“I—I ain't afraid of that,” said the old man. “There's no one in the world knows how many he had. The family knew he had a lot, of course, and knew it was his hobby, and that he kept 'em here where he could look at 'em instead of in a safety deposit vault—though I guess he figured no safety deposit vault had anything on his—but they just knew he had a lot, they didn't know how many.”
A strange light came dawning suddenly in Jimmie Dale's eyes. Had the Tocsin been right in this respect? Was this the realmotive for the murder—not the bank's papers? Jathan Lane's hobby! It was no secret. Jathan Lane was a fellow member of that most exclusive organization, the St. James Club. Dimly there came back to memory a conversation one afternoon when four or five members, Jathan Lane and himself amongst them, were gathered around one of the smoking room tables, and——
“Sure!” said Gentleman Laroque brusquely. “Well, then, what's the matter with you? There's no sign of any robbery; no sign of any entry into the house, not so much as an unlocked door or a scratch on a window sill; and Jathan Lane, the only man who could know that anything had been taken—is dead. And his death”—Laroque grinned—“occurred in such a way as to make what's done here secure from even suspicion. The bank game's a blind. This is what we've been after, and now it's open and shut. And your share is the biggest haul you ever made in your life.”
The old man stared around him. Colour crept into his cheeks and glowed in hectic spots. His eyes, deep in their sockets, began to burn with a feverish light. He pulled himself up to his feet.
“Yes, yes!” he mumbled fiercely. “Rich—ha, ha!—rich! It cannot fail; I am a fool”—he caught his breath, and swayed again on his feet. “Come on! Come on! Hurry!” he choked out.
Jimmie Dale watched them, his lips suddenly tight. They had passed by the safe, and were coming directly toward where he stood. Another yard and they would reach the portières. His automatic swung silently upward in his hand. And then the old man halted in front of an oil painting that hung from the wall a little less than shoulder high.
For an instant the man stood there breathing heavily, as though even the exertion of crossing the room had taxed him beyond his strength; and then with a quick movement he jerked at the edge of the frame, and the painting itself, as though it were the grooved cover of a box, slid to one side, exposing the wall, which was as bare and as innocent in appearance behind, or, rather, through the frame, as anywhere else in the room.
“Jathan Lane's safe deposit vault,” coughed the Minister. He laughed. His cheeks were burning; his eyes were brighter. He leaned suddenly down toward the floor. “This knot in the wainscoting—see?”
Behind the empty frame, a door in the wall swung open—and the light from the room fell upon the nickel dial of a safe.
“That's the boy!” applauded Gentleman Laroque.
“Yes, yes!” whispered the old man. “I'll open it! Wait! A—a long time it took to get the combination, but—but I got it“—his fingers were working at the dial—“there—there it is!”
“Just a second!” said Laroque coolly, as the door of the little wall safe swung open. He glanced around him, then darted across the room to a small, square table on which stood a heavy bronze vase. “Here, this will do!” he said, and laying the vase on the floor, came back with the table. “Shoot the stuff out on this!”
It took a minute, perhaps two; and then upon the table there lay a number of jewellers' cases in both plush and leather, and a dozen or more little chamois bags. Laroque was rapidly opening and shutting the cases, and as he did so the contents of each in its turn, pendants, brooches, ornaments of many designs, all of them set with diamonds, seemed to leap thirstily at the light and hail it with eager scintillating flashes before the covers could be shut down upon them again.
“That all that's in there?” demanded Laroque.
“Yes,” breathed the old man. “Yes”—he rubbed his hands rapaciously together—“all except the tray he uses to paw 'em over on.”
“That's thoughtful of him!” grunted Gentleman Laroque. “Let's have it.”
From the bottom of the safe the Minister pulled out and laid upon the table an oblong, plush-covered tray with raised edges.
“Now!” grunted Laroque again. “Open the bags, and dump the whities into the tray.”
Jimmie Dale drew in his breath. It seemed as though little rivers of fire had begun to stream from the mouths of the bags. The men were working fast now; Laroque with almost cynical composure; the old man, wrought up, clumsy in his greed, his hands trembling, mumbling, crooning to himself.
Diamonds, unset stones, of all sizes, poured into the tray; they filled it, heaped it to its edges. An inch deep they lay. It was a fortune whose value Jimmie Dale did not dare attempt to compute—a pool of immortal beauty, restless with vitality, flashing, limpid, shifting, iridescent. Here the facet of a stone struck back at the light, fiery, passionate in its challenge; there another lay, soft in its radiance, glowing, pulsing, breathing, alive.
Laroque drew a cloth bag from his pocket and unfolded it. He ran his finger through the stones, separating them into two almost equal portions; the portion nearer him he began to put into his little sack.
“Slip the rest of them into the chamois bags again, and put 'em back in the safe,” he directed tersely. “Divide 'em amongst the bags as equally as you can. And those gew-gaws in the cases, too, of course—put them back. We can't afford to monkey with anything but the unset stones; any one of those ornaments might happen to be just the one that somebody in the family would remember—and miss.”
But now the Minister hesitated. The hectic colour had fled from his cheeks, only to enhance, it seemed, the fever fire in his eyes; the muscles of his face twitched; his hands, trembling before, shook now as with the ague.
“All!” he whispered fiercely, and touched his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Look at 'em! My God, look at 'em! We've got 'em all here! Take 'em! Take 'em! Let's take 'em all—all the unset stones anyhow! I'll make my get-away with you. Can't we take 'em all?”
Gentleman Laroque continued his work without looking up.
“I've never been in Sing Sing,” he said, with a thin smile. “That's why I came here myself to-night. I couldn't trust you or anybody else, except Hunchback Joe, to stand up against the temptation of making the bum play that would land us there. All! That's what Sing Sing is full of! You poor fool, aren't you satisfied with a sure thing when the sure thing is a fortune? That's what the half we're taking is—a fortune. And nobody to know that any job has been pulled; and Shiftel with a free hand to dispose of the stones at market value! Would you rather pinch them all, make it next to impossible to sell them for anything like what they're worth, and on top of that dodge the police for the rest of your life? You'd have a rosy chance making your get-away—Mr. Jathan Lane's vanishing butler, alias the Minister, alias Patrick Denton, late of Sing Sing!” His voice hardened suddenly. “As I said, I've never been in Sing Sing. Hurry up, now! Put the rest of those stones and all the ornaments back in the safe.”
The old man swept his hand across his eyes.
“Sure,” he said thickly; “you're right, and I——” A spasm of pain contorted his features, and he clutched at his side and staggered; but as Laroque, with a sharp exclamation, reached out a steadying hand, the Minister shook his head. “I'm all right,” he said—and began to return the diamonds Laroque had left on the tray to the little chamois bags.
A strange smile crossed Jimmie Dale's lips. Laroque was right—quite right. And from Laroque's standpoint—safe. The