The Hand in the Dark by Arthur J. Rees (amazing books to read txt) 📕

you would give me a description of the missing necklace. It will be useful in tracing it."

"It is not difficult to describe," replied Musard, seating himself on the edge of the bed. "It consisted of a single row of pink pearls, none of them very large. The biggest is about forty grains, and the others between twenty and thirty. It has a diamond clasp, set in antique gold, which is the most valuable part of the necklace. Do you know anything about jewels?"

"A little."

"Then you are aware that blue and red diamonds are the most valuable of stones. This diamond is a blue one—not very large, but a particularly fine stone."

"Of course the necklace is well-known to jewel experts?"

"As well-known as any piece of jewellery in Europe. Some of the pearls in it are hundreds of years old. It would be almost impossible for the thief to dispose of the necklace."

"It might be taken to pieces," suggested Colwyn.

"In order to hide its identity? Well, yes, but the selling value would be greatly reduced. The pearls have been strung."

"What about the diamond? Could not that be sold by the thief without risk of discovery?"

"Only by sending it to Amsterdam to get it cut into two or three smaller stones, so as to lessen the risk of detection. The Heredith blue diamond is known to many connoisseurs. It is cut in an unusual form—a kind of irregular rosette, in order to display its fire and optical properties to the best advantage. If it were cut it would lose a great deal of its value. The money value of one large diamond of first quality is very much greater than the same stone cut into three. But it would be difficult to sell the diamond in its present form. The chances are that it would be recognized in Hatton Garden—if it were offered for sale there."

"But if the diamond fell into the hands of somebody with a knowledge of precious stones he might keep it close for a while and then dispose of it abroad—in America, for instance," returned Colwyn. "That trick has been performed with better-known stones than the Heredith diamond. In fact, it strikes me as possible to sell the whole necklace that way. The disposal of the necklace depends largely upon who stole it—upon whether it has fallen into experienced or inexperienced hands. There are jewel dealers who ask no awkward questions if they can get things at their own price."

"Quite so," assented Musard, casting a quick glance at his companion's face. "It would be a risk, though—the thief might pick the wrong man. I can give you the addresses of two or three men in Hatton Garden who should be able to tell you if the necklace has been offered there. They know everything that is going on in the trade."

"I shall be glad to have them."

Musard scribbled several names and addresses on a leaf of his pocket-book, tore it out, and handed it to the detective.

"There is a curious coincidence about the loss of this, necklace," he remarked casually, as he rose to go. "It is another example of the misfortune which attaches to the possession of a blue diamond."

"Are you thinking of the Hope blue diamond? That certainly has a sinister history."

"That is the most notorious instance. But all blue diamonds are unlucky. I could tell you some gruesome stories connected with them. The previous wearer of the Heredith necklace—Philip's mother—died in giving birth to him. Incidentally, there is a curious legend attached to the moat-house in the form of a curse laid on it by the original builder, who was burnt alive in the old house. He prophesied that as the house of the Herediths was founded in horror it should end in horror. These old family curses sometimes come home to roost after a long lapse of time, though modern cynicism affects to sneer at such fancies. Of course, there may be nothing in it, but we have had more than enough horror in the moat-house recently, and poor Mrs. Heredith had a blue diamond in her room when she was murdered. But I must not keep you any longer, Mr. Colwyn. If there has been any miscarriage of justice in this terrible case I trust that you will be successful in bringing it to light."

He lingered after shaking hands, as though he would have liked to continue the conversation. Apparently not finding sufficient encouragement in the detective's face to do so, he turned and left the room, and Colwyn resumed his preparations for departure.

When they were completed he, too, went downstairs, carrying his bag. Miss Heredith and Phil were waiting to bid farewell to him. As Miss Heredith said good-bye, she looked into his face with the perplexed expression of a simple soul seeking reassurance from a stronger mind in the deep vortex of extraordinary events into which she had been plunged beyond her depth. Phil looked white and ill, and the hand which he gave into the detective's cool firm grasp was hot and feverish. While his aunt murmured those conventional phrases under which women seek to cover the realities of life as they bedeck corpses with flowers, Phil stood aside with the impatient air of one scornful of the futility of such things. As Miss Heredith ceased speaking he took a step forward, his dark eyes fixed eagerly and searchingly on Colwyn.

"You will lose no time?" he said. "You will find out everything?"

"I have already promised you that I will continue my investigations," replied Colwyn. The quiet sincerity of his words was the indication of a mind which despised the weakness of mere verbal emphasis.

"Lose no time. Spare no money," said Phil rapidly. His words and utterance contrasted forcibly with the stillness and composure of the man he was addressing. "Think what it means! Let me know everything that happens. Send me telegrams. Follow this thing out night and day. I depend on you—"

"Phil, Phil!" remonstrated Miss Heredith. "Mr. Colwyn has already promised to do all he can. You must be patient."

"Patience! My God, don't talk to me of patience," retorted her nephew fiercely. "I shall have no patience nor peace till this thing is settled."

Miss Heredith looked at him sadly. His breach of good manners in uttering an oath in her presence hurt her worse than a blow, but her heart sickened with the realization that it was but another manifestation of the complete change in him which had been brought about by his wife's murder. Colwyn brought the scene to a close.

"Of course I shall communicate with you," he said to Phil, as he took his departure. Phil accompanied him to his car, and stood under the portico watching him as he drove away. Colwyn glanced back as he crossed the moat-house bridge. The young man was still standing in the open doorway, looking after him. The next moment the bend of the carriage way hid him from view.

Colwyn encountered Tufnell at the next bend of the drive, waiting for him on the path under the trees which bordered the edge. The detective pulled up his car and stepped out.

"It was just off here, sir, that I thought I saw the figure that night," said the butler.

He plunged into a leafy avenue which led off the path at right angles, and followed it into the wood until he reached the mossy trunk of a great oak, which flung a gnarled arm horizontally across the narrow walk as though barring further intrusion into its domain. Tufnell stopped, and turned to the detective.

"It seemed to me as though a man was crouching just about here, sir," he said in a whisper, as if he feared that the intruder might still be hiding there and overhear his words.

Colwyn carefully examined the spot. The moss and grass where he stood grew fresh underfoot, with no marks to suggest that they had been trodden on recently. But close by, behind the horizontal branch of the great oak, was a tangled patch of undergrowth and brambles, broken and pressed down in places, as though it had been entered by a human being. As Colwyn was looking at this place, his eye was attracted by a yellow speck in the background of green. It was a tiny fragment of khaki, caught on one of the bramble bushes.

CHAPTER XIX

Superintendent Merrington sat in his office at Scotland Yard, irascible with the exertions of a trying day which had made heavy inroads upon his temper and patience. He had several big cases on his hands, his time had been broken into by a series of visitors with grievances, and he had been called upon to adjust a vexatious claim of a woman attacked in the street by a police dog, while the animal was supposed to be on duty tracking a sacrilegious thief who had felled a priest in an oratory and bolted with the silver candlesticks from the altar.

The woman had gone mad from the shock and had been placed in a public asylum, where she had imagined herself to be a horse, and in that guise had neighed harmlessly, for some years, until cured by auto-suggestion by a rising young brain doctor who had devoted much time and study to her peculiar case. Her first act of returned reason was to bring a heavy claim for damages against Scotland Yard, and Merrington had fought it out that day with an avaricious lawyer who had taken up the case on the promise of an equal division of the spoils.

Merrington had preferred to pay rather than contest the suit in law, and he was exceedingly wroth in consequence. He was angry with the old woman for presuming to get cured, and angry with the brain doctor for curing her. He considered that the brain doctor had been guilty of a piece of meddlesome interference in restoring the old lady to so-called sanity in a world of fools, without achieving any object except robbery from the public funds by a rascally lawyer. To use Merrington's own words, expressed with intense exasperation to an astonished subordinate, the old woman was quite all right as a horse, comfortable and well-fed, and had probably got more out of life in that guise than she ever had as a human being, compelled to all sorts of shifts and contrivances and mean scrapings before her betters for a scanty living, with nothing but the work-house ahead of her. He concluded in a sort of grumbling epilogue that some people never knew when to leave well alone.

It was in no very amiable frame of mind, therefore, that he received Colwyn's card with a pencilled request for an immediate interview. Merrington disapproved of all private detectives as an unwarrantable usurpation of the functions of Scotland Yard, but he particularly disapproved of a private detective like Colwyn, whose popular renown was far greater than his own. But there were politic reasons for the extension of courtesy to him. The famous private detective was such a powerful rival that it was best to conciliate him with a little politeness, which cost nothing, and he had done Scotland Yard several good turns which at least demanded an outward show of gratitude. He had influence in the right quarter, too, and, altogether, was not a person to be lightly affronted. The consideration of these factors impelled Merrington to inform the waiting janitor that he would see Mr. Colwyn at once, and even caused him to crease his fat red features into a smile of welcome as he awaited his entrance.

When Colwyn appeared in the doorway the big man he had called to see got up from his swing-chair to shake hands with him. When his visitor was seated Merrington leaned back in his own chair and remarked, in his great rolling voice:

"What can I do for you, Mr. Colwyn?"

"Nothing personally. I have called to have a talk with you about the Heredith case."

The veneer of welcome disappeared from Merrington's face at this opening, though a large framed photograph of himself on the wall behind his chair continued to smile down at the private detective with unwonted amiability.

"Ah, yes, the Heredith case," he responded. "A strange affair, that. I investigated it personally. It was a pity you were not in it. There were points about that murder—distinct points. You would have enjoyed it."

Merrington's professional commiseration of Colwyn's ill-luck in missing an enjoyable murder was intended to convey a distinct rebuke to the other's presumption in discussing a case in which he had not been engaged. But Colwyn's next words startled Merrington out of his attitude of censorious dignity.

"I was not in the case at first, but I was called into it subsequently by the husband of the murdered woman. He is dissatisfied with the outcome. He thinks a mistake has been made in arresting the girl Hazel Rath."

The silence with which Merrington received