I turned them over in my hand and examined them with little interest.
“This pure white is a Brazilian,” said I. “It may be worth a hundred and fifty pounds. The other two are jewellers’ common stuff. They would make a pretty pair of ear-rings for your daughter, Murray. You should make the Treasury an offer for them. Say fifty for the pair.”
“The police haven’t much money to waste on the ladies’ ears,” he said rather hardly; “we prefer ’em without ornament—they go closer to the doors. I thought you would like to hear about this. We can’t make much of it here, and I don’t suppose you’ll make more. A ship’s officer like that—you don’t expect him to be a fence in a common way, and he’s about the last you’d name for a professional hand in Paris—for if this is Baron Louis’s stone, as you say, it must have been stolen in Paris.”
“No reason at all, Murray. His wife wore it in her tiara. She was at the Prince’s, I believe, no more than a month ago. Does that occur to you?”
He shrugged his shoulders as though I had been judging his capacity, which, God knows, would have been an unprofitable employment enough.
“We haven’t begun to think about it,” he said. “How can we? No ship has reported his loss. He carried a pipe, a tobacco box, a gold watch, and this. Where does your clue start? Tell me that, and I’ll go on it.”
“There are no papers, then?”
“None—that is, this paper. And if you can make head or tail of it, I’ll give a hundred pounds to a hospital.”
He passed across the table a worn and tattered letter case. It contained a dirty calendar of the year, a lock of dark-chestnut hair, a plain gold wedding ring, and a slip of paper with these words upon it:
“Captain Three Fingers—Tuesday.”
“Is that all, Murray?” I asked when I had put the paper down.
“Absolutely all,” he replied.
“You have searched him for secret pockets?”
“As a woman’s bag at a remnant sale.”
“Where did he carry the diamonds?”
“Inside his waistcoat—a double pocket lined with wool.”
“No arms upon him?”
“Not a toothpick.”
“And you have no trace of any vessel?”
“Lloyd’s can tell us nothing. There has been no report made. It is evident that the man fell off a ship, though what ship, and where, heaven alone knows.”
This, I am afraid, was obvious. The police had asked me to identify the jewels and now that it was done I could be of no more service to them. It remained to see what Baron Louis de Rothschild would have to say, and when I had reminded Murray of that, I took my leave. It would be idle to pretend that I had come to any opinion which might help him. To me, as to others, the case seemed one of profound mystery. A dead seaman carried jewels of great price hidden in his clothes, and he had fallen overboard from a ship. If some first tremor of an idea came to me, I found it in the word “ship.” A seaman and a ship—yes, I must remember that.
And this will bring me to the last and most astonishing feature of this perplexing mystery. Baron Louis expressed the greatest incredulity when he heard of the loss of his famous jewel. It was at his banker’s in Paris, he declared. A telegram to the French house brought the reply that they had the stone sure enough, and that it was in safe keeping, both literally and in metaphor. To this I answered by the pen of my friend at Scotland Yard that if the bankers would cause the stone to be examined for the second time, they would find it either to be false or of a quality so poor that it could never be mistaken by any expert for the Red Diamond of Ford Valley. Once more fact confirmed my suppositions. The jewel in Paris was a coarse stone, of little value, and as unlike the real gem as any stone could be. Plainly the Baron had been robbed, though when and by whom he had not the remotest idea.
You will admit that this twentieth century conception of theft is not without its ingenuity. The difference in value between a diamond of the first water and the third is as the difference between a sovereign and a shilling. Your latter day thief, desiring some weeks of leisure in which to dispose of a well-known jewel, will sometimes be content with less than the full value of his enterprise. He substitutes a stone of dubious quality for one of undoubted purity. Madam, it may be, thinks her diamonds want cleaning, and determines to send them to the jeweller’s when she can spare them. That may be in six months’ time, when her beautiful gems are already sparkling upon the breast of a Rajah or his latest favourite. And she never can be certain that her diamonds were as fine as she believed them to be.
This I had long known. It is not a fact, however, which helps the police, nor have I myself at any time made much of it. Indeed, all that remained to me of the discovery upon Palling beach was the suggestion of a ship, and the possession of a slip of paper with its almost childish memorandum: “Captain Three Fingers—Tuesday.”
CHAPTER V.
THE MAN WITH THE THREE FINGERS.
Dr. Fabos continues his Story.
I waited three years to meet a man with three fingers, and met him at last in a ball-room at Kensington. Such is the plain account of an event which must divert for the moment the whole current of my life, and, it may be, involve me in consequences so far-reaching and so perilous that I do well to ignore them. Let them be what they may, I am resolved to go on.
Horace has told us that it is good to play the fool in season. My own idea of folly is a revolt against the conventional, a retrogression from the servitude of parochial civilisation to the booths of unwashed Bohemia. In London, I am a member of the Goldsmith Club. Its wits borrow money of me and repay me by condescending to eat my dinners. Their talk is windy but refreshing. I find it a welcome contrast to that jargon of the incomprehensible which serves men of science over the walnuts. And there is a great deal of human nature to be studied in a borrower. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself could not be more dignified than some of those whose lives are to be saved by a trifling advance until Saturday.
Seven such Bohemians went at my charge to the Fancy Fair and Fête at Kensington. I had meant to stop there half an hour; I remained three hours. If you say that a woman solved the riddle, I will answer, “In a measure, yes.” Joan Fordibras introduced herself to me by thrusting a bunch of roses into my face. I changed two words with her, and desired to change twenty. Some story in the girl’s expression, some power of soul shining in her eyes, enchanted me and held me fast. Nor was I deceived at all. The story, I said, had no moral to it. They were not the eyes of an innocent child of nineteen as they should have been. They were the eyes of one who had seen and known the dark side of the lantern of life, who had suffered in her knowledge; who carried a great secret, and had met a man who was prepared to fathom it.
Joan Fordibras—that was her name. Judged by her impulsive manner, the brightness of her talk and the sweetness of her laugh, there was no more light-hearted girl in England that night. I alone, perhaps, in all that room, could tell myself that she carried a heavy burden, and would escape from it by force majeure of an indomitable will. Her talk I found vapid to the point of hysteria. She told me that she was half French and half American—“just which you like to call me.” When I had danced twice with her she presented me to her father, General Fordibras—a fine military figure of a man, erect and manly, and gifted with eyes which many a woman must have remembered. These things I observed at a glance, but that which I was presently to see escaped my notice for some minutes. General Fordibras, it appears, had but three fingers to his left hand.
I say that I observed the fact negligently, and did not for the moment take full cognizance of its singularity. Alone