we proceeded on across the bridge into the town of annapolis. first i took roland to a lunch room and commanded him to eat. i had a time getting him to swallow the first mouthful, but that once down, he developed a ravenous appetite. i suppose he had not eaten in thirty hours. it was comical to see how, with a stomachful of hot food inside him, a zest in living renewed itself. the more his resolution weakened, the louder he inveighed against life. but he had a sense of humour. he suddenly became conscious of the absurdity of his attitude, and we laughed together. from that moment he was safe, and he was mine. there is nothing to cement a friendship like laughter.
afterwards i got a room in an obscure hotel. roland sat down on the edge of the bed, and proceeded to give me his version of the matters that perplexed me so. in the middle of a sentence he fell over and slept like a dead man. i stole out and telegraphed sadie at amityville that i had him safe and sound. returning, i sat by the hour watching him. my heart was soft for the human creature i had snatched from the brink. he looked very boyish and appealing as he lay sleeping. he seemed years younger than i. i cannot tell you how glad i was to think that there was warmth in the young body, and sentience under the shut lids.
shortly after midnight he awoke as suddenly and thoroughly as he had fallen asleep. then he wanted to talk. he was bursting with talk. i swallowed my yawns and set myself to listen. i let him talk in his own way, no questions. for a long time i listened to what i already knew, the tale of his jealous, hopeless passion for irma. sometimes he had suspected that she inclined towards him, but it seemed preposterous to ask her to give up her profession for him. on the other hand he knew he could not endure sharing his wife with the public. he had decided to go away without speaking—and then the miraculous legacy had dropped from the skies.
"tell me all about that," i commanded.
"i promised not to tell," he said reluctantly.
"this is a matter of life and death. why was a promise exacted?"
"to avoid publicity."
"there will be none," i said. "i pledge myself to guard the secret as well as you could."
"i destroyed the letter i got, with the others," he said. "but i read it so often i can give it to you almost word for word."
"too bad it was destroyed!" i said.
"oh, you can verify the contents by the amsterdam trust company who paid me the money."
"but if you have a clear case what did you run for?" i asked amazed.
"you will never understand," he said with a wry smile. "i seemed to die at that moment when i saw that irma believed i was capable of robbing her. what did i care about my case?"
hearing that, my opinion of sadie's perspicacity went up marvellously. "go on," i said.
i took down the letter from his dictation. it was written, he said, on expensive note-paper, without address, crest or seal, in a large and somewhat old-fashioned feminine hand.
"dear mr. quarles:
although you have never heard of me i think of you as my dearest friend. i have followed your career from the time of your first appearance on the stage. i am one of those unfortunates who, condemned to live, are cut off from life. i watch life pass from behind my iron screen. it is you who, all unconscious, have supplied me with a dream to cheat my emptiness. i have warmed my cold hands at your fire.
"now they tell me my release is at hand. i wish to show my gratitude to you in the only way that is possible to me. an artist's career is difficult and uncertain. i want to remove a little of the uncertainty from yours.
"i must avoid giving rise to silly gossip which would grieve my relatives. to avoid the publicity of probate i am making secret arrangements beforehand. an old friend will carry out my wishes for me when i am gone.
"the doctors give me a week longer. upon my death this letter will be mailed to you. you will then hear from the amsterdam trust company that a sum of money awaits your order. you will never know my name. but if you should let even the bare facts become known, some busybody would eventually connect them with my name, and unhappy gossip result. therefore i ask you as a man of honour to keep the whole transaction locked in your breast."
"that is all," said roland. "it was signed: 'your grateful friend.'"
"did you look in the recent obituaries for a clue?" i asked.
"yes," he confessed. "there was none."
"go ahead with your story. we'll return to the letter later."
"at first i thought it was a hoax," he resumed, "but sure enough, in two or three days i received a letter from the trust company asking me to call. i saw the president. he said that the sum of forty thousand dollars had been deposited with them to be turned over to me in cash. he said it had been bequeathed to me by one who desired to remain unknown. he said he did not know himself who my benefactor was. he had dealt with a lawyer. he said that there was but one condition attached to the legacy, namely that i give my word never to speak of the matter. i had met this mr. ambler the president, and he had seen me act, so there was no difficulty about identifying me. i left his office carrying the money, and carried it to my own bank to deposit. that is all there is to that."
"good!" i said. "the amsterdam trust company is a solid institution, and the president a well-known man. they will still be there if we need them."
"it mustn't get in the newspapers," he said nervously.
"trust me for that. i'm not going to make you break your word. now about the bet you made with miss hamerton."
he winced at the sound of her name. "there's no more in that than appears on the surface," he said irritably. "i couldn't have told the paste from the genuine. i wanted to give her a box of gloves. but she never claimed them, and i forgot about it."
"the cryptogram you have already explained," said i.
"i did not know there was such a paper in my pocket."
"hold on," he cried suddenly, "about that bet. i have just remembered that i once had a talk about precious stones, pearls, with a man in the company."
"milbourne?"
"sure! how did you know?"
"i believe he took them. but it's going to be a job to prove it."
"it was just a trifling conversation," roland resumed, thinking hard. "i can't remember exactly. he marked the beauty and oddity of ir—of miss hamerton's necklace. i think he said he hoped that she did not risk wearing real pearls on the stage. that may have been to find out if i knew they were artificial. i told him she did not wear the real ones. there was more talk. he seemed to know about pearls, and i believe i asked him how to tell the real from the artificial. i never thought of it then, but looking back i see that it may have been that talk which gave me the idea of making a bet with ir—with her. oh, i have been a fool!"
"this is all interesting," i said, "but it doesn't give us anything solid to go on. now for the main thing. how did the real pearls get in your safe?"
roland struck his forehead. "i have been everybody's dupe!" he groaned.
"it's a part we all have to play occasionally," i said soothingly. "go ahead."
"about this time i began to get circular letters from a firm of jewellers called jones and sanford with an address on maiden lane, where all the jewellers used to be. they were fac-simile letters, very well written."
"the kind that are made to look like personal letters, but like false teeth, deceive nobody?"
"precisely. i got one every few days. they were all to the effect that the writers as brokers, were prepared to sell precious stones at prices much under those asked by the big jewellers. there was a lot of rigmarole about saving on overhead charges, interest on valuable stocks and so on, about what you would expect in such letters. there were a lot of imposing-looking references, too."
"at first i paid no attention to the letters; precious stones didn't interest me. but when i got all that money i began to read them. you see i—i wanted to make irma a present, and i knew she loved pearls better than anything else in the world."
i let a whistle of astonishment out of me. "do you mean to say you bought miss hamerton's pearls with the idea of presenting her with them, to add to her collection?"
he nodded shamefacedly. "i didn't know she had been robbed."
"how long had you had them?"
"just a few days."
he told me that he had asked miss hamerton to marry him, and intended the necklace for a wedding-gift if she consented.
"you were a downy bird!" i exclaimed.
"wait till i tell you," he said. "they were a slick pair. you might have been taken in yourself."
"did they know you?" i asked, still full of amazement.
"certainly. i paid for them by check, certified check."
"which they cashed within half an hour!"
"maybe. i never enquired."
"sold miss hamerton's pearls back to miss hamerton's leading man!" i cried. "my boy, we have something out of the common in crooks to deal with!"
"they had a well-furnished suite on an upper floor of a first-class office building," he resumed. "i was there three or four times. i saw other customers coming and going. everything was business-like and all right looking. even the stenographer had a prim new england air. they showed me all kinds of precious stones. i bit at the pearls because i recognised that they were the same kind irma had. they asked eight thousand dollars for them."
"you knew, didn't you, that miss hamerton's necklace was worth much more than that?"
"yes. but i had been told hers were very fine and perfect. i supposed these to be not so good."
"and so you paid your money on a chance, and took them home."
"not quite as fast as that. the jewellers seemed to take it as a matter of course that i would have the pearls examined by an expert before purchasing. they suggested that i take them up to dunsany's."
"dunsany's?" i said amazed.
"yes. wasn't that enough to lull suspicion? dunsany's is more than a jewelry store; it's a national institution."
"but you never took them there?"
"indeed i did," was the surprising answer. "sanford and jones' clerk went with me. we saw mr. freer, the firm's expert on pearls."
i whistled again. freer, the man at dunsany's to whom i had told my little fiction of the fiction-writer, and who had looked so queer when i mentioned blue pearls!
"large gentleman, elegantly-dressed, with a face like a boiled dumpling?"
"sure!" cried roland. "do you know him, too?"
"go on with your story!" i said.
"mr. freer examined the pearls and told me they were genuine, and of good quality. he valued them at about twelve thousand dollars."
"the devil he did!" i cried. "this case is spreading wider and wider. freer is in the gang, too. to think of their having a picket in dunsany's!"
"how do you know?"
"because he like everybody else in the trade had been informed that the only necklace of blue-black pearls in the world had been stolen. he knew, moreover, that it was worth——" but here prudence stopped my tongue.
"worth what?" asked roland.
"well, much more than twelve thousand."
"the only blue pearls in the world?" he said, puzzled.
"there's a lot about this necklace you don't know," i said smiling. "all in good time. go on with your story."
"well, that's all, isn't it?" said he. "at least you know the rest. why these fellows were so careful of details, you will even find their imprint in gold inside the case. jones and sanford, such and such a number, maiden lane."
"hm! i have a case on my hands now!" i said meditatively. "it may take me six months or more to clean this up."
"i'll work with you," he said.
"my dear fellow, i like you better every minute," i said, smiling at him. "but you'd make the worst detective in the world."
"oh, well, maybe i would," he said.
"there's no need for you to await the outcome of the case," i said. "we have the evidence right in hand to clear you. i'll lay it before miss hamerton to-morrow morning."
my young friend surprised me again. he leaped up with his dark eyes positively blazing. "you'll do nothing of the kind!" he cried passionately. "that affair is done, done for ever. if you interfere, i won't be responsible for the consequences. she has her pearls back. let her be. my time will come when she reads of the capture and the trial of the real thieves in the public newspapers!"
