Mr. Felix Main’s domestic life was spent in two fair-sized rooms over his office. All that he had to do, when the cares of business were over, was to mount one flight of stairs, unlock the door facing him, and, if by chance Mrs. Main were at home, submit himself to the connubial embrace. The door adjoining was the door of his bedchamber, and a very small kitchen on the other side, provided with a gas stove, completed the establishment. Mrs. Main had once been a cinema actress, or in the pictures, as she termed it, and entertained ambitions towards renewing her professional life. Her appearance, however, had suffered from lack of exercise, too much smoking, an excessive use of cosmetics, and a constant, if not to say immoderate, addiction to alcoholic sustenance which had, at thirty years of age, made it difficult for her to satisfactorily undertake the ingenue parts of her youth. Her baby face had lost its freshness, her eyes their brightness, her figure its grace. She had a little money, having been the daughter of a respectable grocer at Camden Hill, some of which she had parted with to her husband and some of which she had wisely kept for her own use. She spent half her life grumbling, but there were many less contented women. Although she was pledged to go to the pictures this evening, in view of her husband’s entertainment of an important client, she lingered about the room, unwilling to depart. Charles, in his well- cut and well-pressed clothes, with his tall figure and his foreign accent, had distinctly taken her fancy. She would have much preferred to stay at home and share the bottle of wine which her husband had purchased earlier in the day from a neighbouring restaurant. Neither of the men, however, to her great regret, showed signs of wishing for her presence.
“Well, you two do look as though you were in for a good time,” she said glancing at the gold-topped bottle, the cigarettes and cigars upon the table. “Mean trick sending me off to the pictures, don’t you think so, Mr. de Suess? I’m just feeling sociable to-night too.”
The blue eyes were lifted to his in a manner which she had once found to be irresistible, but Charles remained a block of wood. Outwardly stolid, he was inwardly nervous and impatient. All he wanted was to drink a tumblerful of that wine and get on with the business.
“It’s a pity you have to go,” he replied politely, “but our business is very dull and stupid. It would not interest you, yet it must be done. Perhaps,” he added, as an afterthought, “we shall still be here when you come back.”
“Mind you are,” she enjoined. “I won’t stop for a drink, however many of my friends I meet. I’ll hurry back to hear how you’ve got on.” Mr. Felix Main, who was not addicted to acts of courtesy, rose to his feet and held the door open.
She passed out with a little backward wave of the hand to Charles. Her husband waited until he heard the front door close behind her before he proceeded to open the bottle of wine.
“Well, I hope you feel at ease now, Mr. de Suess—” he said. “There’s not a soul can come near the house. We’ve got the premises absolutely to ourselves and we haven’t even a servant to pry around.”
Charles threw himself into the most comfortable chair, pushed away his host’s cigarettes contemptuously and lit one from his own case.
“I am beginning to wish,” he declared slowly, “that I had never entered into this business. I think that I would have made just as much money out of my sister in other ways.”
“Now, in what way?” Mr. Felix Main demanded, pouring out a tumblerful of the gold-foiled but rather too foaming beverage, and handing it to his guest. “In what way, I should like to know? From what you have told me, I realise that Lord Glenlitten must never learn of your relationship. Why should he do anything to provide for a strange young man at his wife’s instigation? Ridiculous! You were right to take the matter into your own hands. Remember, I haven’t seen it yet, but every one has agreed as to. the value of that necklace, Mr. de Suess. Thirty thousand pounds will bear a split.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll get the full value for the stones,” Charles reminded him gloomily.
“I don’t suppose I shall,” the other admitted, “but I shall get more than any one else will and I shall get it safely. Say we get twenty thousand pounds. That’s ten thousand each. Doesn’t that satisfy you?”
“I wouldn’t go through what I’ve gone through the last month again for all the money that was ever coined,” Charles groaned, sipping his wine absently. “However, the thing can’t be undone now.”
“Why should it be undone? You have taken a wise and sensible course. You have found a friend who will make everything safe and easy for you. You have seen the newspapers to-day, for instance?”
“Yes, I have seen them,” Charles told him.
“Who is there now to hint at any mystery in connection with the Glenlitten case?” Mr. Felix Main demanded, smiling in his own peculiar fashion. “Since the discovery of the revolver, the whole Press now takes the affair for granted. Why shouldn’t they? Sir Richard Cotton himself knows that it’s all U.P. with his client. I heard to-day in the city—I wouldn’t swear it’s true, mind, but a man on the force told me—that Sir Richard was throwing up the case, didn’t believe in his client any longer and was angry with him for not having told him the truth.”
“I wish he would throw it up,” Charles muttered. “I hate the fellow. It gives me the shivers to look at him.”
“He is a very clever man but he is no trouble to you now, Mr. de Suess. There is nothing he can do, no outlet for all the cunning he ever possessed. The jury will take not ten minutes, not five, to deliberate. It will be all over, and then gradually, one at a time, we can dispose of the jewels.”
“It’s a strange business for you to be in,” Charles said suspiciously.
“It is not my business at all,” Felix Main assured him. “Only, in my time, I have had clients of all sorts, and I have had wonderful bargains brought to me by men who were desperate and had to leave the country. How many brilliants are there in the necklace?”
“Forty-eight.”
“You have brought it with you? What better time could there be than now to let me look at it?” Charles thrust his right hand into his trousers pocket, glanced at the blind behind to be sure that it was down, and the Glenlitten necklace, flashing for a moment like a shower of falling water touched by the sunlight, fell upon the table.
Felix Main gasped almost hysterically as he stood there looking at the glittering cascade of priceless gems. His common, pinched little face was transformed, his mouth slipped open, and an unsuspected front tooth appeared. He was breathing quickly, and beads of moisture forced their way out on his forehead. In his eyes there shone the great greed.
“Gawd!” he exclaimed. “My Gawd!”
He passed his fingers over the gems, picked up the necklace and held it, spread it out upon the table again, caressed it, smoothed two of the larger stones with yellow-stained fingers. All the time he seemed scarcely conscious of his companion’s presence.
“No wonder they made a fuss about it,” he said at last. “I’ve seen a few diamonds; I’ve never seen any like this.”
“Finish looking at it and let’s put it away,” Charles suggested nervously. “Some one might ring the bell. Any one could lose their heads with that about.”
Felix Main was muttering to himself.
“I’ve had swell thieves to see me sometimes,” he acknowledged—“chaps who if they haven’t actually put any one’s light out, have knocked them silly and taken the risk of what might happen, but Gawd! a man might commit murder for this—he might indeed, Mr. de Suess. I wouldn’t blame any one. I almost feel,” he went on, breathing quickly, with one hand upon the largest stone, “that I’d commit murder myself for it.”
“Kill me, eh?” Charles grunted.