Part 12

Silence came in the darkened room. When Thornley Colton spoke again his voice was low, solemn, its tone one of reverent wonder. “The death of that girl is one of the higher mysteries, Sydney. Was she murdered because of a terrible mistake, or did a merciful Providence send a thoughtless, foolish boy to grope in the darkness at just the right instant to deflect that pistol, and send the bullet into her back? She died in the happiest moment of her life; joy was in her heart and on her lips. If the pistol had not been turned by the moving velvet, Cartwright would have died. Her whole story would have had to come out then; she would have heard it bandied by unclean lips on the street-corners; to know that her father, the father who did not even recognize her, was a murderer. A merciful Providence? I’ll always wonder, Sydney.”

THE FIFTH PROBLEM

THE THOUSAND FACETS OF FIRE

I.

Outside was the hurry and bustle of the busy avenue; inside was the quietness and calm that characterised the house of Osmuhn & Son, jewellers and dealers in articles of vertu. The Heppelwhite chairs were carefully placed before each velvet square on the crystal cases that extended the length of the shop on both sides. In rows of expert array on the shelves and in the cabinets on the velvet-carpeted floor were rich European and Oriental porcelains: Faïence and cloisonné; rare pieces of Limoges, Satsuma, Arita, and Ninsei; lacquer ware of Kajikawa, Ritsuo, and Korin. The salesmen, soft-footed, soft-voiced, appeared merely indolent to the casual observer, but to one who could look beneath the surface of things, they gave the impression of being alertly on guard against a hidden something.

A limousine stopped before the door. The woman who alighted was beautiful; the girl who followed her was wonderful--the type that makes men putty and women envious. The uniformed attendant opened the door, they stepped inside. If those two women had crossed the threshold of any other shop on the avenue, there would have been a noticeable flurry of excitement instantly. But not a clerk in the shop showed more than courteous readiness. Osmuhn’s customers were all of the same type: the richest, the most cultured, the most exclusive persons in New York. A diamond ceased to be merely a diamond when it had been sold by Osmuhn. It became a gem with the reputation of the seller behind it; a flawless, matchless carbon. So it was with anything else one bought from Osmuhn & Son.

But if the clerks showed no particular interest, the same could not be said of the light-haired, blue-eyed young man who had been talking with two others at the end of a long glass case. A smile of welcome came to his lips as he hurried forward, hand outstretched.

“Mrs. Marle!” he exclaimed. “And Helen!”

His two hands met theirs in more than friendly clasp; the left to the woman, the right to the girl. Only one man in the shop could not see the light in the man’s eyes as he looked at the girl; but that one had recognised love in the man’s voice.

“You knew I’d be here, didn’t you, Mr. Osmuhn?” laughed the woman rippingly.

“The ruby.” It was not a question, just a smiling statement.

“Could mother ever resist a wonderful jewel?” put in the girl.

“It hasn’t been taken out of the private safe since you saw it before, three months ago,” said the younger Osmuhn. “Five-hundred-thousand-dollar rubies aren’t the playthings of the average gem-buyer.”

“Respect my weakness, please,” pouted the woman in mock pleading; then her eyes saw for the first time one of the men young Osmuhn had just left, and they lighted with pleasure.

“I must speak to Mr. Colton,” she said, and she hurried to where he was standing. The girl and the man followed slowly, talking in earnest undertones.

Thornley Colton’s pale face lighted with pleasure as he took her hand, and his thin, expressive lips smiled their glad welcome. Only the eyes behind the great, round lenses of the smoked, tortoise-rimmed library glasses did not change. His slim stick, apparently of ebony, hung lightly from the tapering fingers of his left hand, as did the hat which a moment before had covered the snow-white hair that curled from the pink scalp.

“Now tell me where you’ve been keeping yourself!” the woman demanded severely. “No evasion! We haven’t seen you since that wonderful thing you did for the Jimmy Raeltons. It _was_ wonderful!” she added earnestly.

“Thank you,” Colton said simply. There was no mock modesty; only quiet sincerity in his rich deep voice.

“But you didn’t answer my questions,” she smiled. She turned to the apple-cheeked, black-haired man who had stood silent. “Can you answer them for him, Mr. Thames?”

The black-haired man started nervously as she spoke, for he had been paying attention only to the beautiful girl with Osmuhn. Mrs. Marle repeated the question before he had time to stammer the apology she saw trembling on his lips.

“I am merely Mr. Colton’s secretary.” He said it a trifle stiffly, and she understood that his hypersensitive nature resented her intuitive understanding.

“I don’t like gaiety,” put in Colton quickly. “A quiet chat is my greatest pleasure. Crowds confuse me, and make my eyes nervous.” He laid his hand fondly on the other man’s shoulder, and to her eyes came womanly sympathy. She knew what Thornley Colton meant. He was blind, and the red-cheeked man beside him furnished the only eyes he knew.

“But you’ll come to my reception to-morrow night?” she asked earnestly. “Only for a few minutes, but _do_ come.”

“I had intended to,” he smiled.

“That’s settled,” she nodded. “Now,” she added, with mock pleading in her voice, “who is to be the happy recipient of your favour this time?” One gloved hand made a small gesture toward the trays of jewels under the glass. The blind man, whose years of practice had made him reader of every inflection, understood instantly, but young Osmuhn came up in time to answer.

“Mr. Colton has kindly consented to investigate a small matter for us,” he said nervously.

“The necklace robbery you were telling me about?” asked the girl, eyes shining.

“Here comes father.” Young Osmuhn’s face was red, his tone guilty.

Mrs. Marle repressed a smile with difficulty. She had never heard a whisper of a necklace robbery in the house of Osmuhn & Son. She understood how carefully the secret must have been guarded, and she understood also the lack of caution that was part of youth and love. But she was a wonderfully bright woman, and apparently she had not even heard her daughter’s remark. All her attention was on the stout little man with the shiny bald head and the bright eyes that gleamed from under bushy brows.

“A great pleasure, Mrs. Marle,” said the elder Osmuhn, as he bowed gravely. “You have come to see the Thousand Facets of Fire.”

“To buy it, I think,” she smiled, extending her hand.

“Ah,” murmured the gem-dealer, in a tone of quiet satisfaction. “I will show it to you at once. It is in the vault.” Then a troubled light came to his eyes, as they rested on Thornley Colton and Sydney Thames. Some subtle fifth sense seemed to tell the blind man the cause instantly.

“Sydney and I will wait in your office, if you don’t mind,” he put in quickly.

Osmuhn’s voice showed his relief. Experience had taught him that there was much more appreciation when the customer was alone. “My son will tell you everything,” he said. He looked around to where the other member of the firm had been standing a moment before; then shrugged his shoulders in parental helplessness. Osmuhn, junior, was leading Miss Helen Marle toward the rear of the shop.

Mrs. Marle laughed. “You would have done the same thing at his age,” she accused.

The jeweller shook his head. “I suppose so.” Then, to the blind man: “A minute only, Mr. Colton,” he apologised.

“Make it ten,” smiled Colton. “Your son told me practically everything, and I’d like to have ten minutes or so to think over the facts.”

Osmuhn turned toward the small, glass-enclosed office at the rear of the shop, from which he could see everything that went on. The blind man followed unhesitatingly, superkeen ears noting each footfall of the man who preceded him.

“Only a minute,” repeated the seller of jewels again, when the two men had been made comfortable in the two big chairs by the desk. “Come, Mrs. Marle.” He seemed to take an unnecessary step or two as he said it, and only the blind man heard the click of some secret electric connection releasing the steel door that Osmuhn opened a minute later by a curious pressure of his fingers on the knob, and a peculiar-looking key.

Mrs. Cornelius Marle, probably the richest woman in New York, lover of jewels because they were jewels, and not merely as ornaments, owner of what was reputed to be the finest collection of rare gems, entered the innermost citadel of the house of Osmuhn. The steel door shut softly behind her, and she knew that she was as far removed from the world outside as though she were a thousand feet underground. She knew that the tapestry-covered walls of the twelve-foot room were of eighteen-inch concrete, interlaced with steel rails; that the Winton-carpeted floor and the panelled ceiling were the same. The steel door behind her was the only opening in the walls of man-made stone.

She needed no direction to take a seat at the small Sheraton table against the wall at the far side of the vault. She had been there before; each time when Osmuhn had picked up some rare and costly jewel. The jeweller, with a soft-voiced apology, leaned over her shoulder to press the pearl-centred black button in the brass wall-plate a foot from the woman’s elbow. The table light shed its brilliance on the white velvet table-pad.

“The Thousand Facets of Fire is the most wonderful ruby I have ever seen or handled,” declared Osmuhn enthusiastically, as he stepped behind her to twirl the two combination knobs on the door of the steel safe that was imbedded in the concrete wall. “Mr. Norvel heard of it when he was in Europe last year. He negotiated for months, and sent it to me just ten days before his horrible accident in France.”

“The accident left him a hopeless cripple, did it not?” she asked politely, turning in her chair so that she could see the deft fingers at work with the combination.

“Yes.” Osmuhn’s voice was sad. “He must walk with canes always.” Then a note of pride came to his voice. “But he refuses to give up. He is here every day, and I need him. In the twenty-eight years he has been with me he has learned everything I know about stones, and to-day he is probably the greatest living expert on diamonds.”

The round safe-door swung open, and, with a wholly unconscious flourish, he placed the big jewel-case before her and snapped back the lid.

A thousand blood-red flashes of living fire seemed to leap upward, battling with their myriad sword points against the soft glow of the electric--then the whole room seemed lighted only by the wonderful ruby in its velvet case.

As great music hypnotises, intoxicates to sense-numbing silence, so the refraction of the ruby’s million rays held the woman spellbound. She could not speak, nor move; her eyes were held by the lights that danced and flashed from the thousand facets--now invitingly, now mockingly, but always sure of their victory.

Osmuhn’s eyes, under their bushy brows, gleamed brighter--they understood. At his first sight of the jewel he, too, had known why men had risked their lives and why women had bartered their souls and bodies for the Thousand Facets of Fire.

“Is it not well named?” he asked.

His words seemed to break the spell that bound her. She nodded as one in a dream, and put forth her fingers almost timidly to touch the flashing stone.

“Take it in your hand, feel the weight of it.” He turned away, walked the length of the room. When he came back she was holding the ruby on her palm. The velvet box had been thrust aside, and in her eyes was almost childish wonder that a thing so full of fire could be so cold.

With a quiet nod of satisfaction Osmuhn turned away again--it was no time for words. Mrs. Marle would want to speak in a moment; until then----. He went behind her, and bent down to the safe, his hands idly rearranging the small boxes that held the most valuable jewels in his possession; jewels that were never allowed to go from the specially-constructed safe in the specially-constructed room, unless his hands removed them.

The woman still gazed at the jewel. A wavering streamer of mist seemed to hover over it for an instant--or was it a picture the jewel had conjured in her brain? As she watched, immovable, it spread over her hand, then over the whole table--an impenetrable veil of filmy nothing. She lifted her unoccupied hand to brush her eyes.

A gasping noise came from her throat. The man behind her seemed to sense something wrong in the very sound. He wheeled, the hand that had been on the safe-door clanged it shut.

“It’s gone!” she choked. “_Gone!_”

The mist had vanished as it had come. The hand that never moved; the hand that had held the ruby was empty!

II.

As the steel door closed behind Osmuhn and Mrs. Marle, Thornley Colton leaned back in his chair and thoughtfully puffed a cigarette. But Sydney Thames, the secretary the blind man had picked up twenty-five years before as a bundle of baby-clothes on the bank of the English river that had given him his name, could not remain silent. The story young Osmuhn had been telling them when the Marles had interrupted was not one calculated to keep the ever-doubting Sydney still.

“What do you think of that necklace disappearance Osmuhn asked you to investigate?” he demanded.

“One of the most interesting problems I’ve been called to solve in a long time,” answered Colton. A smile of joy curved the thin lips, for a problem, to the blind man who solved crime-puzzles as his recreation, was the greatest pleasure he knew.

“But the thing is utterly impossible!” protested Sydney. “Such a thing couldn’t have happened in broad daylight and in New York.”

“As I’ve told you once or twice before, Sydney, the fact remains that it did happen. And there must be some explanation.”

Sydney shook his head. “The statement that a man in full possession of his senses could stare blankly at a two-hundred-thousand-dollar diamond necklace while it disappeared into a thin mist before his very eyes is a trifle too strong for me,” he averred stoutly.

“Do you think young Osmuhn is lying?” smiled Colton.

“He seems to be absolutely straight,” hesitated Sydney. “But his story----” The rest was obvious.

The smile on the blind man’s face broadened. “But consider his frankness in telling of it, Sydney. If he’d been lying I imagine he’d have concocted a better story than that. Consider how every detail of the disappearance is firmly impressed in his mind. The robbery, for that’s what it was, occurred after closing hours, when all the clerks and other employees had gone. Only the younger Osmuhn and the diamond-expert for the firm were on the premises. Norvel, the expert, seeing young Osmuhn behind the long case in the shop, wanted to show him the completed diamond necklace that was to be delivered at the Nevin home next day. He laid it before Osmuhn, and together they examined it for possible flaws. Norvel placed his cane on the case while he took a cigarette from his pocket. Finding he had no matches, he limped with the aid of his other cane to his overcoat, which he had thrown over the back of a chair five feet or so away. A gasp from Osmuhn caused him to turn, with the overcoat still on his arm. He saw the other man staring wildly at the place where, a few minutes before, the diamond necklace had been. Osmuhn swears that, while Norvel was walking toward his overcoat, a thick mist, which he describes as not unlike steam, appeared over the necklace, completely hiding it from his eyes. He confesses that the thing was so remarkable that for an instant he could do nothing but stare. Then the mist began to dissolve, and he saw that the necklace had vanished utterly. His gasp caused Norvel to turn. Norvel hadn’t seen the mist, for it had entirely disappeared when he had hobbled back to the case. Together they searched for the missing diamonds without finding a trace. Also, without leaving one another’s sight for an instant, they telephoned to the elder Osmuhn, and sat watching one another for their mutual protection, until he and a private detective came. They submitted to a thorough search, and took part in the all-night hunt for the jewels that covered every part of the store and building. Why, the very impossibility of the story stamps it with truth!”

“But Norvel was there,” reminded Sydney.

“He had no possible chance of touching the necklace. He had turned away, and his back was toward Osmuhn.”

“But the mist?” persisted Sydney. “That is the impossible part of the whole thing. How, in Heaven’s name, could there be a mist such as he describes in a New York jewellery shop? It’s absurd!”

“Not absurd, Sydney,” corrected the problemist mildly. “Merely the solution; the solution of the whole thing.”

The smile went from his face, he leaned forward with a sudden tenseness of face and body; the delicate nostrils quivered like those of a hound scenting a new trail.

“Something’s wrong inside, Sydney!” His sightless eyes were fixed on the closed, soundproof door, his head was bent forward expectantly. Then he straightened back in his chair, and was quietly puffing his cigarette when the door opened, and the elder Osmuhn, white-faced, trembling, staggered out of the vault-room.

“It’s gone!” He choked the words just as the woman had choked them a few minutes before. “The Thousand Facets of Fire has vanished!”

The blind man had risen at the first word, and before the gem-dealer had finished speaking he had brushed past him, the thin, hollow stick that gave its messages to the hypersensitive finger-tips locating the steps unerringly.

The sobbing, hysterical woman at the small table did not even look up as he laid his hand gently on her shoulder, but he felt her body shudder under the touch, as though her overwrought mind had already pictured visions of the police.

“Tell me how it happened, Mrs. Marle.” The words were soft-spoken, kindly.

“There is nothing to tell,” she sobbed. “The ruby just--went.”

“Dissolved into mist?”

She looked up, sudden, wild hope showing behind the tears in her eyes. “Would you believe that?” she asked breathlessly. “It seems so--impossible--I was afraid----.”

“I know that is how it disappeared,” Thornley Colton said quietly. “Mr. Osmuhn will tell you that a diamond necklace vanished in the same way nearly ten days ago.”

The white-faced jeweller brushed his sweat-beaded forehead with a shaking hand. “Yes,” he groaned, “that, and this ruby, will bring the loss to nearly three-quarters of a million. But it couldn’t have happened!” he declared, almost fiercely. “Mrs. Marle was holding it in her hand! I wasn’t two feet away. The walls are solid concrete! There isn’t a crack in them!” Each staccato sentence was jerked out almost passionately. Osmuhn seemed to be trying to convince himself, as well as his hearers, that the thing he knew had happened was utterly impossible.

Colton paid no attention. He spoke to the woman, still quietly, gently, smoothing his questions so that they became merely statements for which he wanted confirmation.

“You knew the ruby was gone, even before your eyes saw the empty hand?”

Osmuhn and Sydney Thames came closer to the little table.

“Yes.” She spoke more calmly. “I raised my other hand to brush my eyes--I thought it was an optical illusion of some kind--then I felt the stone--go.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she faltered, looking from one to the other in bewilderment. “I could see nothing but the thick mist that seemed to cover the whole table. Then--I suddenly felt my outstretched hand relieved of the weight. It--seemed to just fly away!”

“A ruby weighing nearly two hundred carats would make a very good flyer,” observed the blind man smilingly. Then: “But the mist, wasn’t it a trick of the lights?”

She shook her head. “Mist is the only word that describes it. When my eyes first noticed it, it was a ribbon that widened almost instantly to hide the whole table, though the light shone above it perfectly. I know that last unconsciously, for I think the jewel had hypnotised me--I couldn’t take my eyes away, even when the mist hid it from sight.”

“Where is the switch for the table-light? Snap it off, Mr. Osmuhn.”

The jeweller leaned across the table to obey. Colton examined every inch of the table-light with his fingers.

“Absolutely nothing there,” he murmured. Then his fingers felt the two buttons in the brass plate that he had made the jeweller locate for him. He snapped the light on again, then off, and back.

“It wasn’t a trick of the light,” he declared emphatically. “Nor of your eyes, Mrs. Marle.” He stood erect. “Tell your son to come here, Mr. Osmuhn,” he said quietly.

The white-faced jeweller almost tottered from the small room. The instant that Osmuhn’s footsteps told the blind man that he had gone through the door, Thornley Colton spoke.

“Mrs. Marle.” His voice was crisp, imperative. “At the instant you first saw the mist, _was_ it as wide as a ribbon?”

She answered steadily enough, despite the sudden change in the blind man’s tone: “Yes, it seemed to stretch over the table lengthways, waving slightly, as a ribbon would do in a breath of air, but almost instantly it widened and widened, until it covered the whole table.” There was only a slight tremor in her voice, but in her eyes was awe, as she spoke of the inexplicable thing her eyes had seen.

“Mr. Osmuhn had his back toward you?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know that?”

She smiled wanly up at him, forgetting, as people usually did when Colton was speaking, that he could see nothing. “I don’t know it because I saw him,” she replied, “but I _do_ know it because he always turns toward the small safe back of this chair, and idly arranges the jewel-cases on the shelves when a customer is examining one of the rare gems he keeps in this room. He knows the value of silence when a lover of jewels is looking at a wonderful stone like the Thousand Facets of Fire.”

Colton smiled understanding; then wheeled to face the door as Osmuhn entered, followed by his son. Following them, unnoticed, came Helen Marle. She took her place behind her mother without a word.

“Father says the ruby has vanished!” cried the younger Osmuhn, and his voice, and eyes, and very manner seemed a wild plea for denial.

Colton merely nodded. “Utterly,” he confirmed. “Just as the necklace disappeared--into a mist. Now tell me, Mr. Osmuhn,” he continued quietly, “what was the appearance of the mist when you first saw it over the necklace on the glass case outside?”

“Why, it was just a mist,” stammered the son. “Just a cloud that spread instantly.”

“You never lifted your eyes from the stones?”

“I don’t think so--though I may have looked up for an instant as Mr. Norvel started toward his coat.”

“Cloud--ribbon,” murmured the blind man, apparently to himself, tapping his trouser-leg with his slim stick.

“That wonderful ruby--gone!” muttered the elder Osmuhn, sinking, almost inertly, into a chair at the other side of the small table.

“My God!” They all turned, as the cry burst from the man who had entered the vault-room unnoticed. The new comer was a cripple who hobbled along with the aid of two heavy black canes. But it was the lean, intelligent face, with the coal-black eyes and the thin nose, that held Sydney’s gaze. Mentality was stamped in every deep-graven line, but now there seemed a pitiful helplessness in the tremulous lips of the man as he advanced toward them.