Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 115, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1912 — GREEN DIAMONDS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GREEN DIAMONDS

By MAX PEMBERTON

(Copyright, fay W. a Chapman.)

I can remember perfectly well the day upon which I received the order bom my eccentric old friend, Francia Brewer, to make him a necklace of green diamonds. It was the second of May in the year 1890, exactly three days after his marriage with the fascinating little Singer, Eugenie (Barville, who had set Paris aflame with the piquancy of her acting and her delightful command of a fifth-rate voice some six months after Brewer had left • London to take up the management of a great banking enterprise in the French capital He was then well Into the forties; but- he had skipped through life with scarce a Jostle against the venial sins, and was as ignorant as a babe where that mortal ceptette of vices which the clergy anathematize on the first Wednesday in Lent ’ was concerned. When he was married he wrote to me, and I laid his letter npon my table with a whistle. Not that he was in any way suited for the celibate state, for his instinct was wholly cast in the marrying mold. Had I been called upon to paint him, I should have sat him in an armchair by the side of a roaring fire, with a glass of punch to toast a buxom goodwife, and a pipe as long as the stick of my umbrella to make rings of smoke for a new generation at his knee. Such a man should, said common sense, have been yoked to an English dame, to one used to the odor of lemon, and motherly by Instinct and by training. I could not Imagine him married to a lady from the vaudeville; the contrast between

bfs Iron-beaded directness and the gauze and tinsel of opera bouffe seemed, grotesque almost to incredulity. Yet there was the letter, and there were his absurd ravings about a womhn he had known distantly for Bix months, and intimately for three days. —iil have married/’ he said in this memorable communication, “the dearest little 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. You must come and see her, old boy.” w There was a good deal more of this sort of thing; but the kernel of the letter was in a postscriptum, as was the essence of most of his communications. He told me there that he desired to make some substantial present to the girl he had just married ; and he inclosed a rough sketch of a necklace which he thought would be a pretty thing if rare stones were used to decorate it I fell in with his whim at once; and as it chanced that I had just received from the Jagersfontein mine a parcel of twenty very fine greenish diamonds/1 determined to use them in the business. I may say that these stones were of a delicious pale green tint, almost the color of tte great Jewel in the vaults at Dresden, and that their fire was amazing. 1 have known a gem of the hue to be worth nearly a hundred pounds a carat; and as the lot I had averaged two carats apiece, their worth was very considerable. 1 had not learnt what were Brewer’s instructions In the matter of expense; but I wrote to. him by , the next post congratulating him on his marriage and Informing him that I Would set the green diamonds in a necklace and sell them for two thousand pounds. He accepted the offer by a cablegram, and on the following day sent a long letter of instruction, the pith of which was the order to engrave on the inner side of the pendant the words, major lex amor est nobis. “ , When the trinket reached him, his satisfaction was quite childish. He wrote of his delight, and of "Eugy’s,” and spoiled three sheets of good notepaper telling me of her appearance at the English ball early in June; and of the sensation such an extraordinary bauble caused. Then I heard from himno more until August, when I read in an evening paper that be had been returning from Veluettes after a short lioliday, and had been in a great train smash near Rouen. A later telegram -gave a list of tbe dqad, in which was the name of his wife; and three days after 1 received from him the most pitiful letter that it has ever been my misfortune to read. The whole wounded soul of the man seemed laid bare upon the paper; the simplicity of his words was so touching and so expressive of hia agony, that I could scarce trust myself to go through the long pages over which he let hie sorrow flow. Yet one paragraph remained long in my mind, for it was one that recalled the necklace of green-dia-monds, and it was so astonishing that i did not dobut that Brewer wan, for the time, at any rate, on the highroad to madness. . H l have put them round her dear neck,” he said, “and they shall cling always to her in her long sleep.” ' s ; / - At the end of the month he wrote again, mentioning that, despite my sharp remonstrance, he had seen the Jewels buried with her, and that Ms heart was broken. He said that he thought of coming to stay with me, and Of retiring from business; but #vn ftl f}|A ninrt tlftraSTHYlh fn n/vn. few his inability to leave the flity te ' ’ '*' - TV"-?* J~

fore him. I wrote an answer, advising him to plungeinto work as an antidote to grief, and had posted it but an hour when the mystery of the green diamond necklaoe began. The circumstances were these. My clerk had left with the letters, and I was sitting at my table examining a few unusually large cat’s-eyes which, had been offered to me that morning. I heard the shop door erpen and saw bom the small window near my desk a man in a fur coat, who seemed in something of a hurry when he went to the counter. Three minutes afterwards Michel came up to me, breathlessly and stammering. - He carried & his hand the identical necklace-which I had made for my friend Brewer, and which he had buried with his wife, as his letter said, not a month before. My amazement at the sight of it was so great that for many minutes I sat clasping and unclasping the snap of the trinket, and reading again that strange inscription, major lex amor est nobis, which had caused me so much amusement when I had first ordered it to he cut. Then I asked. Michel: “Who brought this?”

"A man in the shop below—the agent of GreenA Sons, who have been offered it by a customer at Dieppe.” “Have they put a price upon it?” "They ask one thousand five hundred pounds for it.” , - - “Oh, five hundred less than we sold it for; that is .curious. Ask the man if he will leave It on approval for a week.” : “I have put the question already. His people are quite willing.” “Then write out a receipt.” He went away to do bo, still fumbling and amazed. The thing was so' astounding to one who knew the whole of the circumstances, as I did, that I told him nothing more, but examined the necklace minutely at least half a dozen times. Was it possible that there could be two sets of matching green diamonds, two infatuated loverswho had chosen the same pattern of ornament, the Bame strange inscription, and the same -tint of stones? Such a thing was out of the question. Either Brewer had made a mistake when he said that the necklace had been buried with his wife^—a theory which presupposed his return to his normal common sense—or some scoundrel had stolen it from her coffin. I determined to wire to him at once, and had' written out a message when the second mystery In the history of the trinket began to unfold Itself. It came to me in the form of a cablegram from Btewer himself, who asked me to go to hint at Paris without delay, as something which troubled him beyond description had happened since he wrote me.

I need not say that at the time when I received this telegram I had no Idea that a second mystery had engendered it. ' I believed that Brewer bad-discovered .the- loss of the necklace, and had sent for me to trace the thieves. This tack 1 entered upon very willingly; and when I had instructed Michel to ask Green* A Co.—r with whom we did a large business—to give me-a special and private favor real name of the seller of the necklace, I took the eight o'clock train from Victoria; and was in Paris at dawn on the following morning. Early as It was, Brewer waited for me at the Gare du Nord, and greeted me with a welcome which was almost hysterical in its effusiveness. This I could not return, fpr the shock of the sight of him was enough to make any man voiceless. He had aged in looks 20 years in as many months. His clothes bung in folds upon a figure that had once been the figure of a robust and finely built man; his face was wan and colorless; there were hollows above bis temples, and furrows as of great age In the cheeks, which erstwhile shone with all the healthy coloring that physiol vigor can give. His aspect, Indeed, was pitiable; hut I made a great effort to convince him that I had not noticed it, and said, cheerily: “Well, and how is my old friend?”

*T am a widower,” he answered; and there was more pathos in the simple remark than in any' lament I ever heard from him. It was quite evident tiiat his one grief still reigned hi hia thoughts; and I made no other attempt to conquer it “You have important news, or you would not have summoned me from London,” I said, as we left the station In a fiacre. “Won’t yon give me an idea of it now?" ‘When we reach my place I will ten you everything and shew you everything. It’s very kind of you to come, very kind, indeed; but I’d sooner speak of such things at my "You are still at VfllenmoNer ttaHßoe M**” gnd aP<lrtl^sy£ same. is dead, you know.” i thought this remark ray strange, * nf |lylii| S im -..... "Bernard, he asm, I brought yon - . ■ -

gave my poor wife, and barfed with l “AmJ likely to forget that toOyr “Wail '* he continued, “it was stolen bom her grave in the little cemetery knoJTthat,” said L 7 -You know it!” he. cried, looking up aghast. “How could you know it?” “Because it was offered to me yes-, terday- £ ¥¥¥.¥ ¥*-''■ v “Good God!” he exclaimed, “Offered to you yesterday! But it coqld not have been, for my servant bought it in a shabby Jeweler's near the Rue St. L&zarre! Look for yourself, and say what do you call that?" He had unlocked a small safe as he spoke, and he threw & jewel case upon the table. I opened it quickly, and it was then my turn to call out at be had done a moment before. The easecontained a second necklace of green diamonds exactly resembling the one I had made, and had then in my pocket; and it bore even the memorable inscription—major lex amor est nobis. _ . ■ •'./ ../■ ¥ - I said, “there’s deeper work here than you think; this Is the necklace which you believe you buried with your wife; well, what is this one, then, that I have in my pocket?” I opened the second case and laid the- jewels side by side. Yon could not have told one bauble from the other unless you had possessed such an eye as mine, which will fidget over a sham diamond when It is yet a yard away. He had no doubt that they were Identical; and when he saw them together, he began to cry Uke a frightened woman. “What does it mean?” he asked. “Have they robbed my wife’s grave? My God!—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 souls Bernard, if I spend every shilling I possess, I will get to the bottom of this thing! Oh, my wife, my wife—” His distress would hare moved an adamantine heart, and was not a thing to cavil at. The mystery, which had completely unnerved him, had fascinated me so strangely that I de-

termlned not to leave Paris until the last line of its solution was written. The robbery of the grave I could quite understand, but that there should be two necklaces, one of them with real stones and the other with imitation,was a fact before which my Imagination reeled. As for him, he continued jto sit in his arm-chair, and to fret like a child; and there I left him while I went to consult the first detective I could run against The difficulties in getting at the police in Paris are proverbial. The officials there hold it such an Impertinence for a mere civilian to inform them of anything at all, that the unfortunate pursuer of the criminal comes at last to believe himself guilty of some crime. I put up with some hours, badgering at the nearest bureau, and then having no French but that which Is fit for publication, I returned to the Rue de Moray, getting on iny way some glimmer of a plan into my head. I found Brewer in the same wandering state as I had left him; and although he listened when I spoke, I felt sure that his mind was in that infantile condition which can neither beget a plan nor realise one. For himself, he had a single idea; and upon that he harped usqui

*1 must send for Jules,” he kept muttering; “Jules knew her well; hp was one of her oldest friends; he would help me la a case like this, I feel sore. He always told her that green diamonds were unlucky; I was insane to touch the positively insane. Jules will come at once, and I wfil teD him everything, and he will explain things we do not understand. tnow; Robert is in the kitchen and he Will UUL6 R, . *1 will §*yid a note with rVtfiffurt if yon think this man can hslp us; bet I who is he, and why have I not heard Iflf him before?” I “You must have heard of him." ho

answered, testily; “he was always with us when she lived—always.” “What is this M. Jules? you don’t toll me the rest of his name.” S “Jules Gallmard. I most have mentioned him to you. He Is the editor or something, of Paris et Londres. We will write tor him now, and he will come over at once." I emit the letter to please him, asking the man to come across on important business, and then told him of my plan. N “The first thing to do/’ said I, *is to ge to Rainey, and to ascertain if the grave of your wife has been tampered with—and when. If you will stay here and nurse yourself, I will do that at once?” - '<* He seemed to think over the preposition for some minutes; find when he answered me he wap calmer. “I will come with you,” he said; “if—if any one is to look; upon her face again, it shall be me.” I could see that a terrible love gave him strength even for such an ordeal as this. He began to be meaningly, and even alarming calm; and when we seL out f° r Rainey he betrayed no emotion whatever. I will not describe anything bat the result of that never-to-be-forgotten mission, although the scene haunts my memory to this day. Suffice it to say that we found indisputable evidence of a raid upon the vault; and discovered that the necklace had been torn from the body of the woman. When nothing more was to be learnt, I took my friend back to Paris. There I found a letter from the office of Paris et Londreb saying that Gallmard was at Dieppe, but would be with us in the evening.

The mystery had now taken such* a hold on me that I could not rest Brewer, whose calm was rather dangerous than reassuring, seemed strangely lethargic when he reached his rooms, and began to doze in his armchair. This was the best thing he could have done; but I had no intention of dozing myself; and when I had wormed from him the address of the shop where the sham necklaee had been purchased—it proved to be in the Rue Stockholm —I took a fiacre at once and left him to his dreaming. The place was a poor one, though the taste of a Frenchman was apparent in the

display of the few jewels, bronzes and pictures which were the stock in trade of the dealer. He himself was a lifeless creature, who listened to me with great patience, and appeared to be completely astonished when I told him that I desired to have an interview with the vendor of the necklace and the green diamonds. “You could not have come at a more fortunate moment,” said he, “the stones, were pretty, 1 confess, and I fear to have sold them for much less than they were worth; but my client will be here in half an hour for his money, and if you come at that time you can meet him.” This was positively and altogether unlooked-for lade. I spent the 30 minutes’ interval In a neighboring case, and was back at his shop as the clocks were striking seven. His customer was already there; a man short and thick in figure, with a characteristic French low hat stuck on the side of his head; and an old black cutaway coat which was conspicuously English. “Oh,” he said, looking m» up and down critically, and with a perky cock of his head, “you’re the cove that wants to speak to me about the sparklers. are you? and a damned welldressed cove, too. I thought yon were one of these French hogs.” “I wanted to have a chat about such wonderful imitations.” I “and am ißngH.ii uk e yourself.” At Ibis he raked up the-gold which the old dealer bad placed upon the counter for him and went to the door rapidly, where he stood with his hands upon hips, and a wondrous knowing smile in his bit of an ays. £ “You’re a pretty nark, ain’t yon?” be sail, "a fine alap-up Piccadilly thlck-un, s’ help me biases; and yon mint got no bracelets In your pockets, and there ain’t no more of you round tiie corner. Oh, but this is twmr}**1 am quite alone,” I said, quickly,

seeing that the game was nearly lost, “and If you tell me what I want to know, If will give yon as much money as you have In your hand there, and you have my ward that you shall go quite free.” “Your word!” he replied, looking more knowing than eTer; “that’s a ripping 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 of it. Choose your own ooorse, and then you will be sure that I am alone.” ” He looked at me for a minute, walking slowly. Then suddenly he stopped abruptly, and put his hand upon a pocket at his waist “Guv’ner/’ he said, “lay your fingers oh that; do yon feel it? it’s a Colt, ain’t it? Well, if yon want to get me in on the bow, I tell you I’ll go the whole hog, so you know.” “I assure yon again that I have no intention of troubling you with Anything bat a few Questions; and I give you my word that anything you tell me shall not be given against you afterwards. It’s the other hum we Want to catch—the man who took the green diamonds which were not shams.” This thought was quite an inspiration. He considered it for a moment, standing still under the lamp; but at last he stamped his foot and whistled, saying: ¥ ’■

“You want him, do you? Well, so do I; and if I could punch his head I’d walk a mile to do it. You come to my room, guv’ner, and I’ll take my chapce of the rest.” The way lay past the Chapel of the Trinity, and so through many narrow streets to one which seemed the center of a particularly dark and uninviting neighborhood. The man, who told me in quite an affable mood that he name was Bob Williams, and that he hoped to run against me at Auteuil, had a miserable apartment —on the “third” of a house in this dingy street; and there he took me, offering me half a tumbler of neat whisky, which, he went on to explain, would “knock flies” out of me. For himself, he sat upon a low bed and smoked a clay pipe, while I had an arm-chair, lacking springs; and one of my cigars for obvious reasons.

“Well, old chap"—l was that already to him—“what can I tell you, and what do you know?" “I know this mach,” said I; “last month the grave of Mme. Brewer at Rainey was rifled. The man who did it stole a necklace of green diamonds, real or sham, but the latter, I am thinking." “As true as gospel—l am the man who took them, and they were sham, and he 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 the man who got the real necklace I made for Mme- Brewer only a few months ago?” ........ "Ob, 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 other necklace I ain’t beard nothing. You know a blamed sight too much, it seems to me, guv’ner.” “ “That may be,” said I, “but you can add to what I know, and it might be worth £6O to you.” ; “On the cushion?” "I don’t understand.” "Well, on that table, then?* : “Scarcely. Twenty-five now, and 25 when 1 find that you have told me the truth.” “Let’s see the shiners.” I eounted out the money on the bed —five English bank notes, which be eyed suspiciously.

“May, his mark,” he said, thumbing the paper. “Well, as I'm shifting for Newmarket to-morrow that’s not much odds, if you're not shoring the queer on me." - "Do you think they're bad?” "I’ll tell you in a moment; 1 broken, e broken, watermark right; guv’ner, ril put up with 'em. Now, what do you want to know?” "Twant to know how yon came to learn that the stones were in Mme. Brewer's graver’ “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 it ain’t. He is a chap that writes for the papers Mid runs that rag with the rum pictures in It; what do you call it, Paris and something or other?" “Paris et Londres," I ventured at hazard. . ; ~~

"Ay, that’s the thing; I don’t read much of the lingo myself, but I gave him tips at Longchamps last month, and we came back in a dog cart together. It was then that he put me on to the stones and planted me with a false name.” - ‘What did-he say?" “Said that some mad cove at Rainey had buried a necklace worth £2,000 with his wife, and that the dullest chap out could get Into the vault and lift It. Td had a bad day, and was almost stony. He kept harping on the thing so, suggesting that a man could get to America with £5,000 in his pocket, and no one be a penny the wiser or a penny the worse, that I went off that night and did it, and got a fine heap for my pains. That’s what I call a moldy pal—a pal I wouldn’t a doormat of.” “And you sold the booty to the old Frenchman in ffr* Hue de Stockholm?” I

the other chips to the Elephant tel at Cambridge last post tomorrow."* I told him that I would, and Mt You may ask why I had any true* with such a complete blackguard, but the answer is obvious: I had gummed from the first that there was something in the mystery of the green diamonds which? would not bear exposure from Breweifg point of view, and his tale confirmed the opinion. I had learnt from it two obvious facts: ons that Jules Gallmard was anything bat the friend of my friend; the other, that this man knew perfectly''weljh that a sham diamond necklaoe via buried with Mme. Brewer. It came to me then, as in a fiaah, that he, and ha alone, must have stolen, or at least have come into possession of, the rpai necklace which I had ipade. How to undeceive the good soul who entrusted me with his case was the / remaining difficulty. He had loved thtoWoman so; and yet instinct suggested to me that she had been msworthy of his deep affection. That she had been untrue to him I did not know. Gallmard might have stolen the Jewels from her, and have replaced them with a false set; on the other hand, she might have been a party tothe fraud. What, then, shottld I say, or tow much should I dare with the great responsibility before mo of crushing a man whose heart was already broken? With such thoughts I reentered the apartment in the Rue de Moray. As I did so, the servant put a telegram into my hand, and told me that M. Jules Gallmard was with his master. Fate, however, seemed to have given the man another chance, for the cipher said: “Green & Co. in error, they should have sent the stones only; necklaee not for sale; client’s name unknown, acting for Paris agents.” I walked into the room with this message in my pocket; and when Brewer saw me he jumped up with delight, and introduced me to a welldressed Frenchman who had the red rosette in the button-hole of his faultless frock coat, and who showed a row of admirable teeth-when he smiled to greet me. “Here is Jules” said Brewer, “my friend I have spoken of, M. Jules Gallmard; he has come to help us, as I said he would; there is no one whose advice I would sooner take in this horrible matter.” I bowed stiffly to the man, and seated myself on the opposite side of the table to him. As they seemed to wait for me to speak, I took up the question at once. ' “Well,” I said, speaking to Brewer; but turning round to look at his friend, as I uttered the words, “I have found out who sold the sham necklace to the man ip the Due de Stockholm; the rogue Is a racing tout named Bob Williams!" 1

Galimard turned right round In his chair at this, and put his elbows on the table. Brewer said: UWd bless me, what a scamp!" . > •? "And," I continued, “the extraordinary part of the affair is that this scoundrel was put to the business by a man he met at Longchamps last month. It was obvious that this man. stole the real necklace, and now desired all traces of his handiwork to be removed from Mme. Brewer's coffin. I have his name,” with which direct remark I looked hard at the fellow, and he rose straight up from his chair and elutebed at the hack of it with his hand. For a moment he seemed speechless; but when he found his tongue, he threw away, with dreadful maladroitness, the opening I had given him, - - , “Madame gave me the Jewels,” he blurted out, "that I will swear before any 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 was repeated. “I am no thief!” cried the man, drawing himself up In a way that was grotesquely proud, “she gave me the Jewels, your wife, a week after you gave them to her. I had a false set made so that you should not miss them; here is her letter in which she acknowledges the receipt ot them.” The old man—for he was an on man then in speech, in look, and ia the fearful convulsions of his face- —„ sprung from his chair, and struck the rascal who told him the tale full, gjjjg fellow rolled backwards, striking his head against the iron of the fender; During that time I called a cab, and: when be was capable of being moved, sent him away in IL I saw clearly that for Brewer’s sake the matter must be hushed up at once, blocked false In its every line. Nor did I pay any attention to Galimard's raving threat that his friends should call upon me in half an hour; but went upbeen lighted* for fc*«n and chattefAll hfltir 4 ■- vv.. - f x£

And had been In a great train smesh near Rouen”