Part 13

“Mr. Norvel?” Colton stepped to meet the man with outstretched hand. Then he answered the surprised looks some inner consciousness told him was on the faces of the other persons in the room: “Mr. Osmuhn told me of you when we were talking outside, and the tap of your canes as you entered was all the identification I needed.”

“Yes, I am Mr. Norvel.” The words came almost gaspingly, and Colton felt the man’s hand tremble in his. “I was in my office when I saw Mr. Osmuhn speak to Henry. I knew there was something wrong with the Thousand Facets of Fire, and----.”

He gasped chokingly, and staggered. Osmuhn jumped from his chair with a cry of concern, the sight of the man before him momentarily driving from his mind even the loss of the great ruby. “Sit down, Philip,” he commanded, leading the crippled man to a chair.

“These things--are taking the life out of me,” gasped the diamond expert of the firm. “The necklace--then this!”

“Mr. Norvel is on the verge of collapse,” whispered young Osmuhn. “He has had valvular heart trouble for years. The loss of the diamond necklace he had worked on upset him terribly--and he worked for months to get the Thousand Facets of Fire.”

Colton nodded sympathetically. “He should take a long rest,” murmured the blind man.

Norvel heard him. “I’ll get it soon,” he said helplessly, “in the grave.”

“You have years before you yet,” smiled Colton encouragingly. “Disappearances like these are calculated to frazzle the best of nerves.” Then, in the same gentle tone he had used in questioning Mrs. Marle, he went on: “Mr. Osmuhn told me of the terrible auto accident you had in France last summer, Mr. Norvel. Your driver and the occupant of the other car were killed, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” the cripple shuddered. “And it made an old man of me, that and my rotten heart.”

Again Thornley Colton nodded sympathetically. “You hovered between life and death for several months, I understand?”

“Practically dead,” Norvel answered.

“Um!” The blind man rolled the thin stick between his slender fingers, and puzzled lines appeared on his forehead.

“What is the object of those questions?” demanded the elder Osmuhn, and he could not keep the impatience from his voice.

“A long chance, nothing more,” Colton assured him quietly. “A chance that Mr. Norvel, in his delirium, might have told secrets that gave the criminal information necessary to commit these robberies.”

The diamond expert half rose from his chair, his hands clutching his heavy canes. “That may be true--I may be responsible!”

“Ridiculous!” snapped Osmuhn, and he made no attempt to keep the impatience from his tone now.

“We can’t afford to overlook even the remotest possibility in a case like this,” said Thornley Colton evenly.

Norvel lowered the hand that had been clutching at his heart. “Why don’t you search?” he cried. “The stone couldn’t have gotten out of the room! The walls are of solid concrete, impregnable. The ruby must be here!”

The elder Osmuhn looked around nervously, eyes travelling from one face to the other, seeking vainly for some way out. Mrs. Marle rose and slipped her arm around the waist of her daughter.

“I will submit to a search,” she said quietly.

“Thank you! Thank you!” Osmuhn fairly choked his relief. “I will get Miss----.”

“Do you want to search Sydney and me?” asked Thornley Colton, with a half smile on his expressive lips.

“I don’t think it is necessary; you weren’t----.” Osmuhn stopped, understanding that he had practically admitted that Mrs. Marle was the only one on whom suspicion rested. His son opened his mouth to protest, but the woman forestalled him.

“I understand,” she said steadily.

“Then we will go; it is long past my lunch-hour.” The blind man’s fingers touched the crystalless watch in his pocket.

“Don’t you want to know the result of the search?” Osmuhn asked blankly.

“I know it now,” said the blind man, with that same curious smile on his lips. “Good-bye, Mr. Osmuhn.” He shook hands heartily with the jeweller, and held the woman’s hand in his for an instant.

“I shall be at your reception to-morrow night,” he reminded, and she murmured a steady-voiced “Thank you.”

The blind man touched the fingers of the daughter, clasped the palm of the younger Osmuhn and that of Norvel, and hurried out, leaving them staring after him.

It was not until he and Sydney were in the big car on their way to the old-fashioned up-town house and luncheon that Thornley Colton spoke.

“One of the most remarkable crimes I’ve ever had the good fortune to work on, Sydney. And a remarkable thief--a criminal with an imagination.”

“But how did they vanish; where did the ruby and the necklace go?” asked Sydney Thames helplessly.

“Regarding the first part of your double-barrelled question: Is it possible, after all you have heard, that you don’t know _how_ they vanish?” The smile on the thin lips was inscrutable. “Where they go, Sydney, is not half so important as where they are. That’s where the work comes in. I am sure that I know where the Thousand Facets of Fire is, but I don’t know where the necklace is. I never half complete a case. By waiting I can get both the necklace and the ruby. By jumping recklessly I can arrest the criminal and recover the ruby; but I’m not a detective, Sydney; problems are merely my recreation. So I’ll recover both.”

“The ruby!” exclaimed Sydney. “You know where that is?”

“Certainly,” nodded Colton, snapping his smoked cigarette into the street. “The thief has been safe because he has worked against men who have imaginations that are handicapped by eyes. My imagination is unhampered. As I told Osmuhn, the search will reveal nothing, despite the fact that the ruby is just about three feet from the place where it disappeared!”

III.

The red-haired boy with the slightly twisted nose who had become a member of the Colton household as the only fee to a particularly baffling murder case, shifted from one foot to the other in an ecstasy of joy, listening intently and eagerly as the blind man talked. When Thornley Colton had finished, he could contain himself no longer.

“Gee! I’m gettin’ to be a reg’ler detective. Yuh reelly want me to trail him?” He asked the last anxiously, fearful lest he had heard wrong.

“Yes,” smiled the problemist. “Shadow him.”

“B’lieve me, Mr. Colton.” The boy’s eyes were round and serious. “If I locate that nigger, I’ll show him Nick Carter ain’t got nothin’ on me. An’ I’ll find him, too!” he boasted.

“There’s a Hindu somewhere around,” nodded Colton. “He doesn’t amount to much, except as a trail to the real criminal, but I expect him to do a certain thing, and I want to make sure of it. That’s all.”

“I’ll get him,” chirped the boy, and, pulling his cap down over his ears, he darted from the room.

Colton snapped out the light and sat puffing his cigarette in the darkness. For half an hour he did not move, except to light a new cigarette. Sydney Thames entered with a slip of paper in his hand, and Colton switched on the light again.

“Three boats leave this week,” announced Sydney. “The _Bordeaux_ to-morrow, the _Trevoila_ Thursday, and the _Paris_ Saturday.”

“I think that last is about it,” mused Colton, his thin fingers beating a devil’s tattoo on the arm of his chair.

“What?”

“The date of the thief’s departure for Europe.”

“The date of----,” gasped Sydney.

Thornley Colton nodded. “He’ll have time for that one after he finds out that the next trick he’s going to play hasn’t thrown me off the track. He doesn’t realise--yet--the possibilities of blindness; he doesn’t understand that the things which deceive the ordinary man only make facts clearer to me.” Colton pushed the desk-button that would summon the automobile at any hour of the twenty-four. “Let’s take in a matinée, Sydney,” he said, rising.

That afternoon, and that night, not a word was said regarding the remarkable thefts at the shop of Osmuhn & Son. Thornley Colton had apparently forgotten all about it. Early the next morning he answered an anxious query from Osmuhn by saying that he was hard at work, and immediately after he idled away two hours in his music-room. At ten o’clock the telephone rang, and the puzzled Sydney heard the following one-sided conversation:--

“Hello, Shrimp. English valet, eh? Funny! What! Invalid who has a Hindu servant that wheels him out every afternoon at four o’clock? Hindu went away alone at ten o’clock this morning? Where? Good! Good! That’s all now. Go to one of your moving-picture shows for the rest of the day.”

There was a broad smile on his lips as he hung up the receiver.

“What is it?” asked Sydney.

“Just another example of how a clever man will accomplish his object in a clever way. Look up Irotette’s number, will you? I haven’t got it on my list.”

“The caterer?”

“Yes.” When Colton got the connection, and gave his name, there was no doubt of his standing with New York society’s biggest caterer. “I want a favour,” he said, when the head of the firm was at the other end of the wire. “An exceptionally intelligent-looking coloured man just applied for a night’s work at Mrs. Marle’s reception to-night. You took him? I thought you would, for I know the difficulty of getting good men for a big affair like that. Now for the favour. Can you fix it so that his work will allow him the freedom of the rooms? Thanks!”

Sydney started to ask a question, but the blind man forestalled him. “To-morrow you’ll know all about it,” he promised.

Sydney realised that Colton would not say a word till the time came, and, under protest, he accompanied the problemist to the Marle reception that night. Colton apparently enjoyed every minute of the time, but Sydney, as usual, was on edge continuously, for his fear of pretty women amounted almost to an obsession. Even the wonderful personality of Mrs. Marle, who went from one guest to another, as though she had not a care in the world, and as though the disappearance of the ruby had never occurred, was not able to put him at his ease.

Promptly at eleven o’clock next morning Colton summoned his car. “We’re going to make a party call on Mrs. Marle,” was the way he answered Sydney’s question.

“Didn’t you get enough last night?” groaned Thames.

“Quite,” nodded the blind man, “but did you notice that bright-looking serving man with the coal-black eyes? Mrs. Marle pointed him out to me. He is the Hindu whom I spoke to Irotette about.”

“Hindu?” ejaculated Sydney. “Why should a Hindu be serving ices at a fool reception?”

“Because he had a little job to do. I’m going to call on Mrs. Marle this morning, and see how he did it,” replied Colton, as he pulled on his gloves.

When Mrs. Marle appeared, Sydney Thames had hard work to repress a gasp of astonishment. Last night she had been happy, cheerful. Now she was haggard, there were circles under her eyes, and her hand trembled as she held it out.

“An unexpected pleasure, Mr. Colton.” She tried to say it graciously, but her voice shook, and there was a piteous look in her eyes.

Thornley Colton spoke quietly, evenly. “The ruby, please.” The words struck the astounded Sydney like a pistol-shot.

The woman choked a sob in her throat, and swayed slightly. Thornley Colton led her gently to a chair.

“I didn’t take it!” she cried brokenly. “I didn’t! I’m _not_ a thief! I found it in my jewel-case last night. I don’t know how it got there--and Helen saw it, too!” The last words came in a sobbing gasp.

“Of course you didn’t take it!” declared Colton. “You haven’t even got it!” She looked up, searching his eyes to find the truth she had prayed for during the long hours of the night.

“You mean it! You know!” Her hand was on his arm; pleading, joy unutterable was in her voice.

“I didn’t think that you would find it until this morning,” Colton said contritely. “It was placed there last night by an accomplice of the real thief. I knew it would be. The thief realised that he must throw some dust in the eyes of all of us. He failed to understand that dust wouldn’t affect my eyes. The ruby you have is only an imitation, but it would have served its purpose. Let me have it.”

“Yes! Yes! Take it!” The hysteria of reaction was in her voice; she held out her left hand, and the red stone gleamed as the folds of the covering handkerchief fell away from it. “I must tell Helen--I asked her to call up Mr. Osmuhn.”

“I’m going to see him now,” Colton told her, and he hurried out, followed by her tremulous thanks.

The elder Osmuhn seemed on the verge of nervous prostration when they arrived at the shop. He jumped from the chair in his glass-enclosed office, and fairly ran to meet them.

“I’ve been trying to get you for fifteen minutes!” he said hoarsely. “Mrs. Marle has the ruby. Henry has just gone there. I never thought----.”

“I have seen Mrs. Marle,” said Colton sharply. “You should know her better than that. The ruby she had was a mere imitation. Here it is.”

Osmuhn snatched it eagerly, glanced at it, and groaned. “But how did she get this stone?” he demanded. “It is exactly the same weight and cut as the Thousand Facets of Fire. She saw the ruby three months ago!” There was suspicion in his voice now. “She is the only one in New York who did see it! No one could have made an imitation so exactly in the few hours since the original was stolen. And her story of the disappearance was so impossible!” Hours of brooding over the loss of the stone had apparently done their work.

“Don’t you believe your son’s story of the necklace disappearance?” asked Colton impatiently.

“But _she_ has a passion for jewels. The ruby must have destroyed----.”

“If she had stolen it, she would have had more sense than bring this new suspicion against herself. I’ll get the thief, also the ruby and necklace. But I’ll get him in my own way and my own time. You’d better wait. Good day!”

Leaving the head of the house of Osmuhn & Son staring, mouth agape, he left the shop. Thornley Colton never had patience with men who couldn’t see through a ladder when God had given them eyes.

“Telephone-booth, Sydney,” the blind man said, when they were out of the shop. “I’m going to put joy into the heart of Shrimp. Then we’ll kill a few hours before the next act. This is a show with long intermissions.”

The next three hours seemed the longest Sydney Thames had ever spent. They went to an up-town restaurant, and Colton ate as though there was not another thing worth thinking about in the world. Sydney was a flutter of impatience. He couldn’t enjoy his food; the music of the orchestra grated on his nerves; the waiter angered him by his continued hovering. But Sydney knew the futility of questioning the blind man. He knew that each apparently irrelevant thing the blind man had done would lead logically to the finish of the case. But what was the finish? Who was the thief? Where were the jewels that Thornley Colton expected to get by waiting?

At last the crystalless watch told the blind man that the time had come. “We’ll take a little walk along Ninety-first Street,” he said. “I expect to meet a white-haired invalid in a wheel-chair, with a Hindu servant. Watch for him.”

They reached Ninety-first Street, and strolled along casually; two idlers out for an afternoon walk. Suddenly Sydney saw the invalid.

“A man in a wheel-chair was just brought out of that brownstone house a block up the street. The man wheeling him is coloured.”

“Don’t notice him,” warned Colton.

They walked slowly toward the on-coming wheel-chair. Sydney tried his best to appear as calm as the blind man, but he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. What was going to happen? The street, for a block, was deserted, save for them, the two others, and a ragged street gamin, who was speeding along the smooth pavement on roller skates.

Sydney could see the man in the chair plainly now. His long, white hair almost touched his shoulders, the white beard swept his breast, and came up almost to his eyes. His legs were wrapped tight in a red blanket, and a shawl was thrown over his shoulders.

Only five feet separated them. As they stepped out to let the chair go past, the gamin, with a wild whoop, came speeding up in back of the chair, head down. He skated straight at the Hindu servant, struck him, and bowled him over. With a shriek of joy he continued on his way after staggering Sydney Thames as he brushed past him.

Colton leaped forward with a cry of mingled anger and sympathy. His hand on the round iron handle of the chair kept it from going over, and he grasped one of the big knobs at the handle-ends to steady himself as he helped the muttering servant to his feet.

“Little devil!” snapped the invalid, in a high-pitched, querulous voice. Then, as Thornley Colton stepped in front of him: “Thank you, young man.”

“He should be arrested,” declared Colton emphatically. He held out his hand. “I am blind,” he apologised. “Will you shake the hand of another of the afflicted? My secretary described you to me as you came along.”

“Well, you’re no worse off than I am,” cackled the man in the chair. “I see too devilish much! Good day.”

Colton bowed and stood aside. The impassive-faced servant pushed the chair down the side-walk.

“It’s a crime the way those gamins carry on,” muttered Sydney, when they had walked a hundred yards or so in silence.

Colton chuckled. “I’ll have to tell Shrimp how good his disguise was,” he laughed.

“Shrimp!” echoed Sydney in amazement.

“Certainly.” Thornley Colton grinned broadly. “He was on hand to give our Hindu friend a bump when the proper time came.”

“In Heaven’s name why?”

“So that I could locate the probable hiding-place of the ruby and the necklace when the time came for hiding them there. Also, to give me a chance to shake the hand of the man who stole them. Davidson is the invalid’s name. Quite a character, isn’t he?”

IV.

In the darkened music-room Thornley Colton’s fingers wandered idly over the keys, now improvising, now filling the room with the ever-living soul of Beethoven, now swinging crashingly into Wagner; then his fingers on the upper treble brought forth a strange discord of notes through which ran a weird minor melody. The last seemed to please him, for he repeated it, until Sydney Thames, who had been nervously pacing the room, stopped in his tracks.

“What the deuce do you call that?” he demanded, the discords still ringing in his ears. “It’s horrible!”

“Because it doesn’t agree with your orthodox ideas of music,” declared Colton seriously. “That is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I know. It is a Hindustan adaptation of the ‘Chinese Flute Song’ of _Siao She_. It is a fitting accompaniment for this latest case of ours.”

“And just as understandable,” observed Sydney, walking up and down the room again. Colton turned again toward the keys, and Sydney broke out impatiently: “Why don’t you do something, Thorn? Two whole days have passed since you found the man who stole the ruby, and you haven’t done a thing! Osmuhn suspects Mrs. Marle, and she is on the verge of collapse. You haven’t made an attempt to clear up the mystery. It isn’t right! Osmuhn is rapidly losing his patience; his son must stand helplessly by and see the mother of the girl he loves suspected; and the thing is making a nervous wreck of Norvel. It is only a matter of days when he will have to leave the business for good.”

“Osmuhn’s patience became exhausted last night,” Thornley Colton said. “He advised me that he had lost faith in my efforts, and that he was going to call in the police.”

“Great Heaven!” exclaimed Sydney. “That means that they will arrest Mrs. Marle!” It only needed a woman in trouble to put the susceptible Sydney Thames at sixes and sevens.

“I think even the police will hesitate before arresting a woman like Mrs. Marle on mere suspicion,” the blind man declared.

The electric bell at the front door sent out its announcement.

“See who it is, will you? Shrimp is out on a little job for me.”

Sydney hurried out, and the problemist’s sensitive finger-tips felt the face of the crystalless watch in his pocket. A frown furrowed his forehead for a minute. He went into the library, and was sitting at the desk which held the telephone when Sydney came back, followed by Henry Osmuhn, junior.

“They are going to arrest Helen’s mother!” burst out Osmuhn the instant he crossed the threshold.

Colton’s mobile face expressed sympathy. “I don’t think they will,” he assured quietly.

“But they’re going to!” cried Osmuhn fiercely. “My father put the thing into the hands of the police yesterday afternoon. The days of brooding over the loss of the Thousand Facets of Fire have driven him half crazy. The finding of the imitation ruby in Mrs. Marle’s possession, and your refusal to explain what you are waiting for, have driven every bit of commonsense from him. Detectives badgered her for two hours last night. She is on the verge of hysteria. And Helen----.” He paced up and down the room like a caged tiger, each word tumbling over the other as it came from his lips; his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. The sensitive-nerved Sydney Thames caught the contagion.

“It’s a crime to let those innocent women suffer, while you sit there, calmly smoking a cigarette!” charged the secretary bitterly. He turned away as the blind man’s lips curved in a smile. “He has known the thief for two days!” he told Osmuhn, beside himself at the injustice of the problemist.

“He knows the thief!” Osmuhn stopped dead in his tracks, staring incredulously at Sydney. Then he whirled to face the blind man, who sat quietly back in his chair, blowing smoke-rings towards the ceiling. “Why don’t you have him arrested?” he demanded, voice high with excitement.

“Because I want to get the jewels,” answered the blind man.

“But a search, a confession, will----.”

“Do you suppose that a man with the daring and cleverness necessary to accomplish those robberies would either confess or hide the stones where they could be found?” he asked, a trifle impatiently. “I’m waiting for the thief to hide the jewels in a place where I can find them. That will be when he is about to start away. To arrest him before would mean an endless search. You must understand that the thief who could commit robberies like those is a wonderfully clever man. I know that he is marvellous, for he is the only man I ever saw whose heart-beats failed to show any emotion whatever.”

“Who is the thief!” asked Osmuhn soberly. All the excitement and incredulity had gone from his voice now.

“A man who calls himself Davidson; an invalid who is wheeled around by a Hindu servant for an hour or so each afternoon. He is never seen at other times. He lives next door to Mr. Norvel, your diamond-expert.”

“So that’s how he knew!” cried Osmuhn, eye alight with understanding. “Was he in France when Mr. Norvel’s accident occurred?” The question Colton had put at the time of the ruby robbery flashed back in his mind.

The blind man nodded. “I am going to see him the minute my boy calls me up and tells me that he is getting ready to start to the steamer _Paris_, which sails at noon to-day.”

The jangling telephone-bell came as a period to the sentence. Colton removed the receiver, listened a moment, said a single “All right, Shrimp,” and rose. “The curtain is up for the last act,” he said soberly. He pulled open a drawer of the desk and took out a wicked-looking blued-steel automatic and slipped it into his side coat-pocket.

“There won’t be any need of that?” Osmuhn asked nervously.

“The man we are going after isn’t the kind that holds his hands out for the steel bracelets,” replied the problemist grimly.

“But you are blind!” cried Osmuhn. “You can’t see!”