Jewel Mysteries Part 16

"G.o.d forbid that she should," said he; and with that we went out together.

The weather at that time was cold and cheerless; a bleak wind swept round the corners of the streets; and the lights which illumined the peristyle of the great building swayed and flickered with lapping tongues of red and yellow. But once inside, the glow of light and color pa.s.sed description. Here, whirling, shouting, dancing, leaping, the maskers rioted, almost drowning with their clamor the blare of the band; the superb entrance hall was ablaze with the flash of tawdry jewels and s.h.i.+ning raiment; kings and queens, knights and courtiers, _calicots_ and clowns, swarmed up the ma.s.sive staircase, struggling, screaming, pus.h.i.+ng, regardless of everything but the madness of the scene within.

It was with the greatest difficulty that I reached Tussal's box, and therefrom looking down upon the wild carnival, seeing at the first but a medley of form and color, a reckless horde of dancers, grisettes, shepherdesses, over whose heads _confetti_ hurtled, or the _spirales_ which the youths love. What with the dust and the scream of voices, and the chatter of the thousand tongues, and the heroic efforts of the fiddlers, it was almost impossible to locate anything or any one; but the Italian, readier than I, pointed out to me at last the one we sought; and I observed her sitting in a box quite close to us, where she seemed to talk with all a girl's _esprit_ to the young sculptor at her side. A fairer spectacle never was than that of this childish creature, quaintly dressed in a simple gown of white and black, with a necklace of pearls about her throat, and a bouquet of roses in her hand; but the very sight of her turned me sick with fear, for she wore upon her arm the cursed topaz, and you could see the light of it half over the house.

The Italian and I perceived the thing at the one time; indeed, we rose from our seats together.

"For the love of Heaven go to her!" said he; "tell the whole story to both of them; she may not have ten minutes to live."

He had need to say no more, for I was in the _foyer_ as he spoke; but scarce had I opened the door of Barre's box--which was upon the ground floor, almost at the level of the dancers--when an appalling scream rose up even above the clamor of the throng. For one moment, as I stood quaking with my fears, and sore tempted to draw back, I saw nothing but a haze of white smoke, a vision of lurid faces and black forms, and sharper than them all, the figure of Barre himself bending over the body of the insensible girl. Then, amidst the babbling of voices, and the sobbing of women, and the cry of the man, which was the most bitter cry imaginable, I heard the words, "Stop the student in the black cloak--he has shot Mademoiselle!"

But the girl lay dead, with a bullet through her heart.

The tragedy at the Opera House was talk for many days in Paris; but the a.s.sa.s.sin was never taken, nor indeed, heard of. The police inclined to the theory that some masquerader had discharged a pistol by accident in the heat of the riot; and to this theory most people inclined. But there was a large sympathy for M. Georges Barre, who lay near to death for many weeks after the shock, and who quitted the capital subsequently to take up his residence in London. I told him the story the Italian had narrated to me so soon as he was well enough to hear it; but, like the police of Paris who had it also, I could see that he did not believe a word of it. He sold me the topaz bracelet, however, and I have it to this day, for I want the courage to sell it.

Of the Italian I never heard again. I saw him last immediately after the drama of the ball, when he lurched away from me, wringing his hands pitifully, begging me to tell his story to the police, and crying that a curse was upon him. But I take it, in conjunction with his confession, as a little curious that a madman, described as an ecclesiastic of Savona, should have thrown himself before a train in the Gare du Nord two days after the death of Mademoiselle Bernier.

THE RIPENING RUBIES.

THE RIPENING RUBIES.

"The plain fact is," said Lady Faber, "we are entertaining thieves. It positively makes me shudder to look at my own guests, and to think that some of them are criminals."

We stood together in the conservatory of her house in Portman Square, looking down upon a brilliant ball-room, upon a glow of color, and the radiance of unnumbered gems. She had taken me aside after the fourth waltz to tell me that her famous belt of rubies had been shorn of one of its finest pendants; and she showed me beyond possibility of dispute that the loss was no accident, but another of those amazing thefts which startled London so frequently during the season of 1893. Nor was hers the only case. Though I had been in her house but an hour, complaints from other sources had reached me. The Countess of Dunholm had lost a crescent brooch of brilliants; Mrs. Kenningham-Hardy had missed a spray of pearls and turquoise; Lady Hallingham made mention of an emerald locket which was gone, as she thought, from her necklace; though, as she confessed with a truly feminine doubt, she was not positive that her maid had given it to her. And these misfortunes, being capped by the abstraction of Lady Faber's pendant, compelled me to believe that of all the startling stories of thefts which the season had known the story of this dance would be the most remarkable.

These things and many more came to my mind as I held the mutilated belt in my hand and examined the fracture, while my hostess stood, with an angry flush upon her face, waiting for my verdict. A moment's inspection of the bauble revealed to me at once its exceeding value, and the means whereby a pendant of it had been s.n.a.t.c.hed.

"If you will look closely," said I, "you will see that the gold chain here has been cut with a pair of scissors. As we don't know the name of the person who used them, we may describe them as pickpocket's scissors."

"Which means that I am entertaining a pickpocket," said she, flus.h.i.+ng again at the thought.

"Or a person in possession of a pickpocket's implements," I suggested.

"How dreadful," she cried, "not for myself, though the rubies are very valuable, but for the others. This is the third dance during the week at which people's jewels have been stolen. When will it end?"

"The end of it will come," said I, "directly that you, and others with your power to lead, call in the police. It is very evident by this time that some person is socially engaged in a campaign of wholesale robbery.

While a silly delicacy forbids us to permit our guests to be suspected or in any way watched, the person we mention may consider himself in a terrestrial paradise, which is very near the seventh heaven of delight.

He will continue to rob with impunity, and to offer up his thanks for that generosity of conduct which refuses us a glimpse of his hat, or even an inspection of the boots in which he may place his plunder."

"You speak very lightly of it," she interrupted, as I still held her belt in my hands. "Do you know that my husband values the rubies in each of those pendants at eight hundred pounds?"

"I can quite believe it," said I; "some of them are white as these are, I presume; but I want you to describe it for me, and as accurately as your memory will let you."

"How will that help to its recovery?" she asked, looking at me questioningly.

"Possibly not at all," I replied; "but it might be offered for sale at my place, and I should be glad if I had the means of restoring it to you. Stranger things have happened."

"I believe," said she sharply, "you would like to find out the thief yourself."

"I should not have the smallest objection," I exclaimed frankly; "if these robberies continue, no woman in London will wear real stones; and I shall be the loser."

"I have thought of that," said she; "but, you know, you are not to make the slightest attempt to expose any guest in my house; what you do outside is no concern of mine."

"Exactly," said I, "and for the matter of that I am likely to do very little in either case; we are working against clever heads; and if my judgment be correct, there is a whole gang to cope with. But tell me about the rubies."

"Well," said she, "the stolen pendant is in the shape of a rose. The belt, as you know, was brought by Lord Faber from Burmah. Besides the ring of rubies, which each drop has, the missing star includes four yellow stones, which the natives declare are ripening rubies. It is only a superst.i.tion, of course; but the gems are full of fire, and as brilliant as diamonds."

"I know the stones well," said I; "the Burmese will sell you rubies of all colors if you will buy them, though the blue variety is nothing more than the sapphire. And how long is it since you missed the pendant?"

"Not ten minutes ago," she answered.

"Which means that your next partner might be the thief?" I suggested.

"Really, a dance is becoming a capital entertainment."

"My next partner is my husband," said she, laughing for the first time, "and whatever you do, don't say a word to him. He would never forgive me for losing the rubies."

When she was gone, I, who had come to her dance solely in the hope that a word or a face there would cast light upon the amazing mystery of the season's thefts, went down again where the press was and stood while the dancers were pursuing the dreary paths of a "square." There before me were the hundred types one sees in a London ball-room--types of character and of want of character, of age aping youth, and of youth aping age, of well-dressed women and ill-dressed women, of dandies and of the bored, of fresh girlhood and worn maturity. Mixed in the dazzling _melee_, or swaying to the rhythm of a music-hall melody, you saw the lean forms of boys; the robust forms of men; the pretty figures of the girls just out; the figures, not so pretty of the matrons, who, for the sake of the picturesque, should long ago have been in. As the picture changed quickly, and fair faces succeeded to dark faces, and the coquetting eyes of pretty women pa.s.sed by with a glance to give place to the uninteresting eyes of the dancing man, I asked myself what hope would the astutest spy have of getting a clue to the mysteries in such a room; how could he look for a moment to name one man or one woman who had part or lot in the astounding robberies which were the wonder of the town? Yet I knew that if nothing were done, the sale of jewels in London would come to the lowest ebb the trade had known, and that I, personally, should suffer loss to an extent which I did not care to think about.

I have said often, in jotting down from my book a few of the most interesting cases which have come to my notice, that I am no detective, nor do I pretend to the smallest gift of foresight above my fellow man.

Whenever I have busied myself about some trouble it has been from a personal motive which drove me on, or in the hope of serving some one who henceforth should serve me. And never have I brought to my aid other weapon than a certain measure of common sense. In many instances the purest good chance has given to me my only clue; the merest accident has set me straight when a hundred roads lay before me. I had come to Lady Faber's house hoping that the sight of some stranger, a chance word, or even an impulse might cast light upon the darkness in which we had walked for many weeks. Yet the longer I stayed in the ball-room the more futile did the whole thing seem. Though I knew that a nimble-fingered gentleman might be at my very elbow, that half-a-dozen others might be dancing cheerfully about me in that way of life to which their rascality had called them, I had not so much as a hand-breadth of suspicion; saw no face that was not the face of the dancing a.s.s, or the smart man about town; did not observe a single creature who led me to hazard a question.

And so profound at last was my disgust that I elbowed my way from the ball-room in despair; and went again to the conservatory where the palms waved seductively, and the flying corks of the champagne bottles made music harmonious to hear.

There were few people in this room at the moment--old General Sharard, who was never yet known to leave a refreshment table until the supper table was set; the Rev. Arthur Mellbank, the curate of St. Peter's, sipping tea; a lean youth who ate an ice with the relish of a schoolboy; and the ubiquitous Sibyl Kavanagh, who has been vulgarly described as a garrison hack. She was a woman of many partialties, whom every one saw at every dance, and then asked how she got there--a woman with sufficient personal attraction left to remind you that she was _pa.s.se_, and sufficient wit to make an interval tolerable. I, as a rule, had danced once with her, and then avoided both her program and her chatter; but now that I came suddenly upon her, she cried out with a delicious pretence of artlessness, and ostentatiously made room for me at her side.

"_Do_ get me another cup of tea," she said; "I've been talking for ten minutes to Colonel Harner, who has just come from the great thirst land, and I've caught it."

"You'll ruin your nerves," said I, as I fetched her the cup, "and you'll miss the next dance."

"I'll sit it out with you," she cried gus.h.i.+ngly; "and as for nerves, I haven't got any. I must have shed them with my first teeth. But I want to talk to you--you've heard the news, of course! Isn't it dreadful?"

She said this with a beautiful look of sadness, and for a moment I did not know to what she referred. Then it dawned upon my mind that she had heard of Lady Faber's loss.

"Yes," said I, "it's the profoundest mystery I have ever known."

"And can't you think of any explanation at all?" she asked, as she drank her tea at a draught. "Isn't it possible to suspect some one just to pa.s.s the time?"

"If you can suggest any one," said I, "we will begin with pleasure."

"Well, there's no one in this room to think of, is there?" she asked with her limpid laugh; "of course you couldn't search the curate's pockets, unless sermons were missing instead of rubies?"