held close against the bottom of the tray. But such resolution does not easily yield, and his fingers soon tightened again, this time with a deadly grip.

He had expected to meet the flash of the diamond as he bent over her, and dreaded doing so for fear it would attract his eye from her face and so cost him the sight of that startled recognition which would give the desired point to his revenge. But the tray, as he held it, shielded her breast from view, and when he lowered it to strike his blow, he thought of nothing but aiming so truly as to need no second blow. He had had his experience in those old years in a mining camp, and he did not fear failure in this. What he did fear was her utterance of some cry,—possibly his name. But she was stunned with horror, and did not shriek,—horror of him whose eyes she met with her glassy and staring ones as he slowly drew forth the weapon.

Why he drew it forth instead of leaving it in her breast he could not say. Possibly because it gave him his moment of gloating revenge. When in another instant, her hands flew up, and the tray tipped, and the china fell, the revulsion came, and his eyes opened to two facts: the instrument of death was still in his grasp, and the diamond, on whose possession he counted, was gone from his wife’s breast.

It was a horrible moment. Voices could be heard approaching the alcove,—laughing voices that in an instant would take on the note of horror. And the music,—ah! how low it had sunk, as if to give place to the dying murmur he now heard issuing from her lips. But he was a man of iron. Thrusting the stiletto into the first place that offered, he drew the curtains over the staring windows, then slid out with his tray, calm, speckless and attentive as ever, dead to thought, dead to feeling, but aware, quite aware in the secret depths of his being that something besides his wife had been killed that night, and that sleep and peace of mind and all pleasure in the past were gone for ever.

It was not he I saw enter the alcove and come out with news of the crime. He left this role to one whose antecedents could better bear investigation. His part was to play, with just the proper display of horror and curiosity, the ordinary menial brought face to face with a crime in high life. He could do this. He could even sustain his share in the gossip, and for this purpose kept near the other waiters. The absence of the diamond was all that troubled him. That brought him at times to the point of vertigo. Had Mr. Grey recognized and claimed it? If so, he, Abner Fairbrother, must remain James Wellgood, the waiter, indefinitely. This would require more belief in his star than ever he had had yet. But as the moments passed, and no contradiction was given to the universally-received impression that the same hand which had struck the blow had taken the diamond, even this cause of anxiety left his breast and he faced people with more and more courage till the moment when he suddenly heard that the diamond had been found in the possession of a man perfectly strange to him, and saw the inspector pass it over into the hands of Mr. Grey.

Instantly he realized that the crisis of his fate was on him. If Mr. Grey were given time to identify this stone, he, Abner Fairbrother, was lost and the diamond as well. Could he prevent this? There was but one way, and that way he took. Making use of his ventriloquial powers—he had spent a year on the public stage in those early days, playing just such tricks as these—he raised the one cry which he knew would startle Mr. Grey more than any other in the world, and when the diamond fell from his hand, as he knew it would, he rushed forward and, in the act of picking it up, made that exchange which not only baffled the suspicions of the statesman, but restored to him the diamond, for whose possession he was now ready to barter half his remaining days.

Meanwhile Mr. Grey had had his own anxieties. During this whole long evening, he had been sustained by the conviction that the diamond of which he had caught but one passing glimpse was the Great Mogul of his once famous collection. So sure was he of this, that at one moment he found himself tempted to enter the alcove, demand a closer sight of the diamond and settle the question then and there. He even went so far as to take in his hands the two cups of coffee which should serve as his excuse for this intrusion, but his naturally chivalrous instincts again intervened, and he set the cups down again—this I did not see—and turned his steps toward the library with the intention of writing her a note instead. But though he found paper and pen to hand, he could find no words for so daring a request, and he came back into the hall, only to hear that the woman he had contemplated addressing had just been murdered and her great jewel stolen.

The shock was too much, and as there was no leaving the house then, he retreated again to the library where he devoured his anxieties in silence till hope revived again at sight of the diamond in the inspector’s hand, only to vanish under the machinations of one he did not even recognize when he took the false jewel from his hand.

The American had outwitted the Englishman and the triumph of evil was complete.

Or so it seemed. But if the Englishman is slow, he is sure. Thrown off the track for the time being, Mr. Grey had only to see a picture of the stiletto in the papers, to feel again that, despite all appearances, Fairbrother was really not only at the bottom of the thefts from which his cousin and himself had suffered, but of this frightful murder as well. He made no open move—he was a stranger in a strange land and much disturbed, besides, by his fears for his daughter—but he started a secret inquiry through his old valet, whom he ran across in the street, and whose peculiar adaptability for this kind of work he well knew.

The aim of these inquiries was to determine if the person, whom two physicians and three assistants were endeavoring to nurse back to health on the top of a wild plateau in a remote district of New Mexico, was the man he had once entertained at his own board in England, and the adventures thus incurred would make a story in itself. But the result seemed to justify them. Word came after innumerable delays, very trying to Mr. Grey, that he was not the same, though he bore the name of Fairbrother, and was considered by every one around there to be Fairbrother. Mr. Grey, ignorant of the relations between the millionaire master and his man which sometimes led to the latter’s personifying the former, was confident of his own mistake and bitterly ashamed of his own suspicions.

But a second message set him right. A deception was being practised down in New Mexico, and this was how his spy had found it out. Certain letters which went into the sick tent were sent away again, and always to one address. He had learned the address. It was that of James Wellgood, C—, Maine. If Mr. Grey would look up this Wellgood he would doubtless learn something of the man he was so interested in.

This gave Mr. Grey personally something to do, for he would trust no second party with a message involving the honor of a possibly innocent man. As the place was accessible by railroad and his duty clear, he took the journey involved and succeeded in getting a glimpse in the manner we know of the man James Wellgood. This time he recognized Fairbrother and, satisfied from the circumstances of the moment that he would be making no mistake in accusing him of having taken the Great Mogul, he intercepted him in his flight, as you have already read, and demanded the immediate return of his great diamond.

And Fairbrother? We shall have to go back a little to bring his history up to this critical instant.

When he realized the trend of public opinion; when he saw a perfectly innocent man committed to the Tombs for his crime, he was first astonished and then amused at what he continued to regard as the triumph of his star. But he did not start for El Moro, wise as he felt it would be to do so. Something of the fascination usual with criminals kept him near the scene of his crime,—that, and an anxiety to see how Sears would conduct himself in the Southwest. That Sears had followed him to New York, knew his crime, and was the strongest witness against him, was as far from his thoughts as that he owed him the warning which had all but balked him of his revenge. When therefore he read in the papers that “Abner Fairbrother” had been found sick in his camp at Santa Fe, he felt that nothing now stood in the way of his entering on the plans he had framed for ultimate escape. On his departure from El Moro he had taken the precaution of giving Sears the name of a certain small town on the coast of Maine where his mail was to be sent in case of a great emergency. He had chosen this town for two reasons. First, because he knew all about it, having had a young man from there in his employ; secondly, because of its neighborhood to the inlet where an old launch of his had been docked for the winter. Always astute, always precautionary, he had given orders to have this launch floated and provisioned, so that now he had only to send word to the captain, to have at his command the best possible means of escape.

Meanwhile, he must make good his position in C—. He did it in the way we know. Satisfied that the only danger he need fear was the discovery of the fraud practised in New Mexico, he had confidence enough in Sears, even in his present disabled state, to take his time and make himself solid with the people of C—while waiting for the ice to disappear from the harbor. This accomplished and cruising made possible, he took a flying trip to New York to secure such papers and valuables as he wished to carry out of the country with him. They were in safe deposit, but that safe deposit was in his strong room in the center of his house in Eighty-sixth Street (a room which you will remember in connection with Sweetwater’s adventure). To enter his own door with his own latch-key, in the security and darkness of a stormy night, seemed to this self-confident man a matter of no great risk. Nor did he find it so. He reached his strong room, procured his securities and was leaving the house, without having suffered an alarm, when some instinct of self-preservation suggested to him the advisability of arming himself with a pistol. His own was in Maine, but he remembered where Sears kept his; he had seen it often enough in that old trunk he had brought with him from the Sierras. He accordingly went up stairs to the steward’s room, found the pistol and became from that instant invincible. But in restoring the articles he had pulled out he came across a photograph of his wife and lost himself over it and went mad, as we have heard the detective tell. That later, he should succeed in trapping this detective and should leave the house without a qualm as to his fate shows what sort of man he was in moments of extreme danger. I doubt, from what I have heard of him since, if he ever gave two thoughts to the man after he had sprung the double lock on him; which, considering his extreme ignorance of who his victim was or what relation he bore to his own fate, was certainly remarkable.

Back again in C—, he made his final preparations for departure. He had already communicated with the captain of the launch, who may or may not have known his passenger’s real name. He says that he supposed him to be some agent of Mr. Fairbrother’s; that among the first orders he received from that gentleman was one to the effect that he was to follow the instructions of one Wellgood as if they came from himself; that he had done so, and not till he had Mr. Fairbrother on board had he known whom he was expected to carry into other waters. However, there are many who do not believe the captain. Fairbrother had a genius for rousing devotion in the men who worked for him, and probably this man was another Sears.

To leave speculation, all was in train, then, and freedom but a quarter of a mile away, when the boat he was in was stopped by another and he heard Mr. Grey’s voice demanding the jewel.

The shock was severe and he had need of all the nerve which had hitherto made his career so prosperous, to sustain the encounter with the calmness which alone could carry off the situation. Declaring that the diamond was in New York, he promised to restore it if the other would make the sacrifice worth while by continuing to preserve his hitherto admirable silence concerning him: Mr. Grey responded by granting him just twenty-four hours; and when Fairbrother said the time was not long enough and allowed his hand to steal ominously to his breast, he repeated still more decisively, “Twenty-four hours.”

The ex-miner honored bravery. Withdrawing his hand from his breast, he brought out a note-book instead of a pistol and, in a tone fully as determined, replied: “The diamond is in a place inaccessible to any one but myself. If you will put your name to a promise not to betray me for the thirty-six hours I ask, I will sign one to restore you the diamond before one-thirty o’clock on Friday.”

“I will,” said Mr. Grey.

So the promises were written and duly exchanged. Mr. Grey returned to New York and Fairbrother boarded his launch.

The diamond really was in New York, and to him it seemed more politic to use it as a means of securing Mr. Grey’s permanent silence than to fly the country, leaving a man behind him who knew his secret and could precipitate his doom with a word. He would, therefore, go to New York, play his last great card and, if he lost, be no worse off than he was now. He did not mean to lose.

But he had not calculated on any inherent weakness in himself,—had not calculated on Providence. A dish tumbled and with it fell into chaos the fair structure of his dreams. With the cry of “Grizel! Grizel!” he gave up his secret, his hopes and his life. There was no retrieval possible after that. The star of Abner Fairbrother had set.

Mr. Grey and his daughter learned very soon of my relations to Mr. Durand, but through the precautions of the inspector and my own powers of self-control, no suspicion has ever crossed their minds of the part I once played in the matter of the stiletto.

This was amply proved by the invitation Mr. Durand and I have just received to spend our honeymoon at Darlington Manor.