"Two words spoken by this man brought me to my feet; two more to the thin wooden door which divided our rooms, as oft you'll find them divided in cafés through Italy. With feverish impatience, I knelt to pry through the keyhole; and muttered a big oath when I saw that it was stuffed with paper, and that the sight of the two men was hidden from me. But I listened with an ear long trained to listening, and, although the men spoke so that few words reached me, I remained a whole hour upon my knees, amazed that the man should thus be sent by Providence to my very hotel; excited with the new sensation of a foot upon the trail. The ship had not sailed, then, for here was the ruffian, who watched her, wasting rest in the first hours to hold a parley; and if a parley, with whom? Why, with those who paid him for the work, I did not doubt.
"At the end of an hour the voices ceased, but there was still a movement in the room. That was hushed too; and I judged that my neighbour had gone to bed. For myself I had one of two courses before me: either to court sleep and wait luck, with the sun, or to see there and then what was in the room, and by whom it was occupied. You ask, How was that possible? but you forget my scurvy trade again. In my bag were forbidden implements sufficient to stock Clerkenwell. I took from that a brace and bit, and an oiled saw. In ten minutes I cut a hole in the partition and put my eye to it, waiting first to see if any man moved. For the moment my heart quaked as I thought that both the fellows had gone, but one look reassured me. A burly, black-bearded man sat in a reverie before a dressing-table, and I saw that there was spread upon the table a great heap of jewels which, at the lowest valuation, must have been worth a hundred thousand pounds. And beside the jewels was a big bull-dog revolver, close to the man's hand.
"The tension of the strange situation lasted for some minutes. I had no clear vision through my spy-hole, and knew not at the first watching whether the man I saw was asleep or awake. A finer inspection of him, made with a catlike poise as I knelt crouching at the door, showed me that he slept: had fallen to sleep with his fingers amongst the jewels—a great rough dog of a man clutching wealth in his dreaming. And he was, then, one of those connected with the golden ship in the harbour—the strange ship manned by cut-throats, and built for a 'South American Republic.' Indeed did the mystery deepen, the problem became more profound, every moment that I worked upon it. Who was this man? I asked, and why did he sit in an Italian hotel fingering jewels, and giving a meeting-place at midnight to a common murderer from a dockyard? Were the jewels his own? Had he stolen them? Suggestions and queries poured upon me; I felt that, whatever it might be, I would know the truth; and I resolved to dare beyond my custom, and to learn more of the bearded man and of his gems.
"Watch me, then; as I knelt for a whole hour at the place of observation, and waited for the fellow to awake. It must have been well on towards morning when he stirred in his chair, and then sat bolt upright. I thought he looked to have some tremor of nervousness upon him; clutching hastily at the jewels to put them in a great leather case, which again he shut in a large iron box, locking both, and placing the key under his pillow. After that he threw off his clothes with some impatience, and, leaving the lamp which burned upon his dressing-table, he dropped upon his bed. For myself my plan was already contrived; I had determined to go to great risk, and to enter the room—playing the common cheat again, yet more than the common cheat, for that was an enterprise which needed all the fine caution and daring which long years of police work had taught me. I had not only to ape the housebreaker, but also to get the good cunning of a jewel robber—and yet I knew that the things I had seen warranted me, from my point of view, in doing what I did, and that desperate means alone were fit to cope with the situation.
"Now the new work was quick. Being assured that my man slept, I put back with some cold glue, which was always in my tool chest, the piece I had cut from the door, and then picked the lock with one grip of my small pincers. My revolver I carried in the belt at my waist, for my hands were occupied with a soft cloth and a bottle of chloroform. I had big felt slippers upon my feet; and went straight to his bed, where I let him breathe the drug for a few moments, and deepened his light sleep until it became heavy unconsciousness. In this state I did what I would with him, and, having no fear of his awaking, I got at his keys and his jewels, and saw what I wished. There, true enough, were precious stones of all values: Brazilian diamonds, Cape stones tinged with yellow, yet big and valuable, the finer class of Indian turquoise, pink pearls, black pearls—all these loosely wrapped in tissue paper; but a magnificent parcel such as you would see only in a West End house in London. I must confess, however, that these stones interested me but little, for as I delved amongst his treasures I brought up at last a necklace of opals and diamonds, the first set gems I had discovered; and as I held them to the lamp and examined the curious grouping of the stones, and the strange Eastern form of the clasp, I knew that I had seen the bundle before. The conviction was instantaneous, powerful, convincing; yet even with my aptitude for recalling names, places, and things, I could not in my mind place those jewels. None the less was I assured that the one solid clue I had yet taken hold of was in my keeping; and, as a quick glance round the chamber told me no more, I put up the baubles in their case again, replaced the key, and quitted the chamber. Do not think, however, that I had neglected to mark my man; every line of his face was written in my mental notebook, every peculiarity of head and countenance, the shape of his arms, above all, the mould of the hands, that wonderful index to recognition; and henceforth I knew that I could pick him from a hundred thousand.
"When I had done with this business, I lay upon my bed, and brought the whole of my recollection back upon the jewels. Where had I seen them; in what circumstances; in whose hands? Again and again I travelled old ground, exhumed buried cases, dwelt upon names of forgotten criminals, and of big world people. An hour's intense mental concentration told me nothing; the dark of the hour before dawn gave way to the cold breaking of morning light, and yet I tossed in an agony of blank and futile reasoning. I must have slept from the sheer blinding of the brain somewhere about that hour; and in my dreaming I got what wakefulness had denied to me. There in my sleep was the whole history of the stones written for me. I remembered the Liverpool landing-stage; the departure of the Star liner, City of St. Petersburg, for New York; the arrest of the notorious jewel-thief, Carl Reichsmann; the discovery of the opal and diamond necklace upon him; the restoration of it to—to—the brain failed for a moment—then with a loud cry of delight, which roused me, I pronounced the words; to Lady Hardon, of 202A, Berkeley Square, London.
"It is a ridiculous situation to sit up in bed asking yourself if your dream be reality, or your reality be a dream; but when I awoke with that name on my lips, the joy of the thing was so surpassing that I repeated the name again and again, muttering it as I got into my clothes, using it all the time I washed, and speaking it aloud when I stood before the glass to tie my cravat. Here, I suppose the folly of the whole repetition dawned upon me, for, of a sudden, I shut my lips firm and close, and bethought me of the man in the next room. What of him? Was he still there? I listened. There was no sound, not so much as of a heavy sleeper. He had gone then, and had Lady Hardon's jewels—yet Lady Hardon, Lady Hardon——nay, but you could never know the sudden and awful emotion of that great awakening which came to me in that moment when my memory travelled quickly on to Lady Hardon's end; for I remembered then that she went down in the great steamer Alexandria, which was lost in the Bay of Biscay twelve months before I discovered the golden ship in the dockyard at Spezia; and I recalled the fact, known worldwide, that her famous jewels, this necklace amongst them, had gone with her to her end. Lost, I say; yet that was the account at Lloyd's; lost with never a soul to give a word about her agony; lost hopelessly in the broad of the bay. How came it, then, that this man who knew the ruffians in the dockyard below; who seemed a common fellow, yet possessed a hundred thousand pounds' worth of jewellery, how came it that he had