Jewel Mysteries from a Dealer's Note Book Read online

  THE NECKLACE OF GREEN DIAMONDS.

  I can remember perfectly well the day upon which I received the orderfrom my eccentric old friend, Francis Brewer, to make him a necklace ofgreen diamonds. It was the 2d of May in the year 1890, exactly threedays after his marriage with the fascinating little singer, EugenieClarville, who had set Paris aflame with the piquancy of her acting andher delightful command of a fifth-rate voice some six months afterBrewer had left London to take up the management of a great bankingenterprise in the French capital. He was then well into the forties; buthe had skipped through life with scarce a jostle against the venialsins, and was as ignorant as a babe where that mortal septette of viceswhich the clergy anathematize on the first Wednesday in Lent wasconcerned. I have never known a more childish man, or one who held youraffection so readily with simplicity. He was large-hearted, trusting,boyish, by no means unintellectual, and in no sense a fool. Indeed, hiscommercial knowledge was highly valuable; and his energy in working up abusiness was a reproach to those who, like myself, love to sit inarm-chairs and watch the ebb of life from a plate-glass window.

  When he was married he wrote to me, and I laid his letter upon my tablewith a whistle. Not that he was in any way suited for the celibatestate, for his instinct was wholly cast in the marrying mould. Had Ibeen called upon to paint him, I should have sat him in an arm-chair bythe side of a roaring fire, with a glass of punch to toast a buxomgoodwife, and a pipe as long as the stick of my umbrella to make ringsof smoke for a new generation at his knee. Such a man should, saidcommon sense, have been yoked to an English dame, to one used to theodor of the lemon, and motherly by instinct and by training. I could notimagine him married to a lady from the vaudeville; the contrast betweenhis iron-headed directness and the gauze and tinsel of opera bouffeseemed grotesque almost to incredulity. Yet there was the letter, andthere were his absurd ravings about a woman he had known distantly forsix months, and intimately for three days.

  "I have married," he said in this memorable communication, "the dearestlittle soul that God ever brought into the world--fresh as the breeze,bright as the sky, eyes like the night, and temper like an angel. Youmust come and see her, old boy, the moment we set foot in our house atVillemomble. I shan't let you lose an hour; you must learn for yourselfwhat a magnificent Benedick I make. Why, the days go like flashes of thesun--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 knowof life or of woman, or even of the sky above you? Come to Paris, oldman; come, I say, and we'll put you through your paces, and you shallmeet her, the very best little wife that ever fell to an old dray-horsein this fair of high-steppers."

  There was a good deal more of this sort of thing; but the kernel of theletter was in a postscriptum, as was the essence of most of hiscommunications. He told me there that he desired to make somesubstantial present to the girl he had just married; and he enclosed arough sketch of a necklace which he thought would be a pretty thing ifrare 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 Jaegersfontein mine aparcel of twenty very fine greenish diamonds, I determined to use themin the business. I may say that these stones were of a delicious palegreen tint, almost the color of the great jewel in the vaults atDresden, and that their fire was amazing. I have known a gem of the hueto be worth nearly a hundred pounds a carat; and as the lot I hadaveraged two carats apiece, their worth was very considerable. I had notlearnt what were Brewer's instructions in the matter of expense; but Iwrote to him by the next post congratulating him on his marriage andinforming him that I would set the green diamonds in a necklace, andsell 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 ofwhich was the order to engrave on the inner side of the pendant thewords, _major lex amor est nobis_. I laughed at his Latin, and theamatory exuberance which it betrayed; but fell upon the work, andfinished it in the course of three weeks, during which time I had manyand irritating requests from him for constant and detailed accounts ofits progress.

  When the trinket reached him, his satisfaction was quite childish. Hewrote of his delight, and of "Eugy's," and spoilt three sheets of goodnote-paper telling me of her appearance at the English ball early inJune; and of the sensation such an extraordinary bauble caused. Then Iheard from him no more until August, when I read in an evening paperthat he had been returning from Veulettes after a short holiday, and hadbeen in a great train smash near Rouen. A later telegram gave a list ofthe dead, in which was the name of his wife; and three days after Ireceived from him the most pitiful letter that it has ever been mymisfortune to read. The whole wounded soul of the man seemed laid bareupon the paper; the simplicity of his words was so touching and soexpressive of his agony, that I could scarce trust myself to go throughthe long pages over which he let his sorrow flow. Yet one paragraphremained long in my mind, for it was one that recalled the necklace ofgreen diamonds, and it was so astonishing that I did not doubt thatBrewer was, for the time at any rate, on the high-road to madness. "Ihave put them round her dear neck," he said, "and they shall clingalways to her in her long sleep."

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

  The circumstances were these. My clerk had left with the letters, and Iwas sitting at my table examining a few unusually large cat's-eyes whichhad been offered to me that morning. I heard the shop door open, and sawfrom the small window near my desk a man in a fur coat, who seemed insomething of a hurry when he went to the counter. Three minutesafterwards, Michel came up to me breathlessly and stammering. He carriedin his hand the identical necklace which I had made for my friendBrewer, and which he had buried with his wife, as his letter said, not amonth before. My amazement at the sight of it was so great that for manyminutes I sat clasping and unclasping the snap of the trinket, andreading again that strange inscription, _major lex amor est nobis_,which had caused me so much amusement when I had first ordered it to becut. Then I asked Michel,--

  "Who brought this?"

  "A man in the shop below--the agent of Green and Sons, who have beenoffered 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 manif 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 soastounding to one who knew the whole of the circumstances, as I did,that I told him nothing more, but examined the necklace minutely atleast half a dozen times. Was it possible that there could be two setsof matching green diamonds, two infatuated lovers who had chosen thesame pattern of ornament, the same strange inscription, and the sametint of stones? Such a thing was out of the question. Either Brewer hadmade a mistake when he said that the necklace had been buried with hiswife--a theory which presupposed his return to his normal commonsense--or some scoundrel had stolen it from her coffin. I determined towire to him at once, and had written out a message when the secondmystery in the history of the trinket began to unfold itself. It came tome in the form of a cablegram from Brewer himself, who asked me to go tohim at Paris without delay, as something which troubled him beyonddescription had happened since he wrote to me.

  I need not say that at the time when I received this telegram I had noidea that a second mystery had en
gendered it. I believed that Brewer haddiscovered the loss of the necklace, and had sent for me to trace thethieves. This task I entered upon very willingly; and when I hadinstructed Michel to ask Green & Co.--with whom we did a largebusiness--to give me as a special and private favor the real name of theseller 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 welcomewhich was almost hysterical in its effusiveness. This I could notreturn, for the shock of the sight of him was enough to make any manvoiceless. He had aged in look twenty years in as many months. Hisclothes hung in folds upon a figure that had once been the figure of arobust and finely built man; his face was wan and colorless; there werehollows above his temples, and furrows as of great age in the cheeks,which erstwhile shone with all the healthy coloring that physical vigorcan give. His aspect, indeed, was pitiable; but I made a great effort toconvince 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 simpleremark than in any lament I ever heard from him. It was quite evidentthat his one grief still reigned in his thoughts; and I made no otherattempt to conquer it.

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

  "When we reach my place I will tell you everything and show youeverything. It's very kind of you to come, very kind indeed; but I'dsooner 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 therenow; 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 lesscurious. He nodded his head gravely, and continued to nod it, repeatingthe words and holding my hand like some great schoolboy who feared to bealone. He was scarcely better when we arrived at his lodging, and hetook me to a luxurious apartment which was well worthy of his consummatetaste; 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 thingpossible has happened. You remember the necklace of green diamonds Igave 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 littlecemetery 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 God!" he exclaimed, "offered to you yesterday! But it could nothave been, for my servant bought it in a shabby jeweler's near the RueSt. 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 uponthe table. I opened it quickly, and it was then my turn to call out ashe had done a moment before. The case contained a second necklace ofgreen diamonds exactly resembling the one I had made, and had then in mypocket; and it bore even the memorable inscription--_major lex amor estnobis_.

  When I made this discovery there seemed something so uncanny andterrible 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 thenecklace which you believe you buried with your wife; well, what is thisone, then, that I have in my pocket?"

  I opened the second case and laid the jewels side by side. You could nothave told one bauble from the other unless you had possessed such an eyeas mine, which will fidget over a sham diamond when it is yet a yardaway. He had no doubt that they were identical; and when he saw themtogether, he began to cry like a frightened woman.

  "What does it mean?" he asked. "Have they robbed my wife's grave? MyGod!--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 shilling I possess, I will get to the bottomof this thing! Oh, my wife, my wife----"

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

  The difficulties in getting at the police of Paris are proverbial. Theofficials there hold it such an impertinence for a mere civilian toinform them of anything at all, that the unfortunate pursuer of thecriminal comes at last to believe himself guilty of some crime. I put upwith some hours, badgering at the nearest bureau, and then having noFrench but that which is fit for publication, I returned to the Rue deMorny, getting on the way some glimmer of a plan into my head. I foundBrewer in the same wandering state as I had left him; and although helistened when I spoke, I felt sure that his mind was in that infantilecondition 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; hewas one of her oldest friends; he would help me in a case like this, Ifeel sure. He always told her that green diamonds were unlucky; I wasinsane to touch the things, positively insane. Jules will come at once,and I will tell him everything, and he will explain things we do notunderstand. Perhaps you will send a letter to him now; Robert is in thekitchen and he will take it."

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

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

  "Do you see him often now?"

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

  The picture was that of a finely built but very typical Frenchman, a manwith a pointed, well-brushed beard, and a neatly curled mustache. Thehead was not striking, being cramped above the eyes and bulging behindthe ears; but the smile was very pleasant, and the general effect one ofgeniality. 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, orsomething, of _Paris et Londres_. We will write for him now, and he willcome over at once."

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

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

  He seemed to think over the proposition for some minutes; and when heanswered me he was calmer.

  "I will come with you," he said; "if--if any one is to look upon herface again, it shall be me."

  I could see that a terrible love gave him strength even for such anordeal as this. He began to be meaningly and even alarmingly calm; andwhen we set out for Raincy he betrayed no emotion whatever. I will notdescribe anything but the result of that never-to-be-forgotten mission,although the scene haunts my memory to this day. Suffice it to say thatwe found indisputable evidence of a raid upon the vault; and discoveredthat the necklace had been torn from the body of the woman. When nothingmore was to be learnt, I took my friend back to Paris. There I found aletter from the office of _Paris et Londres_ saying that Galimard was atDieppe but would be with us in the evening.

  The mystery had now taken such hold of me that I coul
d not rest. Brewer,whose calm was rather dangerous than reassuring, seemed strangelylethargic when he reached his rooms, and began to doze in his arm-chair.This was the best thing he could have done; but I had no intention ofdozing myself; and when I had wormed from him the address of the shopwhere the sham necklace had been purchased--it proved to be in the RueStockholm--I took a fiacre at once and left him to his dreaming. Theplace was a poor one, though the taste of a Frenchman was apparent inthe display and arrangement of the few jewels, bronzes, and pictureswhich were the stock-in-trade of the dealer. He himself was a lifelesscreature, who listened to me with great patience, and appeared to becompletely astounded when I told him that I desired to have an interviewwith the vendor of the necklace and the green diamonds.

  "You could not have come at a more fortunate moment," said he, "thestones were pretty, I confess and I fear to have sold them for much lessthan they were worth; but my client will be here in half an hour for hismoney, and if you come at that time you can meet him."

  This was positive and altogether unlooked-for luck. I spent the thirtyminutes' interval in a neighboring _cafe_, and was back at his shop asthe clocks were striking seven. His customer was already there; a manshort and thick in figure, with a characteristic French low hat stuck onthe side of his head; and an old black cutaway coat which wasconspicuously English. He wore gaiters, too--a strange sight in Paris;and carried under his arm a rattan cane which was quite ridiculouslyshort. When he turned his head I saw that his hair was cropped quiteclose, and that he had a great scar down one side of his face, whichgave him a hideous appearance. Yet he could not have been twenty-fiveyears of age; and he was one of the gayest customers I have ever met.

  "Oh," he said, looking me up and down critically, and with a perky cockof his head, "you're the cove that wants to speak to me about thesparklers, are you? and a damned well-dressed cove, too. I thought youwere one of these French hogs."

  "I wanted to have a chat about such wonderful imitations," I said, "andam English like yourself."

  At this he raked up the gold which the old dealer had placed upon thecounter for him and went to the door rapidly, where he stood with hishands upon his hips, and a wondrous knowing smile in his bit of an eye.

  "You're a pretty nark, ain't you?" he said, "a fine slap-up Piccadillythick-un, s' help me blazes; and you ain't got no bracelets in yourpockets, and there ain't no more of you round the corner. Oh, hell! butthis is funny!"

  "I am quite alone," I said quickly, seeing that the game was nearlylost, "and if you tell me what I want to know, I will give you as muchmoney as you have in your hand there, and you have my word that youshall go quite free."

  "Your word!" he replied, looking more knowing than ever; "that's aripping fine Bank of Engraving to go on bail on, ain't it? Who are you,and how's your family?"

  "Let's stroll down the street, any way you like," said I, "and talk ofit. Choose your own course, and then you will be sure that I am alone."

  He looked at me for a minute, walking slowly. Then suddenly he stoppedabruptly, and put his hand upon a pocket at his waist.

  "Guv'ner," he said, "lay your fingers on that; do you feel it? it's aColt, ain't it? Well, if you want to get me in on the bow, I tell youI'll go the whole hog, so you know."

  "I assure you again that I have no intention of troubling you withanything but a few questions; and I give you my word that anything youtell me shall not be used against you afterwards. It's the other man wewant to catch--the man who took the green diamonds which were notshams."

  This thought was quite an inspiration. He considered it for a moment,standing still under the lamp; but at last he stamped his foot andwhistled, saying:--

  "You want him, do you? well, so do I; and if I could punch his head I'dwalk a mile to do it. You come to my room, guv'ner, and I'll take mychance of the rest."

  The way lay past the Chapel of the Trinity, and so through many narrowstreets to one which seemed the center of a particularly dark anduninviting neighborhood. The man, who told me in quite an affable moodthat his name was Bob Williams, and that he hoped to run against me atAuteuil, had a miserable apartment on the "third" of a house in thisdingy street; and there he took me, offering me half-a-tumbler of neatwhisky, which, he went on to explain, would "knock flies" out of me. Forhimself, he sat upon a low bed and smoked a clay pipe, while I had anarm-chair, lacking springs; and one of my cigars for obvious reasons.When we were thus accommodated he opened the ball, being no longernervous or hesitating.

  "Well, old chap,"--I was that already to him--"what can I tell you, andwhat do you know?"

  "I know this much," said I; "last month the grave of Madame Brewer atRaincy was rifled. The man who did it stole a necklace of greendiamonds, real or sham, but the latter, I am thinking."

  "As true as gospel--I was the man who took them, and they were sham, andbe damned to them!"

  "Well, you're a pretty ruffian," I said. "But what I want to know is,how did you come to find out that the stones were there, and who was theman who got the real necklace I made for Madame Brewer only a few monthsago?"

  "Oh, that's what you want to know, is it? Well, it's worth something,that is; I don't know that he ain't a pard of mine; and about no othernecklace I ain't heard nothing. You know a blarmed sight too much, itseems to me, guv'ner."

  "That may be," said I, "but you can add to what I know, and it might beworth fifty pounds to you."

  "On the cushion?"

  "I don't understand."

  "Well, on that table then?"

  "Scarcely. Twenty-five now, and twenty-five when I find that you havetold me the truth."

  "Let's see the shiners."

  I counted out the money on to the bed--five English bank notes, which heeyed suspiciously.

  "May, his mark," he said, thumbing the paper. "Well, as I'm shifting forNewmarket to-morrow that's not much odds, if you're not shoving thequeer on me."

  "Do you think they're bad?"

  "I'll tell you in a moment; i broken, e broken, watermark right;guv'ner, I'll put up with 'em. Now, what do you want to know?"

  "I want to know how you came to learn that the stones were in MadameBrewer's grave?"

  "A straight question. Well, I was told by a pal."

  "Is he here in Paris?"

  "He ought to be; he told me his name was Mougat, but I found out that itain't. He is a chap that writes for the papers and runs that rag withthe rum pictures in it; what do you call it, Paris and something orother?"

  "_Paris et Londres_," I ventured at hazard.

  "Ay, that's the thing; I don't read much of the lingo myself, but I gavehim tips at Longchamps last month, and we came back in a dog-carttogether. It was then that he put me on to the stones and planted mewith a false name."

  "What did he say?"

  "Said that some mad cove at Raincy had buried a necklace worth twothousand pounds with his wife, and that the dullest chap out could getinto the vault and lift it. I'd had a bad day, and was almost stony. Hekept harping on the thing so, suggesting that a man could get to Americawith five thousand in his pocket, and no one be a penny the wiser or apenny the worse, that I went off that night and did it, and got a fineheap for my pains. That's what I call a mouldy pal--a pal I wouldn'tmake a doormat of."

  "And you sold the booty to the old Frenchman in the Rue de Stockholm?"

  "Exactly! he gave me a tenner for it, and I'm crossing to Englandto-night. No place like the old shop, guv'ner, when the French hogs aresniffing about you. I guess there's a few of them will want me in Parryin a day or two; and that reminds me, you can do the noble if you like,and send the other chips to the Elephant Hotel at Cambridge last postto-morrow."

  I told him that I would, and left. You may ask why I had any truck withsuch a complete blackguard, but the answer is obvious: I had guessedfrom the first that there was something in the mystery of the greendiamonds which would not bear exposure from Brewer's point of view, andhis tale confirmed the opinion. I had learnt from it two obvious facts:one that Jul
es Galimard was anything but the friend of my friend; theother, that this man knew perfectly well that a sham diamond necklacewas buried with Madame Brewer. It came to me then, as in a flash, thathe, and he alone, must have stolen, or at least have come intopossession of, the real necklace which I had made.

  How to undeceive the good soul who had entrusted me with his case wasthe remaining difficulty. He had loved this woman so; and yet instinctsuggested to me that she had been unworthy of his deep affection. Thatshe had been untrue to him I did not know. Galimard might have stolenthe jewels from her, and have replaced them with a false set; on theother hand, she might have been a party to the fraud. What, then, shouldI say, or how much should I dare with the great responsibility before meof crushing a man whose heart was already broken?

  With such thoughts I re-entered the apartment in the Rue de Morny. As Idid so, the servant put a telegram into my hand, and told me that M.Jules Galimard was with his master. Fate, however, seemed to have giventhe man another chance, for the cipher said,--

  "Green and Co. in error, they should have sent the stones only; necklacenot for sale; client's name unknown, acting for Paris agents."

  I walked into the room with this message in my pocket; and when Brewersaw me he jumped up with delight, and introduced me to a well-dressedFrenchman who had the red rosette in the buttonhole of his faultlessfrock-coat, and who showed a row of admirable teeth when he smiled togreet me.

  "Here is Jules," said Brewer, "my friend I have spoken of, M. JulesGalimard; he has come to help us, as I said he would; there is no onewhose advice I would sooner take in this horrible matter."

  I bowed stiffly to the man, and seated myself on the opposite side ofthe table to him. As they seemed to wait for me to speak, I took up thequestion at once.

  "Well," I said, speaking to Brewer; but turning round to look at hisfriend, as I uttered the words, "I have found out who sold the shamnecklace to the man in the Rue de Stockholm; the rogue is a racing toutnamed Bob Williams!"

  Galimard turned right round in his chair at this, and put his elbows onthe table. Brewer said, "God bless me, what a scamp!"

  "And," I continued, "the extraordinary part of the affair is that thisscoundrel was put to the business by a man he met at Longchamps lastmonth. It is obvious that this man stole the real necklace, and nowdesired all traces of his handiwork to be removed from Madame Brewer'scoffin. I have his name," with which direct remark I looked hard at thefellow, and he rose straight up from his chair and clutched at the backof it with his hand. For a moment he seemed speechless; but when hefound his tongue, he threw away, with dreadful maladroitness, theopening I had given him.

  "Madame gave me the jewels," he blurted out, "that I will swear beforeany court."

  The situation was truly terrible, the man standing gripping his chair,Brewer staring at both of us as at lunatics.

  "What do you say? What's that?" he cried; and the assertion wasrepeated.

  "I am no thief!" cried the man, drawing himself up in a way that wasgrotesquely proud, "she gave me the jewels, your wife, a week after yougave them to her. I had a false set made so that you should not missthem; here is her letter in which she acknowledges the receipt ofthem."

  The old man--for he was an old man then in speech, in look, and in thefearful convulsions of his face--sprung from his chair, and struck therascal who told him the tale full in the mouth with his clenched fist.The fellow rolled backwards, striking his head against the iron of thefender; and lay insensible for many minutes. During that time I called acab, and when he was capable of being moved, sent him away in it. I sawclearly that for Brewer's sake the matter must be hushed at once,blocked out as a page in a life which had been false in its every line.Nor did I pay any attention to Galimard's raving threat that his friendsshould call upon me in half an hour; but went upstairs again to find thebest soul that ever lived sitting over the fire which had been lightedfor him, and chattering with the cackle of the insane. He had theletter, which Galimard had thrown down, in his hands, and he read italoud with hysterical laughter and awful emphasis.

  I tried to speak to him, to reason with him, to persuade him. He heardnothing I said, but continued to chuckle and to chatter in a way thatmade my blood run cold. Then suddenly he became very calm, sitting boltupright in his chair, with the letter clutched tightly in his righthand; and I saw that tears were rolling down his cheeks.

  An hour later the friends of M. Jules Galimard called. They entered theroom noisily, but I hushed them, for the man was dead!

  THE COMEDY OF THE JEWELED LINKS.