THE FIFTH PROBLEM THE THOUSAND FACETS OF FIRE

I.

Outside was the hurry and bustle of the busy avenue; inside was the quietness and calm that characterised the house of Osmuhn & Son, jewellers and dealers in articles of vertu. The Heppelwhite chairs were carefully placed before each velvet square on the crystal cases that extended the length of the shop on both sides. In rows of expert array on the shelves and in the cabinets on the velvet-carpeted floor were rich European and Oriental porcelains: Faïence and cloisonné; rare pieces of Limoges, Satsuma, Arita, and Ninsei; lacquer ware of Kajikawa, Ritsuo, and Korin. The salesmen, soft-footed, soft-voiced, appeared merely indolent to the casual observer, but to one who could look beneath the surface of things, they gave the impression of being alertly on guard against a hidden something.

A limousine stopped before the door. The woman who alighted was beautiful; the girl who followed her was wonderful—the type that makes men putty and women envious. The uniformed attendant opened the door, they stepped inside. If those two women had crossed the threshold of any other shop on the avenue, there would have been a noticeable flurry of excitement instantly. But not a clerk in 169the shop showed more than courteous readiness. Osmuhn’s customers were all of the same type: the richest, the most cultured, the most exclusive persons in New York. A diamond ceased to be merely a diamond when it had been sold by Osmuhn. It became a gem with the reputation of the seller behind it; a flawless, matchless carbon. So it was with anything else one bought from Osmuhn & Son.

But if the clerks showed no particular interest, the same could not be said of the light-haired, blue-eyed young man who had been talking with two others at the end of a long glass case. A smile of welcome came to his lips as he hurried forward, hand outstretched.

“Mrs. Marle!” he exclaimed. “And Helen!”

His two hands met theirs in more than friendly clasp; the left to the woman, the right to the girl. Only one man in the shop could not see the light in the man’s eyes as he looked at the girl; but that one had recognised love in the man’s voice.

“You knew I’d be here, didn’t you, Mr. Osmuhn?” laughed the woman rippingly.

“The ruby.” It was not a question, just a smiling statement.

“Could mother ever resist a wonderful jewel?” put in the girl.

“It hasn’t been taken out of the private safe since you saw it before, three months ago,” said the younger Osmuhn. “Five-hundred-thousand-dollar rubies aren’t the playthings of the average gem-buyer.”

“Respect my weakness, please,” pouted the woman in mock pleading; then her eyes saw for the first time one of the men young Osmuhn had just left, and they lighted with pleasure.

“I must speak to Mr. Colton,” she said, and she hurried to where he was standing. The girl and the man followed slowly, talking in earnest undertones.

170Thornley Colton’s pale face lighted with pleasure as he took her hand, and his thin, expressive lips smiled their glad welcome. Only the eyes behind the great, round lenses of the smoked, tortoise-rimmed library glasses did not change. His slim stick, apparently of ebony, hung lightly from the tapering fingers of his left hand, as did the hat which a moment before had covered the snow-white hair that curled from the pink scalp.

“Now tell me where you’ve been keeping yourself!” the woman demanded severely. “No evasion! We haven’t seen you since that wonderful thing you did for the Jimmy Raeltons. It was wonderful!” she added earnestly.

“Thank you,” Colton said simply. There was no mock modesty; only quiet sincerity in his rich deep voice.

“But you didn’t answer my questions,” she smiled. She turned to the apple-cheeked, black-haired man who had stood silent. “Can you answer them for him, Mr. Thames?”

The black-haired man started nervously as she spoke, for he had been paying attention only to the beautiful girl with Osmuhn. Mrs. Marle repeated the question before he had time to stammer the apology she saw trembling on his lips.

“I am merely Mr. Colton’s secretary.” He said it a trifle stiffly, and she understood that his hypersensitive nature resented her intuitive understanding.

“I don’t like gaiety,” put in Colton quickly. “A quiet chat is my greatest pleasure. Crowds confuse me, and make my eyes nervous.” He laid his hand fondly on the other man’s shoulder, and to her eyes came womanly sympathy. She knew what Thornley Colton meant. He was blind, and the red-cheeked man beside him furnished the only eyes he knew.

171“But you’ll come to my reception to-morrow night?” she asked earnestly. “Only for a few minutes, but do come.”

“I had intended to,” he smiled.

“That’s settled,” she nodded. “Now,” she added, with mock pleading in her voice, “who is to be the happy recipient of your favour this time?” One gloved hand made a small gesture toward the trays of jewels under the glass. The blind man, whose years of practice had made him reader of every inflection, understood instantly, but young Osmuhn came up in time to answer.

“Mr. Colton has kindly consented to investigate a small matter for us,” he said nervously.

“The necklace robbery you were telling me about?” asked the girl, eyes shining.

“Here comes father.” Young Osmuhn’s face was red, his tone guilty.

Mrs. Marle repressed a smile with difficulty. She had never heard a whisper of a necklace robbery in the house of Osmuhn & Son. She understood how carefully the secret must have been guarded, and she understood also the lack of caution that was part of youth and love. But she was a wonderfully bright woman, and apparently she had not even heard her daughter’s remark. All her attention was on the stout little man with the shiny bald head and the bright eyes that gleamed from under bushy brows.

“A great pleasure, Mrs. Marle,” said the elder Osmuhn, as he bowed gravely. “You have come to see the Thousand Facets of Fire.”

“To buy it, I think,” she smiled, extending her hand.

“Ah,” murmured the gem-dealer, in a tone of quiet satisfaction. “I will show it to you at once. It is in the vault.” Then a troubled light came to 172his eyes, as they rested on Thornley Colton and Sydney Thames. Some subtle fifth sense seemed to tell the blind man the cause instantly.

“Sydney and I will wait in your office, if you don’t mind,” he put in quickly.

Osmuhn’s voice showed his relief. Experience had taught him that there was much more appreciation when the customer was alone. “My son will tell you everything,” he said. He looked around to where the other member of the firm had been standing a moment before; then shrugged his shoulders in parental helplessness. Osmuhn, junior, was leading Miss Helen Marle toward the rear of the shop.

Mrs. Marle laughed. “You would have done the same thing at his age,” she accused.

The jeweller shook his head. “I suppose so.” Then, to the blind man: “A minute only, Mr. Colton,” he apologised.

“Make it ten,” smiled Colton. “Your son told me practically everything, and I’d like to have ten minutes or so to think over the facts.”

Osmuhn turned toward the small, glass-enclosed office at the rear of the shop, from which he could see everything that went on. The blind man followed unhesitatingly, superkeen ears noting each footfall of the man who preceded him.

“Only a minute,” repeated the seller of jewels again, when the two men had been made comfortable in the two big chairs by the desk. “Come, Mrs. Marle.” He seemed to take an unnecessary step or two as he said it, and only the blind man heard the click of some secret electric connection releasing the steel door that Osmuhn opened a minute later by a curious pressure of his fingers on the knob, and a peculiar-looking key.

Mrs. Cornelius Marle, probably the richest woman 173in New York, lover of jewels because they were jewels, and not merely as ornaments, owner of what was reputed to be the finest collection of rare gems, entered the innermost citadel of the house of Osmuhn. The steel door shut softly behind her, and she knew that she was as far removed from the world outside as though she were a thousand feet underground. She knew that the tapestry-covered walls of the twelve-foot room were of eighteen-inch concrete, interlaced with steel rails; that the Winton-carpeted floor and the panelled ceiling were the same. The steel door behind her was the only opening in the walls of man-made stone.

She needed no direction to take a seat at the small Sheraton table against the wall at the far side of the vault. She had been there before; each time when Osmuhn had picked up some rare and costly jewel. The jeweller, with a soft-voiced apology, leaned over her shoulder to press the pearl-centred black button in the brass wall-plate a foot from the woman’s elbow. The table light shed its brilliance on the white velvet table-pad.

“The Thousand Facets of Fire is the most wonderful ruby I have ever seen or handled,” declared Osmuhn enthusiastically, as he stepped behind her to twirl the two combination knobs on the door of the steel safe that was imbedded in the concrete wall. “Mr. Norvel heard of it when he was in Europe last year. He negotiated for months, and sent it to me just ten days before his horrible accident in France.”

“The accident left him a hopeless cripple, did it not?” she asked politely, turning in her chair so that she could see the deft fingers at work with the combination.

“Yes.” Osmuhn’s voice was sad. “He must walk with canes always.” Then a note of pride came 174to his voice. “But he refuses to give up. He is here every day, and I need him. In the twenty-eight years he has been with me he has learned everything I know about stones, and to-day he is probably the greatest living expert on diamonds.”

The round safe-door swung open, and, with a wholly unconscious flourish, he placed the big jewel-case before her and snapped back the lid.

A thousand blood-red flashes of living fire seemed to leap upward, battling with their myriad sword points against the soft glow of the electric—then the whole room seemed lighted only by the wonderful ruby in its velvet case.

As great music hypnotises, intoxicates to sense-numbing silence, so the refraction of the ruby’s million rays held the woman spellbound. She could not speak, nor move; her eyes were held by the lights that danced and flashed from the thousand facets—now invitingly, now mockingly, but always sure of their victory.

Osmuhn’s eyes, under their bushy brows, gleamed brighter—they understood. At his first sight of the jewel he, too, had known why men had risked their lives and why women had bartered their souls and bodies for the Thousand Facets of Fire.

“Is it not well named?” he asked.

His words seemed to break the spell that bound her. She nodded as one in a dream, and put forth her fingers almost timidly to touch the flashing stone.

“Take it in your hand, feel the weight of it.” He turned away, walked the length of the room. When he came back she was holding the ruby on her palm. The velvet box had been thrust aside, and in her eyes was almost childish wonder that a thing so full of fire could be so cold.

With a quiet nod of satisfaction Osmuhn turned away again—it was no time for words. Mrs. Marle 175would want to speak in a moment; until then―⁠―. He went behind her, and bent down to the safe, his hands idly rearranging the small boxes that held the most valuable jewels in his possession; jewels that were never allowed to go from the specially-constructed safe in the specially-constructed room, unless his hands removed them.

The woman still gazed at the jewel. A wavering streamer of mist seemed to hover over it for an instant—or was it a picture the jewel had conjured in her brain? As she watched, immovable, it spread over her hand, then over the whole table—an impenetrable veil of filmy nothing. She lifted her unoccupied hand to brush her eyes.

A gasping noise came from her throat. The man behind her seemed to sense something wrong in the very sound. He wheeled, the hand that had been on the safe-door clanged it shut.

“It’s gone!” she choked. “Gone!”

The mist had vanished as it had come. The hand that never moved; the hand that had held the ruby was empty!

II.

As the steel door closed behind Osmuhn and Mrs. Marle, Thornley Colton leaned back in his chair and thoughtfully puffed a cigarette. But Sydney Thames, the secretary the blind man had picked up twenty-five years before as a bundle of baby-clothes on the bank of the English river that had given him his name, could not remain silent. The story young Osmuhn had been telling them when the Marles had interrupted was not one calculated to keep the ever-doubting Sydney still.

“What do you think of that necklace disappearance Osmuhn asked you to investigate?” he demanded.

176“One of the most interesting problems I’ve been called to solve in a long time,” answered Colton. A smile of joy curved the thin lips, for a problem, to the blind man who solved crime-puzzles as his recreation, was the greatest pleasure he knew.

“But the thing is utterly impossible!” protested Sydney. “Such a thing couldn’t have happened in broad daylight and in New York.”

“As I’ve told you once or twice before, Sydney, the fact remains that it did happen. And there must be some explanation.”

Sydney shook his head. “The statement that a man in full possession of his senses could stare blankly at a two-hundred-thousand-dollar diamond necklace while it disappeared into a thin mist before his very eyes is a trifle too strong for me,” he averred stoutly.

“Do you think young Osmuhn is lying?” smiled Colton.

“He seems to be absolutely straight,” hesitated Sydney. “But his story―⁠―” The rest was obvious.

The smile on the blind man’s face broadened. “But consider his frankness in telling of it, Sydney. If he’d been lying I imagine he’d have concocted a better story than that. Consider how every detail of the disappearance is firmly impressed in his mind. The robbery, for that’s what it was, occurred after closing hours, when all the clerks and other employees had gone. Only the younger Osmuhn and the diamond-expert for the firm were on the premises. Norvel, the expert, seeing young Osmuhn behind the long case in the shop, wanted to show him the completed diamond necklace that was to be delivered at the Nevin home next day. He laid it before Osmuhn, and together they examined it for possible flaws. Norvel placed his cane on the case while he 177took a cigarette from his pocket. Finding he had no matches, he limped with the aid of his other cane to his overcoat, which he had thrown over the back of a chair five feet or so away. A gasp from Osmuhn caused him to turn, with the overcoat still on his arm. He saw the other man staring wildly at the place where, a few minutes before, the diamond necklace had been. Osmuhn swears that, while Norvel was walking toward his overcoat, a thick mist, which he describes as not unlike steam, appeared over the necklace, completely hiding it from his eyes. He confesses that the thing was so remarkable that for an instant he could do nothing but stare. Then the mist began to dissolve, and he saw that the necklace had vanished utterly. His gasp caused Norvel to turn. Norvel hadn’t seen the mist, for it had entirely disappeared when he had hobbled back to the case. Together they searched for the missing diamonds without finding a trace. Also, without leaving one another’s sight for an instant, they telephoned to the elder Osmuhn, and sat watching one another for their mutual protection, until he and a private detective came. They submitted to a thorough search, and took part in the all-night hunt for the jewels that covered every part of the store and building. Why, the very impossibility of the story stamps it with truth!”

“But Norvel was there,” reminded Sydney.

“He had no possible chance of touching the necklace. He had turned away, and his back was toward Osmuhn.”

“But the mist?” persisted Sydney. “That is the impossible part of the whole thing. How, in Heaven’s name, could there be a mist such as he describes in a New York jewellery shop? It’s absurd!”

“Not absurd, Sydney,” corrected the problemist 178mildly. “Merely the solution; the solution of the whole thing.”

The smile went from his face, he leaned forward with a sudden tenseness of face and body; the delicate nostrils quivered like those of a hound scenting a new trail.

“Something’s wrong inside, Sydney!” His sightless eyes were fixed on the closed, soundproof door, his head was bent forward expectantly. Then he straightened back in his chair, and was quietly puffing his cigarette when the door opened, and the elder Osmuhn, white-faced, trembling, staggered out of the vault-room.

“It’s gone!” He choked the words just as the woman had choked them a few minutes before. “The Thousand Facets of Fire has vanished!”

The blind man had risen at the first word, and before the gem-dealer had finished speaking he had brushed past him, the thin, hollow stick that gave its messages to the hypersensitive finger-tips locating the steps unerringly.

The sobbing, hysterical woman at the small table did not even look up as he laid his hand gently on her shoulder, but he felt her body shudder under the touch, as though her overwrought mind had already pictured visions of the police.

“Tell me how it happened, Mrs. Marle.” The words were soft-spoken, kindly.

“There is nothing to tell,” she sobbed. “The ruby just—went.”

“Dissolved into mist?”

She looked up, sudden, wild hope showing behind the tears in her eyes. “Would you believe that?” she asked breathlessly. “It seems so—impossible—I was afraid―⁠―.”

“I know that is how it disappeared,” Thornley Colton said quietly. “Mr. Osmuhn will tell you that 179a diamond necklace vanished in the same way nearly ten days ago.”

The white-faced jeweller brushed his sweat-beaded forehead with a shaking hand. “Yes,” he groaned, “that, and this ruby, will bring the loss to nearly three-quarters of a million. But it couldn’t have happened!” he declared, almost fiercely. “Mrs. Marle was holding it in her hand! I wasn’t two feet away. The walls are solid concrete! There isn’t a crack in them!” Each staccato sentence was jerked out almost passionately. Osmuhn seemed to be trying to convince himself, as well as his hearers, that the thing he knew had happened was utterly impossible.

Colton paid no attention. He spoke to the woman, still quietly, gently, smoothing his questions so that they became merely statements for which he wanted confirmation.

“You knew the ruby was gone, even before your eyes saw the empty hand?”

Osmuhn and Sydney Thames came closer to the little table.

“Yes.” She spoke more calmly. “I raised my other hand to brush my eyes—I thought it was an optical illusion of some kind—then I felt the stone—go.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she faltered, looking from one to the other in bewilderment. “I could see nothing but the thick mist that seemed to cover the whole table. Then—I suddenly felt my outstretched hand relieved of the weight. It—seemed to just fly away!”

“A ruby weighing nearly two hundred carats would make a very good flyer,” observed the blind man smilingly. Then: “But the mist, wasn’t it a trick of the lights?”

180She shook her head. “Mist is the only word that describes it. When my eyes first noticed it, it was a ribbon that widened almost instantly to hide the whole table, though the light shone above it perfectly. I know that last unconsciously, for I think the jewel had hypnotised me—I couldn’t take my eyes away, even when the mist hid it from sight.”

“Where is the switch for the table-light? Snap it off, Mr. Osmuhn.”

The jeweller leaned across the table to obey. Colton examined every inch of the table-light with his fingers.

“Absolutely nothing there,” he murmured. Then his fingers felt the two buttons in the brass plate that he had made the jeweller locate for him. He snapped the light on again, then off, and back.

“It wasn’t a trick of the light,” he declared emphatically. “Nor of your eyes, Mrs. Marle.” He stood erect. “Tell your son to come here, Mr. Osmuhn,” he said quietly.

The white-faced jeweller almost tottered from the small room. The instant that Osmuhn’s footsteps told the blind man that he had gone through the door, Thornley Colton spoke.

“Mrs. Marle.” His voice was crisp, imperative. “At the instant you first saw the mist, was it as wide as a ribbon?”

She answered steadily enough, despite the sudden change in the blind man’s tone: “Yes, it seemed to stretch over the table lengthways, waving slightly, as a ribbon would do in a breath of air, but almost instantly it widened and widened, until it covered the whole table.” There was only a slight tremor in her voice, but in her eyes was awe, as she spoke of the inexplicable thing her eyes had seen.

“Mr. Osmuhn had his back toward you?”

“Yes.”

181“How do you know that?”

She smiled wanly up at him, forgetting, as people usually did when Colton was speaking, that he could see nothing. “I don’t know it because I saw him,” she replied, “but I do know it because he always turns toward the small safe back of this chair, and idly arranges the jewel-cases on the shelves when a customer is examining one of the rare gems he keeps in this room. He knows the value of silence when a lover of jewels is looking at a wonderful stone like the Thousand Facets of Fire.”

Colton smiled understanding; then wheeled to face the door as Osmuhn entered, followed by his son. Following them, unnoticed, came Helen Marle. She took her place behind her mother without a word.

“Father says the ruby has vanished!” cried the younger Osmuhn, and his voice, and eyes, and very manner seemed a wild plea for denial.

Colton merely nodded. “Utterly,” he confirmed. “Just as the necklace disappeared—into a mist. Now tell me, Mr. Osmuhn,” he continued quietly, “what was the appearance of the mist when you first saw it over the necklace on the glass case outside?”

“Why, it was just a mist,” stammered the son. “Just a cloud that spread instantly.”

“You never lifted your eyes from the stones?”

“I don’t think so—though I may have looked up for an instant as Mr. Norvel started toward his coat.”

“Cloud—ribbon,” murmured the blind man, apparently to himself, tapping his trouser-leg with his slim stick.

“That wonderful ruby—gone!” muttered the elder Osmuhn, sinking, almost inertly, into a chair at the other side of the small table.

182“My God!” They all turned, as the cry burst from the man who had entered the vault-room unnoticed. The new comer was a cripple who hobbled along with the aid of two heavy black canes. But it was the lean, intelligent face, with the coal-black eyes and the thin nose, that held Sydney’s gaze. Mentality was stamped in every deep-graven line, but now there seemed a pitiful helplessness in the tremulous lips of the man as he advanced toward them.

“Mr. Norvel?” Colton stepped to meet the man with outstretched hand. Then he answered the surprised looks some inner consciousness told him was on the faces of the other persons in the room: “Mr. Osmuhn told me of you when we were talking outside, and the tap of your canes as you entered was all the identification I needed.”

“Yes, I am Mr. Norvel.” The words came almost gaspingly, and Colton felt the man’s hand tremble in his. “I was in my office when I saw Mr. Osmuhn speak to Henry. I knew there was something wrong with the Thousand Facets of Fire, and―⁠―.”

He gasped chokingly, and staggered. Osmuhn jumped from his chair with a cry of concern, the sight of the man before him momentarily driving from his mind even the loss of the great ruby. “Sit down, Philip,” he commanded, leading the crippled man to a chair.

“These things—are taking the life out of me,” gasped the diamond expert of the firm. “The necklace—then this!”

“Mr. Norvel is on the verge of collapse,” whispered young Osmuhn. “He has had valvular heart trouble for years. The loss of the diamond necklace he had worked on upset him terribly—and he worked for months to get the Thousand Facets of Fire.”

183Colton nodded sympathetically. “He should take a long rest,” murmured the blind man.

Norvel heard him. “I’ll get it soon,” he said helplessly, “in the grave.”

“You have years before you yet,” smiled Colton encouragingly. “Disappearances like these are calculated to frazzle the best of nerves.” Then, in the same gentle tone he had used in questioning Mrs. Marle, he went on: “Mr. Osmuhn told me of the terrible auto accident you had in France last summer, Mr. Norvel. Your driver and the occupant of the other car were killed, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” the cripple shuddered. “And it made an old man of me, that and my rotten heart.”

Again Thornley Colton nodded sympathetically. “You hovered between life and death for several months, I understand?”

“Practically dead,” Norvel answered.

“Um!” The blind man rolled the thin stick between his slender fingers, and puzzled lines appeared on his forehead.

“What is the object of those questions?” demanded the elder Osmuhn, and he could not keep the impatience from his voice.

“A long chance, nothing more,” Colton assured him quietly. “A chance that Mr. Norvel, in his delirium, might have told secrets that gave the criminal information necessary to commit these robberies.”

The diamond expert half rose from his chair, his hands clutching his heavy canes. “That may be true—I may be responsible!”

“Ridiculous!” snapped Osmuhn, and he made no attempt to keep the impatience from his tone now.

“We can’t afford to overlook even the remotest possibility in a case like this,” said Thornley Colton evenly.

184Norvel lowered the hand that had been clutching at his heart. “Why don’t you search?” he cried. “The stone couldn’t have gotten out of the room! The walls are of solid concrete, impregnable. The ruby must be here!”

The elder Osmuhn looked around nervously, eyes travelling from one face to the other, seeking vainly for some way out. Mrs. Marle rose and slipped her arm around the waist of her daughter.

“I will submit to a search,” she said quietly.

“Thank you! Thank you!” Osmuhn fairly choked his relief. “I will get Miss―⁠―.”

“Do you want to search Sydney and me?” asked Thornley Colton, with a half smile on his expressive lips.

“I don’t think it is necessary; you weren’t―⁠―.” Osmuhn stopped, understanding that he had practically admitted that Mrs. Marle was the only one on whom suspicion rested. His son opened his mouth to protest, but the woman forestalled him.

“I understand,” she said steadily.

“Then we will go; it is long past my lunch-hour.” The blind man’s fingers touched the crystalless watch in his pocket.

“Don’t you want to know the result of the search?” Osmuhn asked blankly.

“I know it now,” said the blind man, with that same curious smile on his lips. “Good-bye, Mr. Osmuhn.” He shook hands heartily with the jeweller, and held the woman’s hand in his for an instant.

“I shall be at your reception to-morrow night,” he reminded, and she murmured a steady-voiced “Thank you.”

The blind man touched the fingers of the daughter, clasped the palm of the younger Osmuhn and that of Norvel, and hurried out, leaving them staring after him.

185It was not until he and Sydney were in the big car on their way to the old-fashioned up-town house and luncheon that Thornley Colton spoke.

“One of the most remarkable crimes I’ve ever had the good fortune to work on, Sydney. And a remarkable thief—a criminal with an imagination.”

“But how did they vanish; where did the ruby and the necklace go?” asked Sydney Thames helplessly.

“Regarding the first part of your double-barrelled question: Is it possible, after all you have heard, that you don’t know how they vanish?” The smile on the thin lips was inscrutable. “Where they go, Sydney, is not half so important as where they are. That’s where the work comes in. I am sure that I know where the Thousand Facets of Fire is, but I don’t know where the necklace is. I never half complete a case. By waiting I can get both the necklace and the ruby. By jumping recklessly I can arrest the criminal and recover the ruby; but I’m not a detective, Sydney; problems are merely my recreation. So I’ll recover both.”

“The ruby!” exclaimed Sydney. “You know where that is?”

“Certainly,” nodded Colton, snapping his smoked cigarette into the street. “The thief has been safe because he has worked against men who have imaginations that are handicapped by eyes. My imagination is unhampered. As I told Osmuhn, the search will reveal nothing, despite the fact that the ruby is just about three feet from the place where it disappeared!”

III.

The red-haired boy with the slightly twisted nose who had become a member of the Colton household as the only fee to a particularly baffling murder 186case, shifted from one foot to the other in an ecstasy of joy, listening intently and eagerly as the blind man talked. When Thornley Colton had finished, he could contain himself no longer.

“Gee! I’m gettin’ to be a reg’ler detective. Yuh reelly want me to trail him?” He asked the last anxiously, fearful lest he had heard wrong.

“Yes,” smiled the problemist. “Shadow him.”

“B’lieve me, Mr. Colton.” The boy’s eyes were round and serious. “If I locate that nigger, I’ll show him Nick Carter ain’t got nothin’ on me. An’ I’ll find him, too!” he boasted.

“There’s a Hindu somewhere around,” nodded Colton. “He doesn’t amount to much, except as a trail to the real criminal, but I expect him to do a certain thing, and I want to make sure of it. That’s all.”

“I’ll get him,” chirped the boy, and, pulling his cap down over his ears, he darted from the room.

Colton snapped out the light and sat puffing his cigarette in the darkness. For half an hour he did not move, except to light a new cigarette. Sydney Thames entered with a slip of paper in his hand, and Colton switched on the light again.

“Three boats leave this week,” announced Sydney. “The Bordeaux to-morrow, the Trevoila Thursday, and the Paris Saturday.”

“I think that last is about it,” mused Colton, his thin fingers beating a devil’s tattoo on the arm of his chair.

“What?”

“The date of the thief’s departure for Europe.”

“The date of―⁠―,” gasped Sydney.

Thornley Colton nodded. “He’ll have time for that one after he finds out that the next trick he’s going to play hasn’t thrown me off the track. He doesn’t realise—yet—the possibilities of blindness; 187he doesn’t understand that the things which deceive the ordinary man only make facts clearer to me.” Colton pushed the desk-button that would summon the automobile at any hour of the twenty-four. “Let’s take in a matinée, Sydney,” he said, rising.

That afternoon, and that night, not a word was said regarding the remarkable thefts at the shop of Osmuhn & Son. Thornley Colton had apparently forgotten all about it. Early the next morning he answered an anxious query from Osmuhn by saying that he was hard at work, and immediately after he idled away two hours in his music-room. At ten o’clock the telephone rang, and the puzzled Sydney heard the following one-sided conversation:—

“Hello, Shrimp. English valet, eh? Funny! What! Invalid who has a Hindu servant that wheels him out every afternoon at four o’clock? Hindu went away alone at ten o’clock this morning? Where? Good! Good! That’s all now. Go to one of your moving-picture shows for the rest of the day.”

There was a broad smile on his lips as he hung up the receiver.

“What is it?” asked Sydney.

“Just another example of how a clever man will accomplish his object in a clever way. Look up Irotette’s number, will you? I haven’t got it on my list.”

“The caterer?”

“Yes.” When Colton got the connection, and gave his name, there was no doubt of his standing with New York society’s biggest caterer. “I want a favour,” he said, when the head of the firm was at the other end of the wire. “An exceptionally intelligent-looking coloured man just applied for a night’s work at Mrs. Marle’s reception to-night. 188You took him? I thought you would, for I know the difficulty of getting good men for a big affair like that. Now for the favour. Can you fix it so that his work will allow him the freedom of the rooms? Thanks!”

Sydney started to ask a question, but the blind man forestalled him. “To-morrow you’ll know all about it,” he promised.

Sydney realised that Colton would not say a word till the time came, and, under protest, he accompanied the problemist to the Marle reception that night. Colton apparently enjoyed every minute of the time, but Sydney, as usual, was on edge continuously, for his fear of pretty women amounted almost to an obsession. Even the wonderful personality of Mrs. Marle, who went from one guest to another, as though she had not a care in the world, and as though the disappearance of the ruby had never occurred, was not able to put him at his ease.

Promptly at eleven o’clock next morning Colton summoned his car. “We’re going to make a party call on Mrs. Marle,” was the way he answered Sydney’s question.

“Didn’t you get enough last night?” groaned Thames.

“Quite,” nodded the blind man, “but did you notice that bright-looking serving man with the coal-black eyes? Mrs. Marle pointed him out to me. He is the Hindu whom I spoke to Irotette about.”

“Hindu?” ejaculated Sydney. “Why should a Hindu be serving ices at a fool reception?”

“Because he had a little job to do. I’m going to call on Mrs. Marle this morning, and see how he did it,” replied Colton, as he pulled on his gloves.

When Mrs. Marle appeared, Sydney Thames had hard work to repress a gasp of astonishment. Last night she had been happy, cheerful. Now she was 189haggard, there were circles under her eyes, and her hand trembled as she held it out.

“An unexpected pleasure, Mr. Colton.” She tried to say it graciously, but her voice shook, and there was a piteous look in her eyes.

Thornley Colton spoke quietly, evenly. “The ruby, please.” The words struck the astounded Sydney like a pistol-shot.

The woman choked a sob in her throat, and swayed slightly. Thornley Colton led her gently to a chair.

“I didn’t take it!” she cried brokenly. “I didn’t! I’m not a thief! I found it in my jewel-case last night. I don’t know how it got there—and Helen saw it, too!” The last words came in a sobbing gasp.

“Of course you didn’t take it!” declared Colton. “You haven’t even got it!” She looked up, searching his eyes to find the truth she had prayed for during the long hours of the night.

“You mean it! You know!” Her hand was on his arm; pleading, joy unutterable was in her voice.

“I didn’t think that you would find it until this morning,” Colton said contritely. “It was placed there last night by an accomplice of the real thief. I knew it would be. The thief realised that he must throw some dust in the eyes of all of us. He failed to understand that dust wouldn’t affect my eyes. The ruby you have is only an imitation, but it would have served its purpose. Let me have it.”

“Yes! Yes! Take it!” The hysteria of reaction was in her voice; she held out her left hand, and the red stone gleamed as the folds of the covering handkerchief fell away from it. “I must tell Helen—I asked her to call up Mr. Osmuhn.”

“I’m going to see him now,” Colton told her, 190and he hurried out, followed by her tremulous thanks.

The elder Osmuhn seemed on the verge of nervous prostration when they arrived at the shop. He jumped from the chair in his glass-enclosed office, and fairly ran to meet them.

“I’ve been trying to get you for fifteen minutes!” he said hoarsely. “Mrs. Marle has the ruby. Henry has just gone there. I never thought―⁠―.”

“I have seen Mrs. Marle,” said Colton sharply. “You should know her better than that. The ruby she had was a mere imitation. Here it is.”

Osmuhn snatched it eagerly, glanced at it, and groaned. “But how did she get this stone?” he demanded. “It is exactly the same weight and cut as the Thousand Facets of Fire. She saw the ruby three months ago!” There was suspicion in his voice now. “She is the only one in New York who did see it! No one could have made an imitation so exactly in the few hours since the original was stolen. And her story of the disappearance was so impossible!” Hours of brooding over the loss of the stone had apparently done their work.

“Don’t you believe your son’s story of the necklace disappearance?” asked Colton impatiently.

“But she has a passion for jewels. The ruby must have destroyed―⁠―.”

“If she had stolen it, she would have had more sense than bring this new suspicion against herself. I’ll get the thief, also the ruby and necklace. But I’ll get him in my own way and my own time. You’d better wait. Good day!”

Leaving the head of the house of Osmuhn & Son staring, mouth agape, he left the shop. Thornley Colton never had patience with men who couldn’t see through a ladder when God had given them eyes.

191“Telephone-booth, Sydney,” the blind man said, when they were out of the shop. “I’m going to put joy into the heart of Shrimp. Then we’ll kill a few hours before the next act. This is a show with long intermissions.”

The next three hours seemed the longest Sydney Thames had ever spent. They went to an up-town restaurant, and Colton ate as though there was not another thing worth thinking about in the world. Sydney was a flutter of impatience. He couldn’t enjoy his food; the music of the orchestra grated on his nerves; the waiter angered him by his continued hovering. But Sydney knew the futility of questioning the blind man. He knew that each apparently irrelevant thing the blind man had done would lead logically to the finish of the case. But what was the finish? Who was the thief? Where were the jewels that Thornley Colton expected to get by waiting?

At last the crystalless watch told the blind man that the time had come. “We’ll take a little walk along Ninety-first Street,” he said. “I expect to meet a white-haired invalid in a wheel-chair, with a Hindu servant. Watch for him.”

They reached Ninety-first Street, and strolled along casually; two idlers out for an afternoon walk. Suddenly Sydney saw the invalid.

“A man in a wheel-chair was just brought out of that brownstone house a block up the street. The man wheeling him is coloured.”

“Don’t notice him,” warned Colton.

They walked slowly toward the on-coming wheel-chair. Sydney tried his best to appear as calm as the blind man, but he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. What was going to happen? The street, for a block, was deserted, save for them, the two others, and a ragged street gamin, who was 192speeding along the smooth pavement on roller skates.

Sydney could see the man in the chair plainly now. His long, white hair almost touched his shoulders, the white beard swept his breast, and came up almost to his eyes. His legs were wrapped tight in a red blanket, and a shawl was thrown over his shoulders.

Only five feet separated them. As they stepped out to let the chair go past, the gamin, with a wild whoop, came speeding up in back of the chair, head down. He skated straight at the Hindu servant, struck him, and bowled him over. With a shriek of joy he continued on his way after staggering Sydney Thames as he brushed past him.

Colton leaped forward with a cry of mingled anger and sympathy. His hand on the round iron handle of the chair kept it from going over, and he grasped one of the big knobs at the handle-ends to steady himself as he helped the muttering servant to his feet.

“Little devil!” snapped the invalid, in a high-pitched, querulous voice. Then, as Thornley Colton stepped in front of him: “Thank you, young man.”

“He should be arrested,” declared Colton emphatically. He held out his hand. “I am blind,” he apologised. “Will you shake the hand of another of the afflicted? My secretary described you to me as you came along.”

“Well, you’re no worse off than I am,” cackled the man in the chair. “I see too devilish much! Good day.”

Colton bowed and stood aside. The impassive-faced servant pushed the chair down the side-walk.

“It’s a crime the way those gamins carry on,” muttered Sydney, when they had walked a hundred yards or so in silence.

193Colton chuckled. “I’ll have to tell Shrimp how good his disguise was,” he laughed.

“Shrimp!” echoed Sydney in amazement.

“Certainly.” Thornley Colton grinned broadly. “He was on hand to give our Hindu friend a bump when the proper time came.”

“In Heaven’s name why?”

“So that I could locate the probable hiding-place of the ruby and the necklace when the time came for hiding them there. Also, to give me a chance to shake the hand of the man who stole them. Davidson is the invalid’s name. Quite a character, isn’t he?”

IV.

In the darkened music-room Thornley Colton’s fingers wandered idly over the keys, now improvising, now filling the room with the ever-living soul of Beethoven, now swinging crashingly into Wagner; then his fingers on the upper treble brought forth a strange discord of notes through which ran a weird minor melody. The last seemed to please him, for he repeated it, until Sydney Thames, who had been nervously pacing the room, stopped in his tracks.

“What the deuce do you call that?” he demanded, the discords still ringing in his ears. “It’s horrible!”

“Because it doesn’t agree with your orthodox ideas of music,” declared Colton seriously. “That is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I know. It is a Hindustan adaptation of the ‘Chinese Flute Song’ of Siao She. It is a fitting accompaniment for this latest case of ours.”

“And just as understandable,” observed Sydney, walking up and down the room again. Colton turned again toward the keys, and Sydney broke out impatiently: “Why don’t you do something, Thorn? 194Two whole days have passed since you found the man who stole the ruby, and you haven’t done a thing! Osmuhn suspects Mrs. Marle, and she is on the verge of collapse. You haven’t made an attempt to clear up the mystery. It isn’t right! Osmuhn is rapidly losing his patience; his son must stand helplessly by and see the mother of the girl he loves suspected; and the thing is making a nervous wreck of Norvel. It is only a matter of days when he will have to leave the business for good.”

“Osmuhn’s patience became exhausted last night,” Thornley Colton said. “He advised me that he had lost faith in my efforts, and that he was going to call in the police.”

“Great Heaven!” exclaimed Sydney. “That means that they will arrest Mrs. Marle!” It only needed a woman in trouble to put the susceptible Sydney Thames at sixes and sevens.

“I think even the police will hesitate before arresting a woman like Mrs. Marle on mere suspicion,” the blind man declared.

The electric bell at the front door sent out its announcement.

“See who it is, will you? Shrimp is out on a little job for me.”

Sydney hurried out, and the problemist’s sensitive finger-tips felt the face of the crystalless watch in his pocket. A frown furrowed his forehead for a minute. He went into the library, and was sitting at the desk which held the telephone when Sydney came back, followed by Henry Osmuhn, junior.

“They are going to arrest Helen’s mother!” burst out Osmuhn the instant he crossed the threshold.

Colton’s mobile face expressed sympathy. “I don’t think they will,” he assured quietly.

“But they’re going to!” cried Osmuhn fiercely. 195“My father put the thing into the hands of the police yesterday afternoon. The days of brooding over the loss of the Thousand Facets of Fire have driven him half crazy. The finding of the imitation ruby in Mrs. Marle’s possession, and your refusal to explain what you are waiting for, have driven every bit of commonsense from him. Detectives badgered her for two hours last night. She is on the verge of hysteria. And Helen―⁠―.” He paced up and down the room like a caged tiger, each word tumbling over the other as it came from his lips; his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. The sensitive-nerved Sydney Thames caught the contagion.

“It’s a crime to let those innocent women suffer, while you sit there, calmly smoking a cigarette!” charged the secretary bitterly. He turned away as the blind man’s lips curved in a smile. “He has known the thief for two days!” he told Osmuhn, beside himself at the injustice of the problemist.

“He knows the thief!” Osmuhn stopped dead in his tracks, staring incredulously at Sydney. Then he whirled to face the blind man, who sat quietly back in his chair, blowing smoke-rings towards the ceiling. “Why don’t you have him arrested?” he demanded, voice high with excitement.

“Because I want to get the jewels,” answered the blind man.

“But a search, a confession, will―⁠―.”

“Do you suppose that a man with the daring and cleverness necessary to accomplish those robberies would either confess or hide the stones where they could be found?” he asked, a trifle impatiently. “I’m waiting for the thief to hide the jewels in a place where I can find them. That will be when he is about to start away. To arrest him before would mean an endless search. You must understand that 196the thief who could commit robberies like those is a wonderfully clever man. I know that he is marvellous, for he is the only man I ever saw whose heart-beats failed to show any emotion whatever.”

“Who is the thief!” asked Osmuhn soberly. All the excitement and incredulity had gone from his voice now.

“A man who calls himself Davidson; an invalid who is wheeled around by a Hindu servant for an hour or so each afternoon. He is never seen at other times. He lives next door to Mr. Norvel, your diamond-expert.”

“So that’s how he knew!” cried Osmuhn, eye alight with understanding. “Was he in France when Mr. Norvel’s accident occurred?” The question Colton had put at the time of the ruby robbery flashed back in his mind.

The blind man nodded. “I am going to see him the minute my boy calls me up and tells me that he is getting ready to start to the steamer Paris, which sails at noon to-day.”

The jangling telephone-bell came as a period to the sentence. Colton removed the receiver, listened a moment, said a single “All right, Shrimp,” and rose. “The curtain is up for the last act,” he said soberly. He pulled open a drawer of the desk and took out a wicked-looking blued-steel automatic and slipped it into his side coat-pocket.

“There won’t be any need of that?” Osmuhn asked nervously.

“The man we are going after isn’t the kind that holds his hands out for the steel bracelets,” replied the problemist grimly.

“But you are blind!” cried Osmuhn. “You can’t see!”

The blind man’s smile was one of amusement as he answered: “If I had not been blind, I wouldn’t 197have solved this case, and, if I’m not mistaken in my man, my lack of eyes is going to do more toward his actual capture than your keen ones. I have an idea you’ll see another mysterious disappearance—of men this time.”

He slipped on his overcoat and led them out of the house and into the waiting car, which had stood at the curb for the last half-hour. There was not a word spoken by the three men until the car turned into Ninety-first Street.

“Hadn’t we better stop at the corner and walk?” asked Osmuhn, as the car continued on and swerved in toward the curb before the brownstone house.

Colton flicked his cigarette away and shook his head. “I guess Mr. Davidson is expecting us. I’ve had Shrimp working pretty openly in the last day or two. I think the thief will want to pull off one last grand-stand play before he leaves.”

The red-haired boy who had been leaning against a tree at the other side of the street ran over and hopped on the run-board.

“Kin I go in with yuh, Mr. Colton?” he asked eagerly, eyes shining with excitement.

The blind man shook his head. “No, Shrimp,” he denied. “You go over and telephone for the police. We’ll need them in a few minutes.”

The boy’s face showed his disappointment, but he tried bravely to keep it out of his voice. “All right, sir,” he said, with an assumed cheeriness that was pathetic.

Sydney opened the tonneau-door, and Colton alighted, his slim stick before him locating the way up the wide stone steps. His lips were a grim, straight line as he pushed the button, and Osmuhn saw him put his hand in his pocket to assure himself that the automatic was ready for instant use. The nerves of the junior Osmuhn were taut, and his 198muscles tensed as the door swung back and the grave-faced Hindu that the disguised Shrimp had bowled over two days before stood looking at them gravely.

“What wish the Sahibs?” His voice was deep and rich. He had only muttered when they had seen him last.

“Is Mr. Davidson in?” asked Colton politely. Sydney thought he saw a gleam of fire in the Hindu’s dark eyes for an instant.

“Sahib Davidson is busied. He starts for the German baths at noon on the boat.”

“It is highly important.” The blind man’s voice was suave.

From somewhere in the rear of the house came the piping, querulous voice of the invalid: “Who the devil is it, Pinjur?”

“I know not, Sahib,” called the Hindu, in reply.

“The blind man who spoke to him two days ago when the boy of the street nearly upset his chair,” enlightened Thornley Colton, and the ears of the old man were keen, for they heard.

“Send him in!” snapped the squeaky voice. “And come in yourself. There’s a very devil of a draft!”

The Hindu stood aside gravely as they entered, closed the door carefully behind them, and, with a bowed invitation to follow, led the way down the hall toward the library.

Osmuhn’s tense muscles relaxed, and a gasp of amazement came to his lips as they stepped inside the semi-darkened room, and he saw the white-haired, white-bearded old man Thornley Colton had declared was the thief who had stolen the Thousand Facets of Fire and the diamond necklace. Could this be the man, who, by some infernal magic, had 199caused three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of jewels to disappear while people watched them?

The old man drew himself closer to the desk, with his white hands on the wheels of his steel-framed chair, and peered at them short-sightedly.

“What do you want, gentlemen?” he piped. “I haven’t but a minute. Have I, Pinjur?” He darted a queer, bird-like glance toward the Indian servant, who stood, straight-backed, before the one window that broke the lines of high bookshelves surrounding the room. The Hindu bowed.

Colton advanced half a step toward the desk. “We want,” he said, slowly and distinctly, “the Thousand Facets of Fire and the diamond necklace!”

The old man’s cackling laugh came from the white beard even before the last word had been uttered. “You want the ruby, eh?” he squealed, his hand falling on the desk before him. “He wants the necklace, too, Pinjur.”

Osmuhn’s eyes turned toward the Hindu; he saw the Indian lift one hand—then a rising curtain of mist seemed to hide him! Another rose over the desk! In an instant the two had joined, and a solid wall of fog, dense, impenetrable, hid half of the room.

“The mist!” he cried, falling back a step, the fear of the supernatural in his eyes.

He saw Thornley Colton leap forward; saw him swallowed up—vanish utterly. He could not move, nor could Sydney Thames beside him. They both heard a weird, gurgling cry, an oath in a strange language. Then the report of a pistol echoed through the room; the flash showed yellow-pink through the mist.

Thornley Colton’s voice rang out:—

“Fling open the door!” The words loosed the leaden muscles of Sydney Thames. He sprang to obey. The current of air seemed to tear the mist 200to shreds instantly. Osmuhn took a half-step forward—stopped. Horror showed on his face for an instant; then amazement.

On the floor beside the bookcase lay the Hindu. The blood from his wound was staining the carpet. Beside him was a curious-looking knife, with the point stained a dull green. But Thornley Colton and the invalid had vanished utterly!

The line of bookcases was still unbroken. The wheel-chair was where it had been before, but the occupant and the blind man were gone!

Fascinated, horror-stricken, the two men gazed at the empty chair and the silent form of the Indian. A soft click sounded like a pistol-shot in the death stillness of the room. A section of the case swung outward, and Thornley Colton, his overcoat slashed from shoulder to waist, stood before them, smiling grimly.

“My God, Thorn!” gasped Sydney, his strictured heart beating once more.

“Is there any blood on that knife-point, Sydney?” asked the blind man quietly.

Thames picked up the knife to examine it.

“Careful,” warned the problemist. “By the way he slashed at me I think there is one of the devilish Indian poisons on the point.”

Osmuhn and Sydney looked at the green-stained point, the slashed coat of the man who stood before them, smiling calmly, as he awaited the verdict of life or death.

“No,” choked Sydney. He staggered against the wall. “Thank God! Thank God!” he prayed, eyes on the man who had been the only father he had ever known.

Thornley Colton dismissed his escape with a nod and spoke to the white-faced Osmuhn. “I think I told you that eyes would be of very little use in the 201denouement. I knew the man, and the chances he’d take. I expected the fog. The game was to spring open the secret door, wheel the man and the chair inside, and leave us gaping idiotically. Would you like to see the thief; the cleverest, most daring I have ever encountered?”

He stepped aside. Dazedly Osmuhn and Sydney followed, only to stop at the doorway.

Manacled on the floor was the thief. Beside him, in a little heap, was the white wig and beard.

The thief was Norvel, the diamond expert!

“No,” said Thornley Colton, “it isn’t Norvel. It is the man who has been impersonating him for months. The man who lay in a French hospital learning every secret of the real Norvel, as he raved in delirium following the accident. Where Norvel is―⁠―.” He paused significantly.

“His carcass is feeding fishes in the Seine!” snarled the crippled man. Then he burst into a vicious, sneering laugh. “Find the jewels?” he taunted.

“Easily.” Colton went through the door that Sydney and Osmuhn now knew connected Norvel’s house with the one next door. He wrenched off one of the knobs at the end of the wheel-chair handle. They saw the red flash of the ruby as he held it up to the light.

“The necklace and the dozen other jewels that haven’t yet been missed are in the hollow handle,” he said quietly.

V.

It was several hours later. In the ornately furnished vault at the shop of Osmuhn & Son were the younger Osmuhn and Helen Marle, seated side by side in two Heppelwhite chairs, their hands clasped, unashamed. At the small table was Osmuhn, 202senior; across from him, where she had been when the wonderful ruby disappeared, was Mrs. Marle.

Young Osmuhn jumped to his feet as footsteps sounded outside.

“Here he comes!” his voice rang out joyously, as Thornley Colton entered, a long, paper-wrapped bundle under his arm.

Osmuhn, senior, came forward and held out his hand. “I can never thank you enough,” he said brokenly.

“Thank me?” smiled the blind man. “The thanks are all on my side. It was the most interesting problem I ever tackled.”

He laid down the long bundle on the small table, and took Mrs. Marle’s extended hand. She did not say a word, but the expression on her face told volumes; and she understood that the man without eyes knew.

“Now tell us how it was all done,” broke in Helen Marle eagerly. “Henry has just told us how wonderful you were at the house. Tell us how the ruby vanished.”

The irrepressible curiosity of the girl brought a smile to the blind man’s lips. “I’ll start right at the beginning,” he promised. “At the police station the false Norvel consented to talk—a little. The Hindu is in the hospital. The two of them followed the Thousand Facets of Fire all through Europe, trying to get their hands on it. The real Norvel bought it before they had a chance to steal it, and substitute the imitation they had had made. Not knowing that he had already sent it to America, they were following Norvel when their automobile crashed into his on the outskirts of an obscure French village. The drivers of both cars were killed. Norvel got a knock on the head that resulted in concussion of the brain.

“The thief, who refuses to tell his name, or anything 203of his history, had both hips broken, and was made a cripple for life. But he is a wonderful man. He had a cot next to Norvel, and for weeks he heard Norvel rave of his past life, the ruby, the business—things that are reiterated over and over in the raving of delirium. The thief realised what the knowledge was worth. The fake news of Norvel’s death went out. When he had recovered sufficiently to leave the hospital, he was murdered, and the thief became Norvel. He returned here, a changed man, but there was never a chance for suspicion. He was a wonderful actor. He knew everything that Norvel had known, and he knew jewels even better than Norvel himself.

“His Hindu partner and an Englishman who merely played the role of Norvel’s valet came with him. But the thief was a master. The crude stealing made possible by his position didn’t appeal to him. He wanted excitement, to astound people. So he planned to make a million by the cleverest thefts ever committed in the world. The Hindu had learned secrets from the greatest yogi in India, and he was a wonderful worker in gold plate and other metals. For weeks he worked and produced these.” Colton stripped the paper from the long bundle, and the two heavy canes Norvel had always carried were revealed.

“What―⁠―,” began Osmuhn dazedly.

Colton took one of the canes and laid it on the table. “This is the cane Norvel put on the glass case when the diamond necklace disappeared. Let me have that one he stole for a minute, will you?”

Osmuhn swung open the door of the safe and laid it before the blind man.

“Your son was talking, while Norvel was fingering the necklace like this.” Colton pretended to examine the string of stones with his eyes, placing 204them in a perfectly straight line with the end of the cane, not four inches from its feruled bottom. “Watch!” he commanded. “Don’t take your eyes from the stones!” He turned away; not one of them saw the delicate pull he gave to the black thread that was attached to an almost invisible knob at the cane handle. But they did see the feruled bottom spring open. They saw a small claw dart out, swift as the fang of a snake, catch the first stone of the necklace, and in a fraction of an instant the necklace had been drawn into the hollow cane like a snake in its hole—swiftly, silently. The cap closed at the bottom, the cane was merely a cane once more.

He showed them the thread, like the one Norvel had pulled when he started toward his overcoat.

“But the mist I saw?” demanded Osmuhn, junior. “What was that?”

“That is the most wonderful thing the Hindu yogi have in their bag of tricks. I was present at a private exhibition of it twenty years ago in the hill country of India. The men who were with me said that they saw a man disappear in a cloud of mist, just as you saw it attempted to-day. Twenty years ago it was one of the most profound mysteries of India. To-day it isn’t.”

“Isn’t?” echoed Osmuhn.

“No. The trick is done with a wonderful powder called scurtii-scurtii. The powder is so finely ground that when let free in absolutely still air it hangs in the shape of a mist until a breeze blows it away. But it doesn’t billow out like mist, or fog. By some curious property it hangs in the form of a thin, impenetrable curtain, either vertically or horizontally, according to the way it has been shot into the air. The disappearance trick in India can be done only on an absolutely calm day. Just as it could be done only in a vault like this, or in the store outside, 205when every one had gone, and there was no possibility of a door opening. The powder was released from the cane when the end opened.”

“But the ruby?” asked Mrs. Marle. “There is no break in the concrete walls; no way that Mr. Norvel could have gotten access to this room.”

Colton pointed toward the brass wall-plate, with its two light buttons, a foot from her elbow. “There is the explanation, and the thing that told me how the trick had been done.”

They crowded around the table to gaze at the two innocent-appearing buttons.

“When you snapped off the light for me,” said the blind man to the jeweller, “my ear, trained for years to read every sound, immediately caught the false note in the snap of the button against the contact. When I snapped on the lights my fingers found something that no eye could ever have detected. Instead of being roughly ground mother-of-pearl, as the centre of those black buttons always is, my supersensitive finger tip knew instantly that it was highly polished glass; a lens, in fact.”

“By Jove, you’re right!” Osmuhn had been examining it with a powerful glass.

“Yes,” nodded Colton, “and if you put the glass to the other plain button you’ll see a narrow slot, not much thicker than a sheet of paper, through which the scurtii-scurtii was injected the minute Mr. Osmuhn turned his back to follow his invariable rule of arranging the small boxes in the safe, while the customer looked at the jewel. The minute the mist had covered the ruby, Norvel, in his office on the other side of the wall, where there is a plate exactly opposite this, so that the electricians would only have to make one hole for both in the solid concrete, swung the plates back and stole the jewel like this.”

206He unscrewed the heavy knob from the other cane, and from the hollow interior took what looked like a slender cane that, they could see, was made like a telescope of wonderfully thin metal sections. At the small end was a shallow, heavy rubber cup, with the interior smeared with a thick, gummy substance. Colton’s fingers found a curious trigger-like projection at the larger end.

“I don’t need the ruby for this. When the wall plate, which he and the Hindu had fixed when Norvel was supposed to be working late, swung open—hidden, of course, from Mrs. Marle by the mist—he thrust the cup end of the cane through the opening like this.” He thrust the cane toward Mrs. Marle’s hand. Before she could jerk it away, his finger touched the trigger, and the cane shut up like a telescope, as swiftly and silently as a darting shaft of light. “The actual theft didn’t take an instant,” explained Colton, and he couldn’t keep the admiration from his voice. “All he had to do was to touch the stone in your hand, which wasn’t a foot from the wall-plate, the partial vacuum of the cup and the gummy substance would make it stick, and the spring inside would bring it through the plate-hole instantly. Then the plate closed, and the thing was accomplished before you could move a muscle.”

“But what made the mist disappear?” Osmuhn wanted to know. “There was no current of air here.”

“When you turned you must have shut the safe door. Of course, that would blow it away instantly, and the powder is so fine that you’d never see a trace of it. In the robbery of the necklace Norvel swung around with his coat on his arm, so that it formed a fan.”

“But how did you ever connect the man who had fooled us all; the man who had impersonated Norvel so successfully?” queried Osmuhn.

207Colton’s lips curved in a curious smile. “The impersonation was so perfect that it would have deceived any one with eyes, just as his thefts did. And his acting of Davidson was a wonderful piece of work. He could impersonate everything but valvular heart disease.”

“Valvular heart disease?” queried Osmuhn dumbly.

“Yes.” Colton’s lips and voice were serious. “He was the most wonderful criminal I have ever met. A criminal with imagination great enough to plan such crimes, and daring sufficient to execute them when a single move, or a breath of air, would have betrayed him. But his acting was too good. When he came in here after stealing the ruby there was not a fraction of a beat above normal in his heart. He was as cool as ice when the heart of ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have been pounding like a trip hammer. It was steady as a clock even when I left him in the chair apparently on the verge of collapse. Even then he was planning an unsuspicious get-away. Even when Shrimp, my boy, almost knocked his chair over, there wasn’t a flutter. I shook hands with him, so that I could establish his identity absolutely. To me there is as much difference between hands and wrists as there is between faces to men who see. But the pulse beat of valvular heart disease is absolutely unmistakable. The heart of the man who played Norvel so successfully was as sound as my own.

“I spoke in here of the possibility of the thief having learned his facts by listening to Norvel in his delirium. The thief realised that a cable to France might give away his whole game. I was afraid that he had hidden the necklace so cunningly that we wouldn’t find it, though I knew where the ruby was ten minutes after it was stolen.”

208Osmuhn half jumped from his chair.

“You—knew where—the ruby was!” he gasped.

“Yes. I took care to touch his cane handles as I shook hands with him. Your son’s story of the necklace theft told me that one of the canes was responsible for that. While he was in here the ruby was in the big knob at the end of the cane, not three feet away from where it had been stolen. But with my own stick and wonderfully sensitive finger-tips, I knew that the necklace had been put somewhere else. Therefore, I gave him the hint he needed about Mrs. Marle’s reception. I knew if he had an imitation—which was likely, because he must have been on the track of the ruby to meet Norvel on the other side—he would try to get it into Mrs. Marle’s possession for the purpose of confusing all of us. Then my boy found out about his dual role of Davidson and Norvel. Davidson appeared only after Norvel had arrived home, and Norvel was supposed to be in such physical condition that he couldn’t be seen at home. I immediately told you that the jewel was an imitation, put in Mrs. Marle’s home by the real thief, because I knew Norvel would hear all about it, and understand that I wasn’t fooled for a minute. It was time for him to go. The French boat sailed at noon to-day. I knew he would see me, because he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to prove his superiority, and make a final grand-stand play by disappearing before our very eyes as Davidson, and walk out of the next house a few minutes later as Norvel the diamond expert, whose twenty-eight years’ service with Osmuhn & Son placed him above suspicion. You see, he was taking no chances; he always had two ways open. But he forgot that the mist he had appear in his library meant nothing to me. My eyes can’t be deceived!”

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