Jewel Mysteries Part 2

THE NECKLACE OF GREEN DIAMONDS.

I can remember perfectly well the day upon which I received the order from my eccentric old friend, Francis Brewer, to make him a necklace of green diamonds. It was the 2d of May in the year 1890, exactly three days after his marriage with the fascinating little singer, Eugenie Clarville, who had set Paris aflame with the piquancy of her acting and her delightful command of a fifth-rate voice some six months after Brewer had left London to take up the management of a great banking enterprise in the French capital. He was then well into the forties; but he had skipped through life with scarce a jostle against the venial sins, and was as ignorant as a babe where that mortal septette of vices which the clergy anathematize on the first Wednesday in Lent was concerned. I have never known a more childish man, or one who held your affection so readily with simplicity. He was large-hearted, trusting, boyish, by no means unintellectual, and in no sense a fool. Indeed, his commercial knowledge was highly valuable; and his energy in working up a business was a reproach to those who, like myself, love to sit in arm-chairs and watch the ebb of life from a plate-gla.s.s window.

When he was married he wrote to me, and I laid his letter upon my table with a whistle. Not that he was in any way suited for the celibate state, for his instinct was wholly cast in the marrying mould. Had I been called upon to paint him, I should have sat him in an arm-chair by the side of a roaring fire, with a gla.s.s of punch to toast a buxom goodwife, and a pipe as long as the stick of my umbrella to make rings of smoke for a new generation at his knee. Such a man should, said common sense, have been yoked to an English dame, to one used to the odor of the lemon, and motherly by instinct and by training. I could not imagine him married to a lady from the vaudeville; the contrast between his iron-headed directness and the gauze and tinsel of opera bouffe seemed grotesque almost to incredulity. Yet there was the letter, and there were his absurd ravings about a woman he had known distantly for six months, and intimately for three days.

"I have married," he said in this memorable communication, "the dearest little soul that G.o.d ever brought into the world--fresh as the breeze, bright as the sky, eyes like the night, and temper like an angel. You must come and see her, old boy, the moment we set foot in our house at Villemomble. I shan't let you lose an hour; you must learn for yourself what a magnificent Bened.i.c.k I make. Why, the days go like flashes of the sun--and there never was a happier man in or out of this jolly city.

Oh, you slow-goers in London, you poor lame cab-horses, what do you know of life or of woman, or even of the sky above you? Come to Paris, old man; come, I say, and we'll put you through your paces, and you shall meet her, the very best little wife that ever fell to an old dray-horse in this fair of high-steppers."

There was a good deal more of this sort of thing; but the kernel of the letter was in a postscriptum, as was the essence of most of his communications. He told me there that he desired to make some substantial present to the girl he had just married; and he enclosed a rough sketch of a necklace which he thought would be a pretty thing if rare stones were used to decorate it. I fell in with his whim at once; and as it chanced that I had just received from the Jagersfontein mine a parcel of twenty very fine greenish diamonds, I determined to use them in the business. I may say that these stones were of a delicious pale green tint, almost the color of the great jewel in the vaults at Dresden, and that their fire was amazing. I have known a gem of the hue to be worth nearly a hundred pounds a carat; and as the lot I had averaged two carats apiece, their worth was very considerable. I had not learnt what were Brewer's instructions in the matter of expense; but I wrote to him by the next post congratulating him on his marriage and informing him that I would set the green diamonds in a necklace, and sell them for two thousand pounds. He accepted the offer by a cablegram, and on the following day sent a long letter of instruction, the pith of which was the order to engrave on the inner side of the pendant the words, _major lex amor est n.o.bis_. I laughed at his Latin, and the amatory exuberance which it betrayed; but fell upon the work, and finished it in the course of three weeks, during which time I had many and irritating requests from him for constant and detailed accounts of its progress.

When the trinket reached him, his satisfaction was quite childish. He wrote of his delight, and of "Eugy's," and spoilt three sheets of good note-paper telling me of her appearance at the English ball early in June; and of the sensation such an extraordinary bauble caused. Then I heard from him no more until August, when I read in an evening paper that he had been returning from Veulettes after a short holiday, and had been in a great train smash near Rouen. A later telegram gave a list of the dead, in which was the name of his wife; and three days after I received from him the most pitiful letter that it has ever been my misfortune to read. The whole wounded soul of the man seemed laid bare upon the paper; the simplicity of his words was so touching and so expressive of his agony, that I could scarce trust myself to go through the long pages over which he let his sorrow flow. Yet one paragraph remained long in my mind, for it was one that recalled the necklace of green diamonds, and it was so astonis.h.i.+ng that I did not doubt that Brewer was, for the time at any rate, on the high-road to madness. "I have put them round her dear neck," he said, "and they shall cling always to her in her long sleep."

At the end of the month he wrote again, mentioning that, despite my sharp remonstrance, he had seen the jewels buried with her, and that his heart was broken. He said that he thought of coming to stay with me, and of retiring from business; but went on in the next paragraph to confess his inability to leave the city in which she was buried, and the places which kept her memory so sharply before him. I wrote an answer, advising him to plunge into work as an antidote to grief, and had posted it but an hour when the mystery of the green diamond necklace began.

The circ.u.mstances were these. My clerk had left with the letters, and I was sitting at my table examining a few unusually large cat's-eyes which had been offered to me that morning. I heard the shop door open, and saw from the small window near my desk a man in a fur coat, who seemed in something of a hurry when he went to the counter. Three minutes afterwards, Michel came up to me breathlessly and stammering. He carried in his hand the identical necklace which I had made for my friend Brewer, and which he had buried with his wife, as his letter said, not a month before. My amazement at the sight of it was so great that for many minutes I sat clasping and unclasping the snap of the trinket, and reading again that strange inscription, _major lex amor est n.o.bis_, which had caused me so much amus.e.m.e.nt when I had first ordered it to be cut. Then I asked Michel,--

"Who brought this?"

"A man in the shop below--the agent of Green and Sons, who have been offered it by a customer at Dieppe."

"Have they put a price upon it?"

"They ask one thousand five hundred pounds for it."

"Oh, five hundred less than we sold it for; that is curious. Ask the man if he will leave it on approval for a week."

"I have put the question already. His people are quite willing."

"Then write out a receipt."

He went away to do so, still fumbling and amazed. The thing was so astounding to one who knew the whole of the circ.u.mstances, as I did, that I told him nothing more, but examined the necklace minutely at least half a dozen times. Was it possible that there could be two sets of matching green diamonds, two infatuated lovers who had chosen the same pattern of ornament, the same strange inscription, and the same tint of stones? Such a thing was out of the question. Either Brewer had made a mistake when he said that the necklace had been buried with his wife--a theory which presupposed his return to his normal common sense--or some scoundrel had stolen it from her coffin. I determined to wire to him at once, and had written out a message when the second mystery in the history of the trinket began to unfold itself. It came to me in the form of a cablegram from Brewer himself, who asked me to go to him at Paris without delay, as something which troubled him beyond description had happened since he wrote to me.

I need not say that at the time when I received this telegram I had no idea that a second mystery had engendered it. I believed that Brewer had discovered the loss of the necklace, and had sent for me to trace the thieves. This task I entered upon very willingly; and when I had instructed Michel to ask Green & Co.--with whom we did a large business--to give me as a special and private favor the real name of the seller of the necklace, I took the eight o'clock train from Victoria; and was in Paris at dawn on the following morning. Early as it was, Brewer waited for me at the Gare du Nord, and greeted me with a welcome which was almost hysterical in its effusiveness. This I could not return, for the shock of the sight of him was enough to make any man voiceless. He had aged in look twenty years in as many months. His clothes hung in folds upon a figure that had once been the figure of a robust and finely built man; his face was wan and colorless; there were hollows above his temples, and furrows as of great age in the cheeks, which erstwhile shone with all the healthy coloring that physical vigor can give. His aspect, indeed, was pitiable; but I made a great effort to convince him that I had not noticed it, and said cheerily,--

"Well, and how is my old friend?"

"I am a widower," he answered; and there was more pathos in the simple remark than in any lament I ever heard from him. It was quite evident that his one grief still reigned in his thoughts; and I made no other attempt to conquer it.

"You have important news, or you would not have summoned me from London," I said, as we left the station in a fiacre. "Won't you give me an idea of it now?"

"When we reach my place I will tell you everything and show you everything. It's very kind of you to come, very kind indeed; but I'd sooner speak of such things at my own house."

"You are still at Villemomble?"

"Yes; but I have an apartment by the Rue de Morny, and am staying there now; the old home is not the same. She is dead, you know."

I thought this remark very strange, and his manner of giving it no less curious. He nodded his head gravely, and continued to nod it, repeating the words and holding my hand like some great schoolboy who feared to be alone. He was scarcely better when we arrived at his lodging, and he took me to a luxurious apartment which was well worthy of his consummate taste; but the moment he had shut the outer door his manner changed, becoming quick, interested, and distinctly nervous.

"Bernard," he said, "I brought you to Paris because the strangest thing possible has happened. You remember the necklace of green diamonds I gave my poor wife, and buried with her?"

"Am I likely to forget that folly?" I asked.

"Well," he continued, "it was stolen from her grave in the little cemetery near Raincy----"

"I know that," said I.

"You know it!" he cried, looking up aghast. "How could you know it?"

"Because it was offered to me yesterday."

"Good G.o.d!" he exclaimed, "offered to you yesterday! But it could not have been, for my servant bought it in a shabby jeweler's near the Rue St. Lazarre! Look for yourself, and say what do you call that?"

He had unlocked a small safe as he spoke, and he threw a jewel case upon the table. I opened it quickly, and it was then my turn to call out as he had done a moment before. The case contained a second necklace of green diamonds exactly resembling the one I had made, and had then in my pocket; and it bore even the memorable inscription--_major lex amor est n.o.bis_.

When I made this discovery there seemed something so uncanny and terrible about it that the beads of perspiration stood on my forehead, and my hand shook until I nearly dropped the case.

"Frank," I said, "there's deeper work here than you think; this is the necklace which you believe you buried with your wife; well, what is this one, then, that I have in my pocket?"

I opened the second case and laid the jewels side by side. You could not have told one bauble from the other unless you had possessed such an eye as mine, which will fidget over a sham diamond when it is yet a yard away. He had no doubt that they were identical; and when he saw them together, he began to cry like a frightened woman.

"What does it mean?" he asked. "Have they robbed my wife's grave? My G.o.d!--two necklaces alike down to the very engraving. Who has done it?

Who could do such a thing with a woman who never harmed a living soul?

Bernard, if I spend every s.h.i.+lling I possess, I will get to the bottom of this thing! Oh, my wife, my wife----"

His distress would have moved an adamantine heart, and was not a thing to cavil at. The mystery, which had completely unnerved him, had fascinated me so strangely that I determined not to leave Paris until the last line of its solution was written. The robbery of the grave I could quite understand, but that there should be two necklaces, one of them with real stones and the other with imitation, was a fact before which my imagination reeled. As for him, he continued to sit in his arm-chair, and to fret like a child; and there I left him while I went to consult the first detective I could run against.

The difficulties in getting at the police of Paris are proverbial. The officials there hold it such an impertinence for a mere civilian to inform them of anything at all, that the unfortunate pursuer of the criminal comes at last to believe himself guilty of some crime. I put up with some hours, badgering at the nearest bureau, and then having no French but that which is fit for publication, I returned to the Rue de Morny, getting on the way some glimmer of a plan into my head. I found Brewer in the same wandering state as I had left him; and although he listened when I spoke, I felt sure that his mind was in that infantile condition which can neither beget a plan nor realize one. For himself, he had a single idea; and upon that he harped _usque ad nauseam_.

"I must send for Jules," he kept muttering; "Jules knew her well; he was one of her oldest friends; he would help me in a case like this, I feel sure. He always told her that green diamonds were unlucky; I was insane to touch the things, positively insane. Jules will come at once, and I will tell him everything, and he will explain things we do not understand. Perhaps you will send a letter to him now; Robert is in the kitchen and he will take it."

"I will send a note with pleasure if you think this man can help us; but who is he, and why have I not heard of him before?"

"You must have heard of him," he answered testily; "he was always with us when she lived--always."

"Do you see him often now?"

"Yes, often; he was here a week ago; that is his photograph on the cabinet there."

The picture was that of a finely built but very typical Frenchman, a man with a pointed, well-brushed beard, and a neatly curled mustache. The head was not striking, being cramped above the eyes and bulging behind the ears; but the smile was very pleasant, and the general effect one of geniality. I examined the photograph, and then asked casually:

"What is this M. Jules? you don't tell me the rest of his name."

"Jules Galimard. I must have mentioned him to you. He is the editor, or something, of _Paris et Londres_. We will write for him now, and he will come over at once."

I sent the letter to please him, asking the man to come across on important business, and then told him of my plan.

"The first thing to do," said I, "is to go to Raincy, and to ascertain if the grave of your wife has been tampered with--and when. If you will stay here and nurse yourself, I will do that at once?"