THE CASTLECOURT
  DIAMOND CASE


[Illustration: _SHE MADE A SORT OF GRASP AT THE CASE_  [Page 30]




  The Castlecourt
  Diamond Case

  BEING A COMPILATION OF THE STATEMENTS
  MADE BY THE VARIOUS PARTICIPANTS IN
  THIS CURIOUS CASE NOW, FOR THE FIRST
  TIME, GIVEN TO THE PUBLIC :: :: ::

  _By_

  GERALDINE BONNER

  _Author of “Hard Pan,” “The Pioneers,” etc._

  _FRONTISPIECE ILLUSTRATION_

  BY

  HARRIE F. STONER

  [Illustration]

  FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  1906




  COPYRIGHT, 1905
  BY
  GERALDINE BONNER

  [_Printed in the United States of America_]
  Published, December, 1905




CONTENTS


  Statement of Sophy Jeffers, lady’s maid
    to the Marchioness of Castlecourt                   9

  Statement of Lilly Bingham, known in
    England as Laura Brice, in the
    United States as Frances Latimer,
    to the police of both countries as
    Laura the Lady, besides having recently
    figured as a housemaid at
    Burridge’s Hotel, London, under
    the alias of Sara Dwight                           47

  Statement of Cassius P. Kennedy, formerly
    of Necropolis City, Ohio, now
    Manager of the London Branch of
    the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage
    Company (Ltd.) of Chicago and St.
    Louis                                              95

  Statement of John Burns Gilsey, private
    detective, especially engaged on the
    Castlecourt diamond case      127

  The Statement of Daisy K. Fairweather
    Kennedy, late of Necropolis City,
    Ohio, at present a resident of 15
    Farley Street, Knightsbridge, London              157

  Statement of Gladys, Marchioness of
    Castlecourt                                       189




Statement of Sophy Jeffers, lady’s maid to the Marchioness of
Castlecourt.




Statement of Sophy Jeffers, lady’s maid to the Marchioness of
Castlecourt.


I had been in Lady Castlecourt’s service two years when the Castlecourt
diamonds were stolen. I am not going to give an account of how I was
suspected and cleared. That’s not the part of the story I’m here to set
down. It’s about the disappearance of the diamonds that I’m to tell,
and I’m ready to do it to the best of my ability.

We were in London, at Burridge’s Hotel, for the season. Lord
Castlecourt’s town house at Grosvenor Gate was let to some rich
Americans, and for two years now we had stayed at Burridge’s. It was
the third of April when we came to town--my lord, my lady, Chawlmers
(my lord’s man), and myself. The children had been sent to my lord’s
aunt, Lady Mary Cranbury--she who’s unmarried, and lives at Cranbury
Castle, near Worcester.

Lord Castlecourt didn’t like going to the hotel at all. Chawlmers used
to tell me how he’d talk sometimes. Chawlmers has been with my lord ten
years, and was born on the estate of Castlecourt Marsh Manor. But my
lord generally did what my lady wanted, and she was not at all partial
to the country. She’d say to me--she was always full of her jokes:

“Yes, it’s an excellent place, the country--an excellent place to get
away from, Jeffers. And the farther away you get the more excellent it
seems.”

My lady had been born in Ireland, and lived there till she was a woman
grown. It’s not for me to comment on my betters, but I’ve heard it said
she didn’t have a decent frock to her back till old Lady Bundy took
her up and brought her to London. Her father was a clergyman, the Rev.
McCarren Duffy, of County Clare, and they do say he hadn’t a penny to
his fortune, and that my lady ran wild in cotton frocks and with holes
in her stockings till Lady Bundy saw her. I’ve heard tell that Lady
Bundy said of her she’d be the most beautiful woman in London since
the Gunnings (whoever they were), and just brought her up to town and
fitted her out from top to toe. In a month she was the talk of the
season, and before it was over she was betrothed to the Marquis of
Castlecourt, who was a great match for her.

But she was the beggar on horseback you hear people talk about. Lord
Castlecourt wasn’t what would be called a millionaire, but he gave her
more in a month than she’d had before in five years, and she’d spend
it all and want more. It seemed as if she didn’t know the value of
money. If she’d see a pretty thing in a shop she’d buy it, and if she
had not got the ready money they’d give her the credit; for, being the
Marchioness of Castlecourt, all the shop people were on their knees to
her, they were that anxious to get her patronage. Then when the bills
would come in she would be quite surprised and wonder how she had come
to spend so much, and hide them from Lord Castlecourt. Afterward she’d
forget all about them, even where she’d put them.

Lord Castlecourt was so fond of her he’d have forgiven her anything.
They’d been married five years when I entered my lady’s service, and he
was as much in love with her as if he’d been married but a month. And
I don’t blame him. She was the prettiest lady, and the most coaxing,
I ever laid eyes on. She might well be Irish: there was blarney on
her tongue for all the world, and money ready to drop off the ends of
her fingers into any palm that was held out. There was no story of
misfortune but would bring the tears to her eyes and her purse to her
hand: generous and soft hearted she was to every creature that walked.
No one could be angry with her long. I’ve seen Lord Castlecourt begin
to scold her, and end by laughing at her and kissing her. Not but what
she respected him and loved him. She did both, and she was afraid of
him too. No one knew better than my lady when it was time to stop
trifling with my lord and be serious.

It was Lord Castlecourt’s custom to go to Paris two or three times
every year. He had a sister married there of whom he was very fond, and
he and her husband would go off shooting boars to a place with a name
I can’t remember. My lady was always happy to go to Paris. She’d say
she loved it, and the theaters, and the shops--tho what she could see
in it _I_ never understood. A dirty, messy city, and full of men ready
to ogle an honest, Christian woman, as if she was what half the women
look like that go prancing along the streets. My lady spent a good
deal of her time at the dressmakers, and she and I were forever going
up to top stories in little, silly lifts that go up of themselves. I’d
a great deal rather have walked than trusted myself to such unsafe,
French contrivances--underhand, dangerous things, that might burst at
any moment, _I_ say.

The year before the time I am writing of we went to Paris, as usual, in
March. We stopped at the Bristol, and stayed one month. My lady went
out a great deal, and between-whiles was, as usual, at what they call
there “_couturières’_,” at the jewelers’, or the shops on the Rue de la
Paix. She also bought from Bolkonsky, the furrier, a very smart jacket
of Russian sable that I’ll be bound cost a pretty penny. When we went
back to London for the season her beauty and her costumes were the
talk of the town. Old Lady Bundy’s maid told me that Lady Bundy went
about saying: “And but for me, she’d be the mother of the red-headed
larrykins of an Irish squireen!” Which didn’t seem to me nice talk for
a lady.

We spent that summer at Castlecourt Marsh Manor very quietly, as was my
lord’s wish. My lady did not seem in as good spirits as usual, which I
set down to the country life that she always said bored her. Once or
twice she told me that she felt ill, which I’d never known her to say
before, and one day in the late summer I discovered her in tears. She
did not seem to be herself again till we went to Paris in September.
Then she brightened up, and was soon in higher spirits than ever. She
was on the go continually--often would go out for lunch, and not be
back till it was time to dress for dinner. She enjoyed herself in Paris
very much, she told me. And I think she did, for I never saw her more
animated--almost excited with high spirits and success.

The following spring we left Castlecourt Marsh Manor, and, as I said
before, came to Burridge’s on April the third. The season was soon
in full swing, and my lady was going out morning, noon, and night.
There was no end to it, and I was worn out. When she was away in the
afternoon I’d take forty winks on the sofa, and have Sara Dwight, the
housemaid of our rooms, bring me a cup of tea, when she’d sometimes
take one herself, and we’d gossip a bit over it.

If I’d known what an important person Sara Dwight was going to turn out
I’d have taken more notice of her. But, unfortunately, thieves don’t
have a mark on their brow like Cain, and Sara was the last girl any one
would have suspected was dishonest. All that I ever thought about her
was that she was a neat, civil-spoken girl, who knew her betters and
her elders when she saw them. She was quick on her feet, modest and
well-mannered--not what you’d call good-looking: too pale and small for
my taste, and Chawlmers quite agreed with me. The one thing I noticed
about her were her hands, which were white and fine like a lady’s. Once
when I asked her how she kept them so well, she laughed, and said, not
having a pretty face, she tried to have pretty hands.

“Because a girl ought to have something pretty about her, oughtn’t she,
Miss Jeffers?” she said to me, quiet and respectful as could be.

I answered, as I thought it was my duty, that beauty was only skin
deep, and if your character was honest your face would take care of
itself.

She looked down at her hands, and smiled a little and said:

“Yes, I suppose that’s true, Miss Jeffers. I’ll try to remember it.
It’s what every girl ought to feel, I’m sure.”

Sara Dwight had the greatest admiration for Lady Castlecourt. She’d
manage to be standing about in doorways and on the stairs when my lady
passed down to go to dinner and to the opera. Then she’d come back
and tell me how beautiful my lady was, and how she envied me being
her maid. While she was talking she’d help me tidy up the room, and
sometimes--because she admired my lady so--I’d let her look at the new
clothes from Paris as they hung in the wardrobe. Sara would gape with
admiration over them. She spoke a little about my lady’s jewels, but
not much. I’d have suspected that.

It was in the fifth week after we came to town--to be exact, on the
afternoon of the fourth day of May--that the diamonds were stolen. As
I’d been so badgered and questioned and tormented about it, I’ve got it
all as clear in my head as a photograph--just how it was and just what
time everything happened.

That evening my lady was going to dinner at the Duke of Duxbury’s. It
was to be a great dinner--a prince and a prime minister, and I don’t
know what all besides. My lady was to wear a new gown from Paris and
the diamonds. She told me when she went out what she would want and
when she would be back. That was at four, and I was not to expect her
in till after six.

Some time before that I got her things ready, the gown laid out, and
the diamonds on the dressing-table. They were kept in a leather case
of their own, and then put in a despatch-box that shut with a patent
lock. When we traveled I always carried this box--that is, when my
lady used it. A good deal of the time it was at the bankers’. Lord
Castlecourt was very choice about the diamonds. Some of them had been
in his family for generations. The way they were set now--in a necklace
with pendants, the larger stones surrounded by smaller ones--had been
a new setting made for his mother. My lady wanted them changed, and I
remember that Lord Castlecourt was vexed with her, and she couldn’t
pet and coax him back into a good humor for some days.

One of the last things that I did that afternoon while arranging the
dressing-table was to open the despatch-box and take the leather case
out. Tho it was May, and the evenings were very long, I turned on the
electric lights, and, unclasping the case, looked at the necklace.

I was standing this way when Chawlmers comes to the side door of the
room (the whole suite was connected with doors), and asks me if I
could remember the number of the bootmakers where my lady bought her
riding-boots. Some friend of Chawlmers wanted to know the address. I
couldn’t at first remember it, and I was standing this way, trying
to recollect, when I heard the clock strike six. I told Chawlmers I’d
get it for him. I was certain it was in my lady’s desk, and I put the
case down on the bureau, and Chawlmers and I together went into the
sitting-room (the door open between us and my lady’s room) and looked
for it. We found it in a minute, and Chawlmers was writing it down in
his pocket-book when I thought I heard (so light and soft you could
hardly say you’d heard anything) a rustle like a woman’s skirt in the
next room. For a second I thought it was my lady, and I jumped, for I’d
no business at her desk, and I knew she’d be vexed and scold me.

Chawlmers didn’t hear a thing, and looked at me astonished. Then I ran
to the door and peeped in. There was no one there, and I thought, of
course, I’d been mistaken.

We didn’t leave the room directly, but stood by the desk talking for
a bit. When I told this to the detectives, one of the papers said it
showed “how deceptive even the best servants were.” As if a valet and
a lady’s maid couldn’t stop for a moment of talk! Poor things! we
work hard enough most of the time, I’m sure. And that we weren’t long
standing there idle can be seen from the fact that I heard half-past
six strike. I was for urging Chawlmers to go then--as Lady Castlecourt
might be in at any moment--but he hung about, following me into my
lady’s room, helping me draw the curtains and turn on all the lights,
for my lady can’t bear to dress by daylight.

It was nearly seven o’clock when we heard the sound of her skirts in
the passage. Chawlmers slipped off into his master’s rooms, shutting
the door quietly behind him. My lady was looking very beautiful. She
had on a blue hat trimmed with blue and gray hydrangeas, and underneath
it her hair was like spun gold, and her eyes looked soft and dark.
It never seemed to tire her to be always on the go. But I’d thought
lately she’d been going too much, for sometimes she was pale, and once
or twice I thought she was out of spirits--the way she’d been in the
country last summer.

She seemed so to-night, not talking as much as usual. There were
some letters for her on the corner of the dressing-table, and I could
see her face in the glass as she read them. One made her smile, and
then she sat thinking and biting her lip, which was as red as a
cherry. She seemed to me to be preoccupied. When I was making the side
“_ondulations_” of her hair--which everybody knows is a most critical
operation--she jerked her head, and said suddenly she wondered how the
children were. I never before knew my lady to think about the children
when her hair was being attended to.

She was sitting in front of the dressing-table, her toilet complete,
when she stretched out her hand to the leather case of the diamonds.
I was looking at the reflection in the mirror, thinking that she was
as perfect as I could make her. She, too, had been looking at the back
of her head, and still held the small glass in one hand. The other
she reached out for the diamonds. The case had a catch that you had
to press, and I saw, to my surprise, that she raised the lid without
pressing this. Then she gave a loud exclamation. There were no diamonds
there!

She turned round and looked at me, and said:

“How odd! Where are they, Jeffers?”

I felt suddenly as if I was going to fall dead, and afterward, when
my lady stood by me and said it was nonsense to suspect me, one of
the things she brought up as a proof of my innocence was the color I
turned and the way I looked at that moment.

“Jeffers!” she said, suddenly rising up quick out of her chair. And
then, without my saying a word, she went white and stood staring at me.

“My lady, my lady,” was all I could falter out, “I don’t know--I don’t
know!”

“Where are they, Jeffers? What’s happened to them?”

My voice was all husky like a person’s with a cold, as I stammered:

“They were in the case an hour ago.”

My lady caught me by the arm, and her fingers gripped tight into my
flesh.

“Don’t say they’re stolen, Jeffers!” she cried out. “Don’t tell me
that! Lord Castlecourt would never forgive me. He’ll never forgive me!
They’re worth thousands and thousands of pounds! They _can’t_ have been
stolen!”

She spoke so loud they heard her in the next room, and Lord Castlecourt
came in. He was a tall gentleman, a little bald, and I can see him
now in his black clothes, with the white of his shirt bosom gleaming,
standing in the doorway looking at her. He had a surprised expression
on his face, and was frowning a little; for he hated anything like loud
talking or a scene.

“What’s the matter, Gladys?” he said. “You’re making such a noise I
heard you in my room. Is there a fire?”

She made a sort of grasp at the case, and tried to hide it. Chawlmers
was in the doorway behind my lord, and I saw him staring at her and
trying not to. He told me afterward she was as white as paper.

“The diamonds,” she faltered out--“your diamonds--your family’s--your
mother’s.”

Lord Castlecourt gave a start, and seemed to stiffen. He did not move
from where he was, but stood rigid, looking at her.

“What’s the matter with them?” he said, quick and quiet, but not as if
he was calm.

She threw the case she had been trying to hide on the dressing-table.
It knocked over some bottles, and lay there open and empty. My lord
sprang at it, took it up, and shook it.

“Gone?” he said, turning to my lady. “Stolen, do you mean?”

“Yes--yes--yes,” she said, like that--three times; and then she fell
back in the chair and put her hands over her face.

Lord Castlecourt turned to me.

“What’s this mean, Jeffers? You’ve had charge of the diamonds.”

I told him all I knew and as well as I could, what with my legs
trembling that they’d scarce support me, and my tongue dry as a piece
of leather. When I got toward the end, my lady interrupted me, crying
out:

“Herbert, it isn’t my fault, it isn’t! Jeffers will tell you I’ve taken
good care of them. I’ve not been careless or forgetful about them, as
I have about other things. I _have_ been careful of them! It isn’t my
fault, and you mustn’t blame me!”

Lord Castlecourt made a sort of gesture toward her to be still. I
could see it meant that. He kept the case, and, going to the door,
locked it.

“How long have you been in these rooms?” he said, turning round on me
with the key in his hand.

I told him, trembling, and almost crying. I had never seen my lord look
so terribly stern. I don’t know whether he was angry or not, but I was
afraid of him, and it was for the first time; for he’d always been a
kind and generous master to me and the other servants.

“Oh, my lord,” I said, feeling suddenly weighed down with dread and
misery, “you surely don’t think I took them?”

“I’m not thinking anything,” he said. “You and Chawlmers are to stay
in this room, and not move from it till you get my orders. I’ll send at
once for the police.”

My lady turned round in her chair and looked at him.

“The police?” she said. “Oh, Herbert, wait till to-morrow! You’re not
even sure yet that they are stolen.”

“Where are they, then?” he says, quick and sharp. “Jeffers says she saw
them in that case an hour ago. They are not in the case now. Do either
you or she know where they are?”

I was down on my knees, picking up the bottles that had been knocked
over by the empty jewel-case.

“Not I, God knows,” I said, and I began to cry.

“The matter must be put in the hands of the police at once,” my
lord said. “I’ll have the hotel policeman here in a few minutes, and
the rooms searched. Jeffers and Chawlmers and their luggage will be
searched to-morrow.”

My lady gave a sort of gasp. I was close to her feet, and I heard her.
But, for myself, I just broke down, and, kneeling on the floor with the
overturned bottles spilling cologne all around me, cried worse than
I’ve done since I was in short frocks.

“Oh, my lady, I didn’t take them! I didn’t! You know I didn’t!” I
sobbed out.

My lady looked very miserable.

“My poor Jeffers,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder, “I’m sure
you didn’t. If I’d only a sixpence in the world I’d stake that on
your honesty.”

Lord Castlecourt didn’t say anything. He went to the bell and pressed
it. When the boy answered it he gave him a message in a low tone, and
it didn’t seem five minutes before two men were in the room. I did
not know till afterward that one was the manager, and the other the
hotel policeman. I stopped my crying the best I could, and heard my
lord telling them that the diamonds were gone, and that Chawlmers and
I had been the only people in the room all the afternoon. Then he said
he wanted them to communicate at once with Scotland Yard, and have a
capable detective sent to the hotel.

“Lady Castlecourt and I are going to dinner,” he said, looking at his
watch. “We will have to leave, at the latest, within the next twenty
minutes.”

Lady Castlecourt cried out at that:

“Herbert, I don’t see how I can go to that dinner. I am altogether too
upset, and, besides, it will be too late. It’s eight o’clock now.”

“We can make the time up in the carriage,” my lord said; and he went
into the next room with the policeman, where they talked together in
low voices. I helped my lady on with her cloak, and she stood waiting,
her eyebrows drawn together, looking very pale and worried. When my
lord came back he said nothing, only nodded to my lady that he was
ready, and, without a word, they left the room.

I tried to tidy the bureau and pick up the bottles as well as I could,
and every time I looked at the door into the sitting-room I saw that
policeman’s head peering round the door-post at me.

That was an awful night. I did not know it till afterward, but both
Chawlmers and I were under what they call “surveillance.” I did not
know either that Lord Castlecourt had told the policeman he believed us
to be innocent; that we were of excellent character, and nothing but
positive proof would make him think either of us guilty. All I felt, as
I tossed about in bed, was that I was suspected, and would be arrested
and probably put in jail. Fifteen years of honest service in noble
families wouldn’t help me much if the detectives took it into their
heads I was guilty.

The next morning we heard about the disappearance of Sara Dwight, and
things began to look brighter. Sara had left the hotel at a little
after seven the evening before, speaking to no one, and carrying a
small portmanteau. When they came to examine her room and her box
they found a jacket and skirt hanging on the wall, some burnt papers
in the grate, and the box almost empty, except for some cheap cotton
underclothes and a dirty wadded quilt put in to fill up. Sara had given
no notice, and had not at any time told any of her fellow servants
that she was dissatisfied with her place or wanted to leave.

That morning Mr. Brison, the Scotland Yard detective, had us up in the
sitting-room asking us questions till I was fair muddled, and didn’t
know truth from lies. Lord Castlecourt and my lady were both present,
and Mr. Brison was forever politely asking my lady questions till she
got quite angry with him, and said she wasn’t at all sure the diamonds
were stolen; they might have been mislaid, and would turn up somewhere.
Mr. Brison was surprised, and asked my lady if she had any idea where
they were liable to turn up; and my lady looked annoyed, and said it
was a silly question, and that she “wasn’t a clairvoyant.”

Three days after this Mr. John Gilsey, who is a detective, and, I have
heard since, a very famous gentleman, was engaged by Lord Castlecourt
to “work upon the case.” Mr. Gilsey was very soft-spoken and pleasant.
He did not muddle you, as Mr. Brison did, and it was very easy to tell
him all you knew or could remember, which he always seemed anxious to
hear. He had me up in the sitting-room twice, once alone and once with
Mr. Brison, and they asked me a host of questions about Sara Dwight. I
told them all I could think of; and when I came to her hands, and how
they were white and fine, like a lady’s, I saw Mr. Brison look at Mr.
Gilsey and raise his eyebrows.

“Does it seem to you,” he says, scribbling words in his note-book,
“that this sounds like Laura the Lady?”

And Mr. Gilsey answered:

“The manner of operating sounds like her, I must admit.”

“She was in Chicago when last heard of,” says Mr. Brison, stopping in
his scribbling, “but we’ve information within the last week that she’s
left there.”

“Laura the Lady is in London,” Mr. Gilsey remarked, looking at his
finger nails. “I saw her three weeks ago at Earlscourt.”

Mr. Brison got red in the face and puffed out his lips, as if he was
going to say something, but decided not to. He scribbled some more,
and then, looking at what he had written as if he was reading it over,
says:

“If that’s the case, there’s very little doubt as to who planned and
executed this robbery.”

“That’s a very comfortable state of affairs to arrive at,” says Mr.
Gilsey, “and I hope it’s the correct one.” And that was all he said
that time about what he thought.

After this we stayed on at Burridge’s for the rest of the season, but
it was not half as cheerful or gay as it had been before. My lord was
often moody and cross, for he felt the loss of the diamonds bitterly;
and my lady was out of spirits and moped, for she was very fond of him,
and to have him take it this way seemed to upset her. Mr. Brison or Mr.
Gilsey were constantly popping in and murmuring in the sitting-room,
but they got no further on--at least, there was no talk of finding the
diamonds, which was all that counted.

This is all I know of the theft of the necklace. What happened at that
time, and what Mr. Gilsey calls “the surrounding circumstances of the
case,” I have tried to put down as clearly and as simply as possible. I
have gone over them so often, and been forced to be so careful, that I
think they will be found to be quite correct in every particular.




Statement of Lilly Bingham, known in England as Laura Brice, in the
United States as Frances Latimer, to the police of both countries as
Laura the Lady, besides having recently figured as a housemaid at
Burridge’s Hotel, London, under the alias of Sara Dwight.




Statement of Lilly Bingham, known in England as Laura Brice, in the
United States as Frances Latimer, to the police of both countries as
Laura the Lady, besides having recently figured as a housemaid at
Burridge’s Hotel, London, under the alias of Sara Dwight.


I never was so glad of anything in my life as to get out of that
beastly hole, Chicago. I’ll certainly never go back there unless there
is an inducement big enough to compensate for the elevated railroad,
the lake, the noise, the winds, the restaurants, the climate, and the
people. Ugh, what a nightmare!

England’s the country for me, and London is the focus of it. You can
live like a Christian here, and enjoy all the refinements and decencies
of life for a reasonable consideration. How my heart leaped when I
saw the old, gray, sooty walls looming up through the river haze--I
thought it best to sneak by the back way, because if I go up the front
stairs and ring the bell there may be loiterers round who had seen
Laura the Lady before, and might become impertinently curious about
her future movements. And then when I saw Tom waiting for me--my own
Tom, that I lawfully married, in a burst of affection, three years ago,
at Leamington--I shouted out greetings, and danced on the deck, and
waved my handkerchief. It was worth while having lived in Chicago for
a year to come back to London and Tom and a little furnished flat in
Knightsbridge.

We were very respectable and quiet for a month--just a few callers
climbing up the front stairs, and demure female tea-parties at
intervals. I bought plants to put in the windows, and did knitting in a
conspicuous solitude which the neighbors could overlook. When I saw the
maiden lady opposite scrutinizing me through an opera-glass I felt like
sending her my marriage certificate to run her eye over and return.
We even hired a maid of all work from an agency as a touch of local
color on this worthy domestic picture. But when the Castlecourt diamond
scheme began to ripen I nagged at her till she was impudent and bundled
her off. Maud Durlan came in then, put on a cap and apron, and played
her part a good deal better than she used to when she acted soubrettes
in the vaudeville.

We were two weeks lying low, maturing our plans, tho when I left
Chicago I knew what I was coming back for. Outwardly all was the same
as usual--the decent callers still climbed the front stairs, and
elderly ladies who, without any stretch of imagination, might have
been my mother and aunts, dropped in for tea. I used to wonder how
the people on the floor below--they were the family of a man who made
rubber tires for bicycles--would have felt if they could have seen
Maud, our neat and respectable slavy, sitting with the French heels
of her slippers caught on the third shelf of the bookcase, dropping
cigarette ashes into the waste-paper basket.

When all was ready, Tom and I left for a “business” trip on the
Continent. We went away in a four-wheeler, driven by Handsome Harry,
the top piled with luggage, my face at the window smiling a last,
cautioning good-by at Maud. Five days later, under the name of Sara
Dwight, I was installed as housemaid on the third floor of Burridge’s
Hotel.

I had done work of that kind before--once in New York, and at another
time in Paris; having been born and spent my childhood in that cheerful
city, my French is irreproachable. The famous robbery of the Comtesse
de Chateaugay’s rubies was my work--but I mustn’t brag about past
exploits. I had never been engaged in a hotel theft of the importance
of the Castlecourt one. The necklace was valued at between eight
thousand and nine thousand pounds. The stones were not so remarkable
for size as for quality. They were of an unusually even excellence and
pure water.

After I had been in the hotel for a few days and watched the
Castlecourt party, all apprehension left me, and I felt confident and
cool. They were an extremely simple layout. Lady Castlecourt was a
beauty--a seductive, smiling, white and gold person, without any sense
at all. Her husband adored her. Being a man of some brains, that was
what might have been expected. What might not have been expected was
that she appeared to reciprocate his affection. Having made a careful
study of the manners and customs of the upper classes, I was not
prepared for this. I note it as one of those exceptions to rule which
occur now and then in the animal kingdom.

Besides the marquis and his lady, there were a maid and a valet to be
considered. The former was a dense, honest woman named Sophy Jeffers,
close on to forty, and of the unredeemed ugliness of the normal lady’s
maid. Such being the case, it was but natural to find that she was in
love with Chawlmers, the valet, who was twenty-seven and good-looking.
Jeffers was too truthful to tamper with her own age, but she did not
feel it necessary to keep up the same rigid standard when it came to
Chawlmers. It was less of a lie to make him ten years older than
herself ten years younger. From these facts I drew my deductions as to
the sort of adversary Jeffers might be, and I found that, by a modest
avoidance of Chawlmers’ society, I could make her my lifelong friend.

The evening of the Duke of Duxbury’s dinner was the time I decided upon
as the most convenient for taking the stones. I had heard from Jeffers
that the marquis and marchioness were going. When her ladyship left
her rooms that afternoon I heard her tell Jeffers that she would not
be back till after six, and to have everything ready at that hour. Off
and on for the next two hours I was doing work about the corridor with
a duster. It was near six when I heard the two servants talking in the
sitting-room. A bird’s-eye view through the keyhole showed me where
they were, and that they were engaged in searching for something in
the desk. It was my chance. With my housemaid’s pass-key I opened the
door a crack, and peeped in. The leather case of the diamonds stood on
the dressing-table not twenty feet from the door. It did not take five
minutes to enter, open the case, take the necklace, and leave. Jeffers
heard me. She was in the room almost as I closed the door. Before she
could have got into the hall I was in the broom-closet hunting for a
dust-pan. But she evidently suspected nothing, for the door did not
open and there was no indication of disturbance.

Two days later Tom and I returned from our “business trip” to the
Continent. I quite prided myself on the way our luggage was labeled.
It had just the right knock-about, piebald look. We drove up in a
four-wheeler, Handsome Harry on the box, and Maud opened the door for
us. For the next few days we were quiet and kept indoors. We spent the
time peacefully in the kitchen, breaking the settings of the diamonds
and reading about the robbery in the papers. As soon as things simmered
down, Tom was to take the stones across to Holland, where they would
be distributed. We threw away the settings, and put the diamonds in a
small box of chamois-skin that I pinned to my corset with a safety-pin.

That was the way things were--untroubled as a summer sea--till ten
days after our return, when I began to get restive. I had had what
they call in America “a strenuous time” at Burridge’s, working like a
slave all day, with not a soul to speak to but a parcel of ignorant
servant women, and I wanted livening up. I longed for the light and
noise of Piccadilly, the crowd and the restaurants; but what I wanted
particularly was to go to the theater and see a play called “The
Forgiven Prodigal.”

Maud and Tom raised a clamor of disapproval: What was the use of
running risks? did I think, because I’d been in Chicago for nearly a
year, that I was forgotten? did I think the men in Scotland Yard who
knew me were all dead? did I think the excitement of the Castlecourt
robbery was over and done? I yawned at them, and then told them, with
a gentle smile, that they were a “pusillanimous pair.” There might
be many men in Scotland Yard who knew me, and that, as they say in
Chicago, “is all the good it would do them.” They couldn’t arrest
me for sitting peacefully at a theater looking at a play. As for
connecting me with Sara Dwight, I would give any one a hundred pounds
who, when I was dressed and had my war-paint on, would find in me a
single suggestion of the late housemaid at Burridge’s. So I talked
them down; and if I didn’t convince them of the reasonableness of my
arguments, I at least managed to soothe their fears.

I dressed myself with especial care, and when the last rite of my
toilet was accomplished looked critically in the glass to see if
anything of Sara Dwight remained. The survey contented me. Sara’s
mother, if there be such a person, would have denied me. I was all in
black, a sweeping, spangly dress I had bought in New York, cut low, and
my neck is not my weak point, especially when _crême des violettes_
has been rubbed over it. My hair was waved (Maud does it very well,
much better than she cooks, I regret to say), and dressed high, with a
small red wreath of geraniums round it. Nose powdered to a probable,
ladylike whiteness, a touch of rouge, a tiny _mouche_ near the corner
of one eye, and long, black gloves--and, presto change! I wore no
jewels--their owners might recognize them. One could hardly say I
“wore” the Castlecourt diamonds, which were fastened to my corset with
a safety-pin. They were rather uncomfortable, but they were the only
thing about me that were.

As I stood in front of the glass putting on finishing touches, Maud
left the room, and went to the drawing-room to watch for Handsome
Harry, who was to drive our hansom. I did not like taking a hired
driver, and, thank goodness, I didn’t! I was putting a last _soupçon_
of scarlet on my lips, when she came back, stepping softly, and with
her eyes round and uneasy looking.

“I don’t know whether I’m nervous,” she says, “but there’s a man just
gone by in a hansom, and he leaned out and looked hard at our windows.”

“I hope it amused him,” I said, looking critically at my lips, to see
if they were not a little too incredibly ruddy. “It’s a harmless and
innocent way of passing the time, so we mustn’t be hard on him if it
doesn’t happen to be very intellectual. Come, help me on with my cloak,
and don’t stand there like Patience on a monument staring at thieves.”

I was irritated with Maud, trying to upset my peace of mind that way.
She’d had any amount of good times while I’d been at Burridge’s with
my nose to the grindstone. And here she was, the first time I’d got a
chance to have a spree, looking like a depressed owl and talking like
the warning voice of Conscience! As she silently held up my cloak and I
thrust my hand in the sleeve, I said, over my shoulder:

“And you needn’t go upsetting Tom by telling him about strange men in
hansoms who stare up at our front windows. I want to have a good time
this evening, not feel that I’m sitting by a guilty being who jumps
every time he’s spoken to as if the curse of Cain was on him.”

Maud said nothing, and I shook myself into my cloak and swept out to
the hall, where Tom was waiting.

There had been a slight fog all afternoon, and now it was thick; not a
“pea-soup” one, but a good, damp, obscuring fog--a regular “burglar’s
delight.” As we came down the steps we saw the two hansom lamps making
blurs, like lights behind white cotton screens. Tom was grumbling about
it and about going out generally as he helped me in. And just at that
minute, still and quick, like a picture going across a magic-lantern
slide, I saw a man on the other side of the street step out of the
shadow of a porch, and glide swiftly and softly past the light of the
lamp and up the street, to where the form of a waiting hansom loomed.
It was all very simple and natural, but his walk was odd--so noiseless
and stealthy.

I got in, and Tom followed me. He hadn’t seen anything. For the moment
I didn’t speak of it, because I wasn’t sure. But I’ve got to admit
that my heart beat against the Castlecourt diamonds harder than was
comfortable. We started, and I listened, and faintly, some way behind
us, I heard the _ker-lump!--ker-lump!--ker-lump!_ of another horse’s
hoofs on the asphalt. I leaned forward over the door, and tried to look
back. Through the mist I saw the two yellow eyes of the hansom behind
us. Tom asked me what was the matter, and I told him. He whistled--a
long, single note--then leaned back very steady and still. We didn’t
say anything for a bit, but just sat tight and listened.

It kept behind us that way for about ten minutes. Then I pushed up the
trap, and said to Harry:

“What’s this hansom behind us up to, Harry?”

“That’s what I want to know,” he says, quiet and low.

“Lose it, if you can, without being too much of a Jehu,” I answered,
and shut the trap.

He tried to lose it, and we began a chase, slow at first, and then
faster and faster, down one street and up the other. The fog by this
time was as thick and white as wool, and we seemed to break through
it like a ship, as if we were going through something dense and
hard to penetrate. It seemed to me, too, a maddeningly quiet night.
There was no traffic, no noise of wheels to get mixed with ours. The
_ker-lump!--ker-lump!_ of our horse’s hoofs came back as clear as
sounds in a calm at sea from the long lines of house fronts. And that
devilish hansom never lost us. It kept just the same distance behind
us. We could hear its horse’s hoofs, like an echo of our own, beating
through the fog. It got no nearer; it went no faster. It did not seem
in a hurry, it never deviated from our track. There was something
hideously unagitated and cool about it--a sort of deadly, sinister
persistence. I saw it in imagination, like a live monster with bulging
yellow eyes, staring with gloating greediness at us as we ran feebly
along before it.

Tom didn’t say much. He doesn’t in moments like this. He’s got the
nerve all right, but not the brain. There’s no inventive ability in
Tom, he’s not built for crises. Handsome Harry now and then dropped
some remark through the trap, which was like a trickle of icy water
down one’s spine. I began to realize that my lips were dry, and that
the insides of my gloves were damp. I knew that whatever was to be
done had to come from me. I’d got them into this, and, as they say in
Chicago, “it was up to me” to get them out.

I leaned over the doors, and looked at the street we were going
through. I know that part of London like a book--the insides of some
of the houses as well as the outsides; it’s a part of our business in
which I’m supposed to be quite an expert. The street was a small one
near Walworth Crescent, the houses not the smartest in the locality,
but good, solid, reliable buildings inhabited by good, solid, reliable
people. The lower floors were all alight. It was the heart of the
season, and in many of them there were dinners afoot. I thought, with
a flash of longing--such as a drowning man might feel if he thought
of suddenly finding himself on terra firma--of serene, smiling people
sitting down to soup. I’d have given the Castlecourt diamonds at that
moment to have been sitting down with them to cold soup, sour soup,
greasy soup, any kind of soup--only to be sitting down to soup!

We turned a corner sharp, going now at a tearing pace, and I saw
before us a length of street wrapped in fog, and blurred at regular
intervals by the lights of lamps. It looked ghostlike--so white, so
noiseless, lined on either side by dim house fronts blotted with an
indistinct sputter of lights. There was not a sound but our own horse’s
hoof-beats, and far off, like a noise muffled by cotton wool, the echo
of our pursuer’s. Through the opaque, motionless atmosphere I saw that
the vista into which I stared was deserted. There was not a human
figure or a vehicle in sight. It was a lull, a brief respite, a moment
of incalculable value to us!

My mind was as clear as crystal, and I felt a sense of cool, high
exhilaration. I have only felt this way in desperate moments, and this
was a truly desperate moment--a pursuer on our heels and the diamonds
in my possession!

I leaned over the doors, and looked up the line of houses. It was
Farley Street. Who lived in Farley Street? Suddenly I remembered that
I knew all about the people who lived in No. 15. They were Americans
named Kennedy--a man, his wife, and a little girl. He was manager of
the London branch of a Chicago concern called the “Colonial Box, Tub,
and Cordage Company,” that I had often heard of in America. We had
marked the house, and made extensive investigations before I left,
intending to add it to our list, as Mrs. Kennedy had some handsome
jewelry and silver. Since my return I had seen her name in the papers
at various entertainments, and Maud had told me a lot about her
social successes. She was pretty, and people were taking her up. All
this--that it takes me some minutes to tell--flashed through my mind
in a revolution of the wheels.

I could see now that the windows of No. 15 were lit up. The Kennedys
were evidently at home, perhaps had a dinner on. They, along with the
rest of the world, would in a minute be sitting down to soup. They
might be sitting down now; it was close on to half-past eight. Why
could not we sit down with them?

I lifted the top, and said to Harry:

“Is the hansom round the corner yet?”

“No,” he answered, “it’s our only chance. They’re still a bit behind
us. I can tell by the sound.”

“Drive to No. 15, second from the corner,” I said, “and go as if the
devil was after you.”

I dropped the trap, and as we tore down to No. 15 I spoke in a series
of broken sentences to Tom.

“We’re going in here to dinner. You must look as if it was all right.
If we carry it off well, they won’t dare to question. We’re Major
and Mrs. Thatcher, of the Lancers, that arrived Saturday from India.
They’re Americans, and won’t know anything, so you can say about what
you like. Give them India hot from the pan. I’ve been living in London
while you’ve been away. That’s how I come to know them and you don’t.
My Christian name’s Ethel. Do the dull, heavy, haw-haw style. Americans
expect it.”

We brought up at the curb with a jerk, threw back the doors, and dashed
up the steps. I caught a vanishing glimpse of Handsome Harry leaning
far forward to lash the horse as the hansom went bounding off into the
fog. As we stood pressed against the door, Tom whispered:

“What the devil is their name?”

“Kennedy,” I hissed at him--“Cassius P. Kennedy. Came originally from
Necropolis City, Ohio; lived in Chicago as a clerk in the Colonial
Box, Tub, and Cordage Company, and then was made manager of the London
branch. Their weak point is society. If any people are there, keep your
mouth shut. Be dense and unresponsive.”

We heard the rattle of the pursuing hansom at the end of the street,
then through the ground glass of the door saw a man servant’s
approaching figure.

“Only stay a few minutes over the coffee. We’re going on to the opera,”
I whispered, as the door opened.

I swept in, Tom on my heels. We came as fast as we could without
actually falling in and dashing the servant aside, for the noise of
our pursuer was loud in our ears, and we knew we were lost if we were
seen entering. As Tom somewhat hastily shut the door, I was conscious
of the expression of surprise on the face of the solemn butler. He did
not say anything, but looked it. I slid out of my cloak, and handed it,
languidly, to him.

“No, I won’t go up-stairs,” I said, in answer to his glare of growing
amaze.

Then I turned to the glass in the hat-rack, and began to arrange my
hair. I could see, reflected in it, a pair of portières, half open, and
affording a glimpse of a room beyond, bathed in the subdued rosy light
of lamps. I was conscious of movement there behind the portières--a
stir of skirts, a sort of hush of curiosity.

There had been the sound of voices when we came in. Now I noticed the
stealthy, occasional sibilant of a whisper. There was no dinner-party.
We were going to dine _en famille_. So much the better. My hair neat,
I turned to the butler, and, touching the jet of my corsage with an
arranging hand, murmured:

“Major and Mrs. Thatcher.”

The man drew back the curtain, and, with our name going before us in
loud announcement, I rustled into the room, Tom behind me.

Standing beside an empty fireplace, and facing the entrance in
attitudes of expectancy, were a young man and woman. In the soft pink
lamplight I had an impression of their two astonished faces, or,
rather, astonished eyes, for they were making a spirited struggle to
obliterate all surprise from their faces. The woman was succeeding
the best. She did it quite well. When she saw me she smiled almost
naturally, and came forward with a fair imitation of a hostess’
welcoming manner. She was young and very pretty--a fine-featured,
delicate woman, in a floating lace tea-gown. Her hand was thin and
small, a real American hand, and gleamed with rings. I could see her
husband, out of the tail of my eye, battling with his amazement and
staring at Tom. Tom was behind me, looming up bulkily, not saying
anything, but looking blankly through the glass wedged in his eye and
pulling his mustache.

“My dear Mrs. Kennedy,” I said, in my sweetest and most languid drawl,
“are we late? I hope not. There is such a fog, really I thought we’d
never get here.”

My fingers touched her hand, and my eyes looked into hers. She was
immensely curious and upset, but she smiled boldly and almost easily. I
could see her inward wrestlings to place me, and to wonder if she could
possibly have asked us, and had forgotten that too.

“And at last,” I continued, glibly, “I am able to present my husband.
I was afraid you were beginning to think he was a sort of Mrs. Harris.
Harry, dear, Mrs. and Mr. Kennedy.”

They all bowed. Tom held out his big paw, and took her little hand for
a moment, and then dropped it. He had just the stolid, awkward, owlish
look of a certain kind of army man.

“Awfully glad to get here, I’m sure,” he boomed out. And then he said
“What?” and looked at Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy was not as much master of the situation as his wife. He
wasn’t exactly frightened, but he was inwardly distracted with not
knowing what to do.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, loudly, to Tom, quite forgetting his
English accent. “Glad you could get around here. Foggy night, all
right!”

I looked at the clock. Tom stood solemnly on the hearth-rug, staring at
the fire. The Kennedys, for a moment, could think of nothing to say,
and I had to look at the clock again, screw up my eyes, and remark:

“Just half-past. We’re not really late at all. You know, Harry is
_such_ a punctual person, and he’s afraid I’ve got into unpunctual
habits while he’s been away.”

“He _has_ been away for some time, hasn’t he?” said Mrs. Kennedy,
looking from one to the other with piquant eyes that yearned for
information.

“Four years with the Lancers in India,” Tom boomed out again.

The Kennedys were relieved. They’d got hold of something. They both sat
down, and it was obvious that they gathered themselves together for new
efforts.

I did likewise. I realized that I must be biographical to a reasonable
extent--just enough to satisfy curiosity, without giving the impression
that I was sitting down to tell my life-story the way the heroine does
in the first act of a play.

“He arrived only last Saturday,” I said, “and you may imagine how
pleased I was to be able to bring him to-night, in answer to your kind
invitation.”

“Only too glad he could come,” murmured Mrs. Kennedy, oblivious of the
terrified side-glance that her husband cast in her direction. “Very
fortunate that you had this one evening disengaged.”

“I’m taking him about everywhere,” I continued, with girlish loquacity.
“People had begun to think that Major Thatcher was a myth, and I’m
showing them that there’s a good deal of him and he’s very much alive.
For four years, you know, I’ve been living here, first in those
miserable lodgings in Half Moon Street, and after that in my flat--you
know it--on Gower Street. A nice little place enough, but much nicer
now, with Harry in it.”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Kennedy, as sympathetically as was compatible
with her eagerness to pounce upon such crumbs of information as I let
drop. “How dull these four years have been for you!”

“Dull!” I echoed, “dull is not the word!” And I gave my eyes an
expressive, acrobatic roll toward the ceiling.

“She couldn’t have stood it out there,” said Tom, in an unexpected bass
growl. “Too hot! Ethel can’t stand the heat--never could.”

Then he lapsed into silence, staring at the fire under Mr. Kennedy’s
fascinated gaze. Dinner was just then announced, and I heard him saying
as he walked in behind us:

“Is India very hot, Mrs. Kennedy? Once in Delhi I sat for four days in
a cold bath, and read the Waverley novels.”

To which Mrs. Kennedy answered, brightly:

“I should think that would have put you to sleep, and you might have
been drowned.”

That was one of the most remarkable dinners I ever sat through. Of the
two couples, the Kennedys were the least at ease. They were more afraid
of being found out than we were. The cold sweat would break out on
Mr. Kennedy’s brow when the conversation edged up toward the subject
of previous meetings, and Mrs. Kennedy would begin to talk feverishly
about other things. She was the kind of woman who hates to be unequal
to any social emergency; and I am bound to confess, considering how
unprepared she was, she held her own this time with tact and spirit.
She had the copious flow of small talk so many Americans seem to have
at command, and it rippled fluently and untiringly on from the soup to
the savory. I added to the impression I had already made by alluding
to various titled friends of mine, letting their names drop carelessly
from my lips as the pearls and diamonds fell from the mouth of the
virtuous princess.

Tom did well, too--excellently well. When the conversation showed signs
of languishing, he began about India. He gave us some strange pieces
of information about that distant land that I think he invented on the
spur of the moment, and he told several anecdotes which were quite
deadly and without point. When they were concluded, he gave a short,
deep laugh, let his eye-glass fall out, looked at us one after the
other, and said, “What?”

I would have enjoyed myself immensely if a sense of heavy uneasiness
had not continued to weigh on me. What troubled me was the uncertainty
of not knowing whether we really had escaped our pursuers. There was
the horrible possibility that they had seen us enter the house, and
were waiting to grab us as we came out. If they were there, and I was
caught with the diamonds in my possession, it would be a pretty dark
outlook for Laura the Lady--so dark I could not bear to picture it,
even in thought. As I talked and laughed with my hosts, my mind was
turning over every possible means by which I could get rid of the
stones before I left the house, trying to think up some way in which I
could dispose of them, and yet which would not place them quite beyond
reclaiming. I think my nerves had been shaken by that spectral pursuit
in the fog. Anyway, I wasn’t willing to risk a second edition of it.

We sat over dinner a little more than an hour. It was not yet ten when
Mrs. Kennedy and I rose, and with a reminder to Tom that we were to “go
to the opera,” I trailed off in advance of my hostess across the hall
into the drawing-room. Here we sat down by a little gilt table, and
disposed ourselves to endure that dreary period when women have to put
up with one another’s society for ten minutes. It was my opportunity of
getting rid of the diamonds, and I knew it.

We had sipped our coffee for a few minutes, and dodged about with the
usual commonplaces, when I suddenly grew grave, and, leaning toward
Mrs. Kennedy, said:

“Now that we are alone, my dear Mrs. Kennedy, I must ask you about a
matter of which I am particularly anxious to hear more.”

She looked at me with furtive alarm. I could see she was nerving
herself for a grapple with the unknown.

“What matter?” she said.

I lowered my voice to the key of confidences that are dire if not
actually tragic:

“How about poor Amelia?” I murmured.

She dropped her eyes to her cup, frowning a little. I was thrilling
with excitement, waiting to hear what she was going to say. After a
moment she lifted her face, perfectly calm and grave, to mine, and said:

“Really, the subject is a very painful one to me. I’d rather not talk
about it.”

It was a master-stroke. I could not have done better myself. I eyed
her with open admiration. You never would have thought it of her; she
seemed so young. After she had spoken she gave a sigh, and again looked
down at her cup, with an expression on her face of pensive musing. At
that moment the voices of the men leaving the dining-room struck on my
ear.

I put my hand into the front of my dress, and undid the safety-pin. My
manner became furtive and hurried.

“Mrs. Kennedy,” I said, leaning across the table, and speaking almost
in a whisper, “I entirely sympathize with your feelings, but I am _very
much_ worried about Amelia. You know the--the--circumstances.” She
raised her eyes, looked into mine, and nodded darkly. “Well, I have
something here for her. It’s nothing much,” I said, in answer to a look
of protest I saw rising in her face--“just the merest trifle I would
like you to give her. _She_ will understand.”

I drew out the bag, and I saw her looking at it with curious, uneasy
eyes. The men were approaching through the back drawing-room. I rose
to my feet, and still with the secret, hurried air, I said:

“Don’t give yourself any trouble about it. It’s just from me to her.
Our husbands, of course, mustn’t know. I’ll put it here. Poor Amelia!”

There was a crystal and silver bowl on the table, and I put the bag
into it and placed a book over it.

“Mrs. Thatcher,” she said, quickly, “really, I--”

“Hush!” I said, dramatically, “it’s for Amelia! _We_ understand!”

And then the men entered the room.

We left a few minutes later. The butler called a cab for us, and even
if a person had never been a thief he ought to have had some idea
of how we felt as we issued out of that house and walked down the
steps. We neither of us spoke till we got inside the hansom and drove
off--safe for that time, anyway.

We went to Handsome Harry’s place for that night, and sent him back for
Maud, with the message she must get out immediately with what things
she could bring. By eleven she was with us with her trunk and mine on
top of a four-wheeler. The next morning we had scattered--I for Calais
_en route_ for Paris, Tom for Edinburgh. Maud went to join a vaudeville
company that she acts with “between-whiles.” We had to leave a good
many things in the flat; but I felt we’d got out cheaply, and had no
regrets.

That is the history of my connection with the Castlecourt diamond
robbery. Of course, it was not the end of the connection of our gang
with the case, but my actual participation ended here. I was simply an
interested spectator from this on. My statement is merely the record of
my own personal share in the theft, and as such is written with as much
clearness and fulness as I, who am unused to the pen, have got at my
command.




Statement of Cassius P. Kennedy, formerly of Necropolis City, Ohio,
now Manager of the London Branch of the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage
Company (Ltd.) of Chicago and St. Louis.




Statement of Cassius P. Kennedy, formerly of Necropolis City, Ohio,
now Manager of the London Branch of the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage
Company (Ltd.) of Chicago and St. Louis.


We had been in London two years when a series of extraordinary events
took place which involved us, through no fault of our own, in the most
unpleasant predicament that ever overtook two honest, respectable
Americans in a foreign country.

I had been sent over to start the English branch of the Colonial Box,
Tub, and Cordage Company, one of the biggest concerns of the Middle
West, and it wasn’t two months before I realized that the venture was
going to catch on, and I was going to be at the head of a booming
business. I’d brought my wife and little girl along with me. We’d
been married five years--met in Necropolis City, and lived there and
afterward in Chicago, where I got my first big promotion. She was Daisy
K. Fairweather, of Buncumville, Indiana, and had been the belle of the
place. She’d also attracted considerable attention in St. Louis and
Kansas City, where she’d visited round a good deal. There was nothing
green about Daisy K. Fairweather--never had been.

Daisy and I didn’t know many people when we first came over, but
that little woman wasn’t here six months before she’d sized up the
situation, and made up her mind just how and where she was going to
butt in. The first thing she did was to conform to those particular
ones among the local customs that seemed to her the most high-toned. In
Chicago we’d always dined at half-past six, and given the hired girls
every Thursday off. In London we dined the first year at half-past
seven, and the second at half-past eight. We had four servants and a
butler called Perkins, who ran everything in sight--myself included. I
always dressed for dinner after Perkins came, and tried to look as if
it was my lifelong custom. I’d have sunk out of sight in a sea of shame
rather than have had Perkins think I had not been brought up to it.

Daisy caught on to everything, and then passed the word on to me. She
was always springing innovations on me, and I did the best I could to
keep my end up. She stopped talking the way she used to in Necropolis
City, and made Elaine--that’s our little girl--quit calling me “Popper”
and call me “Daddy.” She called her front hair her “fringe” and her
shirt-waist her “bloos,” and she made me careful of what I said before
the servants. “Servants talk so!” she’d say, just as if she’d heard
them. In Necropolis City, or even Chicago, we never bothered about the
“help” talking. They said what they wanted and we said what we wanted,
and that was all there was to it. But I supposed it was all right.
Whatever Daisy K. Fairweather Kennedy says goes with me.

By the second season Daisy’d broken quite a way into society, and knew
a bishop and two lords. We were asked out a good deal, and we’d some
worthy little dinners at our own shack--15 Farley Street, near Walworth
Crescent, a thirty-five foot, four-story, high-stooped edifice that
we paid the same rent for you’d pay for a seven-room flat in Chicago.
Daisy by this time was in with all kinds of push. She was what she
called a “success.” Nights when we didn’t go out she’d sit with me and
say:

“Well, I don’t really see how I’ll ever be able to live in Chicago
again, and Necropolis City would certainly kill me.”

This same season Lady Sara Gyves dined with us twice (it was a great
step, Daisy said, and I took it for granted she knew), and once at a
reception Daisy stood right up close to the Marchioness of Castlecourt,
the greatest beauty in London, and watched her drink a cup of tea.
Daisy didn’t meet her that time, but she said to me:

“Next season I’ll know her, and the season after that, if we’re
careful, I’ll dine with her. Then, Cassius P. Kennedy, we will have
arrived!”

I said “Sure!” That’s what I mostly say to her, because she’s mostly
right. You don’t often find that little woman making breaks.

It was in our third season in London, the time the middle of May, when
the things occurred of which I have made mention at the beginning of
my statement. It was this way:

We’d been going out a good deal, pretty nearly every night, and we
were glad to have, for once, a quiet evening at home. Of course, that
doesn’t mean the same as it does in Necropolis City or even Chicago.
We dine, just the same, at half-past eight, and both of us dress for
dinner. We have to, Daisy says, no matter how we feel, because of the
servants. The servants in London are good servants all right, but the
way you have to avoid shocking their sensitive feelings sometimes
makes a free-born American rebellious. I like to think I’m an object
of interest to my fellow creatures, but it’s a good deal of a bother
to have it on your mind that you mustn’t destroy the illusions of the
butler or upset the ideals of the cook.

As we were waiting for dinner to be announced we heard a cab rattle
up and stop, as it seemed, at our door. We looked at each other with
inquiring eyes, and then heard the cab go off--on the full jump, I
should say, by the noise it made--and a minute later the bell rang
sharp and quick. Perkins opened the door, and Daisy and I heard a
lady’s voice, very sweet and sort of drawling, say something in the
vestibule. I peeped through the curtains, and there were a man and
a woman--a distinguished-looking pair--taking off their coats and
primping themselves up at the hall mirror. I’d never seen either of
them before, as far as I could remember, but I could tell by their
general make-up that they were the real thing--the kind Daisy was
always cultivating and asking to dinner.

I stepped back, and said to her, in a whisper:

“Somebody’s come to dinner, and you’ve forgotten all about it.”

She shook her head, and whispered back:

“I haven’t asked any one to dinner; I’m sure I haven’t.”

“Well, they’re here, whether we’ve asked them or not,” I hissed, “and
you can’t turn ’em out. They expect to be fed.”

“Who are they?”

“Search me! Friends of yours I’ve never seen.”

“For pity’s sake, don’t look surprised! Try and pretend it’s all
right.”

We lined up by the fireplace, and got our smiles all ready. The
portière was drawn, and Perkins announced:

“Major and Mrs. Thatcher.”

They sailed smilingly into the room, the woman ahead, rustling in a
long, sparkly, black dress. To my certain knowledge, I’d never seen
either of them before. The woman was very pretty; not pretty in the
sense that Daisy is, with beautiful features and a perfect complexion,
but slim, and pale, and aristocratic-looking. She had black hair with
a little wreath of red flowers in it, and the whitest neck I ever saw.
She evidently thought she was all right as far as herself and the
house and the dinner were concerned, for she was perfectly serene,
and easy as an old shoe. The man behind her was a big, handsome, dense
chap--just home from India, they said, and he looked it. He’d that dull
way those dead swell army fellows sometimes have; it goes with a long
mustache and an eye-glass.

I looked out of the tail of my eye at Daisy, and I knew by her face she
couldn’t remember either of them. But they were the genuine article,
and she wasn’t going to be feazed by any situation that could boil up
out of the society pool. She was just as easy as they were. She’d a
smile on her face like a child, and she said the little, mild, milky
things women say just as milkily and mildly as tho she was greeting
her lifelong friends.

Well, it went along as smoothly as a summer sea. They located
themselves as Major and Mrs. Thatcher, and told a lot about their life
and their movements--all of which I could see Daisy greedily gathering
in. I didn’t know whether she remembered them or not, but I didn’t
think she did, she was so careful about alluding to places where
she had met them. They seemed to know her all right--Mrs. Thatcher,
especially. She’d allude to smart houses where Daisy had been asked,
and tony people that were getting to be friends of Daisy’s. She seemed
to be right in the best circles herself. I wouldn’t like to say how
many times she mentioned the names of earls and lords; one of them,
Baron--some name like Fiddlesticks--she said was her cousin.

She didn’t stay long after dinner. I don’t think I sat ten minutes
with the major--and it was a dull ten minutes, and no mistake. There
was nothing light and airy about him. He asked me about Chicago (which
he pronounced “Chick-ago”), and said he had heard there was good
sport in the Rocky Mountains, and thought of going there to hunt the
Great Auk. I didn’t know what the Great Auk was, and I asked him. He
looked blankly at me, and said he believed a “large form of bird,”
which surprised me, as I had an idea it was a preadamite beast, like a
behemoth.

I was glad to have the major go, not only because he was so dull, but
because I was so dying to find out from Daisy if she’d placed them and
who they were. They were hardly on the steps and the front door shut on
them before I was back in the parlor.

“Who are they, for heavens’ sake?” I burst out.

She shook her head, laughing a little, and looking utterly bewildered.

“My dear boy,” she said, “I haven’t the least idea. It’s the most
extraordinary thing I ever knew.”

“Isn’t there anything about them you remember? Didn’t they say
something that gave you a clew?”

“Not a word, and yet they seem to know me so well. The queerest thing
of all was that, when you were in the dining-room with the man, the
woman, in the most confidential tone, began to ask me about some one
called Amelia. It was _too_ dreadful! I hadn’t the faintest notion what
she meant.”

“What did you say? I’ll lay ten to one you were equal to it.”

“I realized it was desperate, and, after going through the dinner so
creditably, I wasn’t going to break down over the coffee. She said:
‘How about poor Amelia?’ I knew by that ‘poor’ and by the expression of
her face it was something unusual and queer. I thought a minute, and
then looked as solemn as I could, and answered: ‘Really, the subject is
a very painful one to me. I’d rather not talk about it.’”

We both roared. It was so like Daisy to be ready that way!

“And then--this is the strangest part of all--she put her hand in the
front of her dress and drew out some little thing of chamois leather,
and told me to give it to Amelia from her. I tried to stop her, but it
was too late. She put it here in the crystal bowl.”

Daisy went to the bowl, and took out a little limp sack of chamois
leather.

“It feels like pebbles,” she said, pinching it.

And then she opened it and shook the “pebbles” into her hand. I bent
down to look at them, my head close to hers. The palm of her hand was
covered with small, sparkling crystals of different sizes and very
bright. We looked at them, and then at one another. They were diamonds!

For a moment we didn’t either of us say anything. Daisy had been
laughing, and her laugh died away into a sort of scared giggle. Her
hand began to shake a little, and it made the diamonds send out gleams
in all directions.

“What--what--does it mean?” she said, in a low sort of gasp.

I just looked at them and shook my head. But I felt a cold sinking in
that part of my organism where my courage is usually screwed to the
sticking-place.

“Are they real, do you think?” she said again, and she took the evening
paper and poured them out on it.

Spread out that way, they looked most awfully numerous and rich. There
must have been more than a hundred of them of different sizes, and
shaking around on the surface of the paper made them shine and sparkle
like stars.

“It’s a fortune, Cassius,” she said, almost in a whisper; “it’s a
fortune in diamonds. Why did she leave them?”

“Didn’t she say they were for Amelia?” I said, in a hollow tone.

“Yes; but who is Amelia? How will we ever find her? What shall we do?
It’s too awful!”

We stood opposite one another with the paper between us, and tried to
think. In the lamplight the diamonds winked at us with what seemed
human malice. I turned round and picked up the bag they had come from,
looked vaguely into it, and shook it. A last stone fell out on the
paper, quite a large one, and added itself to the pile.

“Why did she leave them here?” Daisy moaned. “What did she bother us
for? Why didn’t she take them to Amelia herself?”

“Because she was afraid,” I said, in the undertone of melodrama.
“They’re stolen, Daisy.”

I had voiced the fear in both our hearts. We sat down opposite one
another on either side of the table, with the newspaper full of
diamonds between us. I don’t know whether I was as pale as Daisy, but
I felt quite as bad as she looked. And sitting thus, each staring into
the other’s scared face, we ran over the events of the evening.

We couldn’t make much of it; it was too uncanny. But from the first we
both decided we’d felt something to be wrong. Why or how they’d come?
who they were? what they wanted?--we couldn’t answer a single question.
We were in a maze. The only thing that seemed certain was that they had
one hundred and fifty diamonds of varying sizes that they had wanted,
for some reason, to get rid of, and they’d got rid of them to us. And
so we talked and talked till, by slow degrees, we got to the point
where suddenly, with a simultaneous start, we looked at one another,
and breathed out:

“The Castlecourt diamonds!”

We had read it all in the papers, and we had talked it over, and here
we were with a pile of gems in a newspaper that might be the very
stones.

“And next year I’d hoped to know Lady Castlecourt. I’d been sure I
would!” Daisy wailed. “And now--”

“But you haven’t stolen the diamonds, dearest,” I said, soothingly.
“You needn’t get in a fever about that.”

“But, good heavens, I might just as well! Do you suppose there’s any
one in the world fool enough to believe the story of what happened here
to-night? People say it’s hard to believe everything in the Bible! Why,
Jonah and the whale is a simple every-day affair compared to it!”

It did look bad; the more we talked of it the worse it looked. We
didn’t sleep all night, and when the dawn was coming through the
blinds we were still talking, trying to decide what to do. At
breakfast we sat like two graven images, not eating a thing, and all
that day in the office I found it impossible to concentrate my mind,
but sat thinking of what on earth we’d do with those darned diamonds.

I’d suggested, the first thing, to go and give them up at the nearest
police station. But Daisy wouldn’t hear of that. She said that no
one would believe a word of our story--it was too impossible. And
when I came to think of it I must say I agreed with her. I saw myself
telling that story in a court of justice, and I realized that a look
of conscious guilt would be painted on my face the whole time. I’d
have felt, whether it was true or not, that nobody really ought to
believe it, and as an honest, self-respecting citizen I ought not to
expect them to. Here we were, strangers that nobody knew a thing about,
anyway! Daisy said they’d take us for accomplices; and when I said
to her we’d be a pretty rank pair of accomplices to give up the swag
without a struggle, she said they’d think we got scared, and decided to
do what she calls “turn State’s evidence.”

She thought the best thing to do was to keep the stones till we could
think up a more plausible story. We tried to do that, and the night
after our meeting with Major and Mrs. Thatcher we stayed awake till
three, thinking up “plausible stories.” We got a great collection of
them, but it seemed impossible to get a good one without implicating
somebody. I invented a corker, but it cast a dark suspicion on Daisy;
and she had an even better one, but it would have undoubtedly resulted
in the arrest of Perkins and the housemaid, and possibly myself.

It was a horrible situation. Even if we could possibly have escaped
suspicion ourselves, it would have ruined us socially and financially.
Would the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage Company have retained as the
head of its London branch a man who had got himself mixed up with a
sensational diamond robbery? Not on your life! That concern demands a
high standard and unspotted record in all its employees. I’d have got
the sack at the end of the month.

And Daisy! How would the bishop and two lords have felt about it? Had
no more use for that little woman, you can bet your bottom dollar! Even
Lady Sara Gyves, who, they say, will go anywhere to get a dinner, would
have given her the Ice-house Laugh. _I_ know them. And I saw my Daisy
sitting at home all alone on her reception day, and taking dinner with
me every night. No, sir! That wouldn’t happen if Cassius P. Kennedy had
to take those diamonds to the Thames and throw them off London Bridge
in a weighted bag.

So there we were! It was a dreadful predicament. Every morning we
read the papers with our hearts thumping like hammers. Every ring at
the bell made us jump, and we had a deadly fear that each time the
portière was lifted and a caller appeared we’d see the buttons and
helmet of a policeman with a warrant of arrest concealed upon his
person. I began to have awful dreams and Daisy didn’t sleep at all,
and got pale and peaked. We thought up more “plausible stories,” but
they seemed to get less probable every time, and all our spare moments
together, which used to be so happy and care free, were now dark and
harassed as the meetings of conspirators.

Even concealing the miserable things was a wearing anxiety. First we
decided to divide them, Daisy to wear her half in the chamois bag hung
around her neck, while I concealed mine in a money-belt worn under
my clothes. We had about decided on that and I’d bought the belt,
when we got the idea that if we were killed in an accident they’d be
found on us, and then our memoirs would go down to posterity blackened
with shame. So we just put them back in the bag and locked them up in
Daisy’s jewel-case, round which we hovered as they say a murderer does
round the hiding-place of his victim.

I never knew before how burglars felt; but if it was anything like
the way Daisy and I did, I wonder anybody ever takes to that perilous
trade. We were the most unhappy creatures in London, feeling ourselves
a pair of thieves, and our unpolluted, innocent home no better than a
“fence.” There was less in the papers about the Castlecourt diamonds
robbery, but that did not give us any peace; for, in the first place,
we didn’t know for certain that we had the Castlecourt diamonds, and,
in the second, when we now and then did see dark allusions to the
sleuths being “on a new and more promising scent,” we modestly supposed
that we might be the quarry to which it led. Daisy began to talk of
“going to prison” as a termination of her career that might not be so
far distant, and to the thought of which she was growing reconciled.

This about covers the ground of my immediate connection with the stolen
diamonds. Their subsequent disposition is a matter in which my wife
is more concerned than I am. She also will be able to tell her part
of the story with more literary frills than I can muster up. I’m no
writing man, and all I’ve tried to do is to state my part of the affair
honestly and clearly.




Statement of John Burns Gilsey, private detective, especially engaged
on the Castlecourt diamond case.




Statement of John Burns Gilsey, private detective, especially engaged
on the Castlecourt diamond case.


At a quarter before eight on the evening of May fourth a telephone
message was sent to Scotland Yard that a diamond necklace, the property
of the Marquis of Castlecourt, had been stolen from Burridge’s Hotel.
Brison, one of the best of their men, was detailed upon the case,
and three days later my services were engaged by the marquis. After
investigations which have occupied several weeks, I have become
convinced that the case is an unusual and complicated one. The reasons
which have led me to this conclusion I will now set down as briefly and
clearly as possible.

As has already been stated in the papers, the diamonds, on the
afternoon of the robbery, were standing in a leather jewel-case on
the bureau in Lady Castlecourt’s apartment. To this room access was
obtained by three doors--that which led into Lord Castlecourt’s room,
that which led into the sitting-room, and that which led into the hall.

Lord Castlecourt’s valet, James Chawlmers, and Lady Castlecourt’s maid,
Sophy Jeffers, had been occupied in this suite of apartments throughout
the afternoon. At six Jeffers had laid out her ladyship’s clothes,
taken the diamonds from the metal despatch-box in which they were
usually carried, and set them on the bureau. She had then withdrawn
into the sitting-room with Chawlmers, where they had remained for half
an hour talking. During this period of time Jeffers deposes that she
heard the rustle of a skirt in the sitting-room, and went to the door
to see if any one had entered. No one was to be seen. She returned
to the sitting-room, and resumed her conversation with Chawlmers. It
is the general supposition--and it would appear to be the reasonable
one--that the diamonds were then taken. According to Jeffers, they
were in the case at six o’clock, and on the testimony of Lord and Lady
Castlecourt they were gone at half-past seven. The person toward whom
suspicion points is a housemaid, going by the name of Sara Dwight, who
had a pass-key to the apartment.

The suspicions of Sara Dwight were strengthened by her actions. At
quarter past seven that evening she left the hotel without giving
warning, and carrying no further baggage than a small portmanteau.
Upon examination of her room, it was discovered that she had left a
gown hanging on the pegs, and her box, which contained a few articles
of coarse underclothing and a wadded cotton quilt. She had been
uncommunicative with the other servants, but had had much conversation
with Sophy Jeffers, who described her as a brisk, civil-spoken girl,
whose manner of speech was above her station.

The natural suspicions evoked by her behavior were intensified in the
mind of Brison by the information that the celebrated crook Laura the
Lady had returned to London. I myself had seen the woman at Earlscourt,
and told Brison of the occurrence. It had appeared to Brison that
Jeffers’ description of the housemaid had many points of resemblance
with Laura the Lady. The theft reminded us both of the affair of the
Comtesse de Chateaugay’s rubies, when this particular thief, who speaks
French as well as she does English, was supposed to have been the
moving spirit in one of the most daring jewel robberies of our time.

Brison, confident that Sara Dwight and Laura the Lady were one and
the same, concentrated his powers in an effort to find her. He was
successful to the extent of locating a woman closely resembling Laura
the Lady living quietly in a furnished flat in Knightsbridge with a
man who passed as her husband. He discovered that this couple had left
for a “business trip” on the Continent shortly before Sara Dwight’s
appearance at Burridge’s, and had returned shortly after her departure
therefrom.

He regarded the pair and their movements as of sufficient importance
to be watched, and for a week after their return from the Continent
had the flat shadowed. One foggy night, while he himself was watching
the place, the man and woman came out in evening dress, and took a
hansom that was waiting for them. Brison followed them, and the fog
being dense and their horse fresh, lost them in the maze of streets
about Walworth Crescent. He is positive that the occupants of the cab
realized they were followed and attempted to escape. He assures me that
he saw the driver turn several times and look at his hansom, and then
lash his horse to a desperate speed.

One of the points in this nocturnal pursuit that he thinks most
noteworthy is the manner in which the occupants of the cab disappeared.
After keeping it well in sight for over half an hour, he lost it
completely and suddenly in the short street that runs from Walworth
Crescent, north, into Farley Street; ten minutes later he is under
the impression that he sighted it again near the Hyde Park Hotel. But
if it was the same cab it was empty, and the driver was looking for
fares. For some hours after this Brison patrolled the streets in the
neighborhood, but could find no trace of the suspected pair. It was
midnight when he returned to his surveillance of the flat. The next
morning he heard that its occupants had left. A search-warrant revealed
the fact that they had gone with such haste that they had left many
articles of dress, etc., behind them. There was every evidence of a
hurried flight.

All this was so much clear proof, in Brison’s opinion, of the guilt
of Sara Dwight. Upon this hypothesis he is working, and I have not
disturbed his confidence in the integrity of his efforts. The result
of my investigations, which I have been quietly and systematically
pursuing for the last three weeks, has led me to a different and
much more sensational conclusion. That Sara Dwight may have taken the
diamonds I do not deny. But she was merely an accomplice in the hands
of another. The real thief, in my opinion, is Gladys, Marchioness of
Castlecourt!

My reasons for holding this theory are based upon observations taken at
the time, upon my large and varied experience in such cases, and upon
information that I have been collecting since the occurrence. Let me
briefly state the result of my deductions and researches.

Lady Castlecourt, who was the daughter of a penniless Irish clergyman,
was a young girl of great beauty brought up in the direst poverty. Her
marriage with the Marquis of Castlecourt, which took place seven years
ago this spring, lifted her into a position of social prominence and
financial ease. Society made much of her; she became one of its most
brilliant ornaments. Her husband’s infatuation was well known. During
the first years of their marriage he could refuse her nothing, and he
stinted himself--for, tho well off, Lord Castlecourt is by no means a
millionaire peer--in order to satisfy her whims. The lady very quickly
developed great extravagances. She became known as one of the most
expensively dressed women in London. It had been mentioned in certain
society journals that Lord Castlecourt’s revenues had been so reduced
by his wife’s extravagance that he had been forced to rent his town
house in Grosvenor Gate, and for two seasons take rooms in Burridge’s
Hotel.

This is a simple statement of certain tendencies of the lady. Now let
me state, with more detail, how these tendencies developed and to what
they led.

I will admit here, before I go further, that my suspicions of Lady
Castlecourt were aroused from the first. It was, perhaps, with a
predisposed mind that I began those explorations into her life during
the past five years which have convinced me that she was the moving
spirit in this theft of the diamonds.

For the first two years of her married life Lady Castlecourt lived most
of the time on the estate of Castlecourt Marsh Manor. During this
period she became the mother of two sons, and it was after the birth
of the second that she went to London and spent her first season there
since her marriage. She was in blooming health, and even more beautiful
than she had been in her girlhood. She became the fashion: no gathering
was complete without her; her costumes were described in the papers;
royalty admired her.

I have discovered that at this time her husband gave her six hundred
pounds per annum for a dressing allowance. During the first two years
of her married life she lived within this. But after that she exceeded
it to the extent of hundreds, and finally thousands, of pounds. The
fifth year after her marriage she was in debt three thousand pounds,
her creditors being dressmakers, furriers, jewelers, and milliners
in London and Paris. She made no attempt to pay these debts, and the
tradesmen, knowing her high social position and her husband’s rigid
sense of pecuniary obligations, did not press her, and she went on
spending with an unstinted hand.

It was last year that she finally precipitated the catastrophe by
the purchase of a coat of Russian sable for the sum of one thousand
pounds, and a set of turquoise ornaments valued at half that amount.
Each of these purchases was made in Paris. The two creditors, having
been already warned of her disinclination to meet her bills, had, it
is said, laid wagers with other firms to which she was deeply in debt,
that they would extract the money from her within the year.

It was in the summer of the past year that Lady Castlecourt was first
threatened by Bolkonsky, the furrier, with law proceedings. In the end
of September she went to Paris and visited the man in his own offices,
and--I have it from an eyewitness--exhibited the greatest trepidation
and alarm, finally begging, with tears, for an extension of a month’s
time. To this Bolkonsky consented, warning her that, at the end of that
time, if his account was not settled, he would acquaint his lordship
with the situation and institute legal proceedings.

Before the month was up--that was in October of the past year--his
account was paid in full by Lady Castlecourt herself. At the same
time other accounts in Paris and London were entirely settled or
compromised. I find that, during the months of October and November,
Lady Castlecourt paid off debts amounting to nearly four thousand
pounds. In most instances she settled them personally, paying them in
bank-notes. A few claims were paid by check. I have it from those with
whom she transacted these monetary dealings that she seemed greatly
relieved to be able to discharge her obligations, and that in all
cases she requested silence on the subject as the price of her future
patronage.

I now come to a feature of the case that I admit greatly puzzles me.
Lady Castlecourt was still wearing the diamonds when this large sum
was disbursed by her. As far as can be ascertained, she had made no
effort to sell them, and I can find no trace of a frustrated attempt to
steal them. She had suddenly become possessed of four thousand pounds
without the aid of the diamonds. They were not called into requisition
till nearly six months later.

The natural supposition would be that “some one”--an unknown donor--had
put up the four thousand pounds; in fact, that Lady Castlecourt had a
lover, to whom, in a desperate extremity, she had appealed. But the
most thorough examination of her past life reveals no hint of such a
thing. Frivolous and extravagant as she undoubtedly was, she seems to
have been, as far as her personal conduct goes, a moral and virtuous
lady. Her name has been associated with no man’s, either in a foolish
flirtation or a scandalous and compromising intrigue; in fact, her
devotion to Lord Castlecourt appears to have been of an absolutely
genuine and sincere kind. While she did not scruple to deceive him
as to her pecuniary dealings, she unquestionably seems to have been
perfectly upright and honest in the matter of marital fidelity.

Where, then, did Lady Castlecourt secure this large sum of money? My
reading of the situation is briefly this:

Her creditors becoming rebellious and Lady Castlecourt becoming
terrified, she appealed to some woman friend for a loan. Who this is
I have no idea, but among her large circle of acquaintances there
are several ladies of sufficient means and sufficiently intimate with
Lady Castlecourt to have been able to advance the required sum. This
was done, as I have shown above, in the month of October, when Lady
Castlecourt was in Paris, where she at once began to pay off her debts.
After this she continued wearing the diamonds, and, in my opinion--such
is her shallowness and irresponsibility of character--forgot the
obligations of the loan, which had probably been made under a promise
of speedy repayment, either in full or in part.

It was then--this, let it be understood, is all surmise--that Lady
Castlecourt’s new and unknown debtor began to press for a repayment.
There might be many reasons why this should so closely have followed
the loan. With a woman of Lady Castlecourt’s lax and unbusinesslike
methods, unusual conditions could be readily exacted. She is of the
class of persons that, under a pressing need for money, would agree
to any conditions and immediately forget them. That she did agree
to a speedy reimbursement I am positive; that once again she found
herself confronted by an angry and threatening creditor; and that,
in desperation and with the assistance of Sara Dwight, she stole the
diamonds, intending probably to pawn them, is the conclusion to which
my experience and investigations have led me.

How she came to select Sara Dwight as an accomplice I am not qualified
to state. In my opinion, fear of detection made her seek the aid of a
confederate. Sara’s flight, with its obviously suspicious surroundings,
has an air of prearrangement suggestive of having been carefully
planned to divert suspicion from the real criminal. Sophy Jeffers
assured me that Lady Castlecourt had never, to her knowledge, conversed
at any length with the housemaid. But Jeffers is a very simple-minded
person, whom it would be an easy matter to deceive. That Sara Dwight
was her ladyship’s accomplice I am positive; that she took the jewels
and now has them is also my opinion.

Being convinced of her need of ready money, and of the rashness and
lack of balance in her character, I have been expecting that Lady
Castlecourt would make some decisive move in the way of selling the
diamonds. With this idea agents of mine have been on the watch, but
without so far finding any evidence that she has attempted to place the
stones on the market. We have found no traces of them either in London
or Paris, or the usual depots in Holland or Belgium. It is true that
the Castlecourt diamonds, not being remarkable for size, would be easy
to dispose of in small, separate lots, but our system of surveillance
is so thorough that I do not see how they could escape us. I am of the
opinion that the stones are still in the hands of Sara Dwight, who,
whether she is an accomplished thief or not, is probably more wary and
more versed in such dealings than Lady Castlecourt.

That her ladyship should have been the object of my suspicions from
the start may seem peculiar to those to whom she appears only as a
person of rank, wealth, and beauty. Before the case came under my
notice at all, I had heard her uncontrolled extravagance remarked upon,
and that alone, coupled with the fact that Lord Castlecourt is not a
peer of vast wealth, and that the lady’s moral character is said to be
unblemished, would naturally arouse the suspicion of one used to the
vagaries and intricacies of the evolution of crime.

During my first interview with her ladyship I watched her closely, and
was struck by her pallor, her impatience under questioning, her hardly
concealed nervousness, and her indignant repudiation of the suspicions
cast upon her servants. All the domestics in her employment agree that
she is a kind and generous mistress, and it would be particularly
galling to one of her disposition to think that her employees were
suffering for her faults. Her answers to many of my questions were
vague and evasive, and to both Brison and myself, at two different
times, she suggested the possibility of the jewels not being stolen at
all, but having been “mislaid.” Even Brison, whose judgment had been
warped by her beauty and rank, was forced to admit the strangeness of
this remark.

The description given me by Sophy Jeffers of her ladyship’s deportment
when the theft was discovered still further strengthened my suspicions.
Lady Castlecourt’s behavior at this juncture might have passed as
natural by those not used to the very genuine hysteria which often
attacks criminals. That she was wrought up to a high degree of nervous
excitement is acknowledged by all who saw her. It is alleged by
Jeffers--quite innocently of any intention to injure her mistress,
to whom she appears devoted--that her ladyship’s first emotion on
discovering the loss was a fear of her husband; that when he entered
the room she instinctively tried to conceal the empty jewel-case behind
her, and that almost her first words to him were assurances that she
had not been careless, but had guarded the jewels well.

Fear of Lord Castlecourt was undoubtedly the most prominent feeling she
then possessed, and it showed itself with unrestrained frankness in
the various ways described above. Afterward she attempted to be more
reticent, and adopted an air of what almost appeared indifference,
surprising not only myself and Brison, but Jeffers, by her remarks,
made with irritated impatience, that they still might “turn up
somewhere,” and “that she did not see how we could be so sure they were
stolen.” This change of attitude was even more convincing to me than
her former exhibition of alarm. The very candor and childishness with
which she showed her varying states of mind would have disarmed most
people, but were to me almost conclusive proofs of her guilt. She is a
woman whose shallow irresponsibility of mind is even more unusual than
her remarkable beauty. No one but an old and seasoned criminal, or a
creature of extraordinary simplicity, could have behaved with so much
audacity in such a situation.

Having arrived at these conclusions, I am not reduced to a passive
attitude. I will wait and watch until such time as the diamonds
are either pawned or sold. This may not occur for months, tho I am
inclined to think that her ladyship’s need of money will force her to
a recklessness which will be her undoing. Sara Dwight may be able to
control her to a certain point, but I am under the impression that her
ladyship, frightened and desperate, will be a very difficult person to
handle.

This brings my statement up to date. At the present writing I am simply
awaiting developments, confident that the outcome will prove the verity
of my original proposition and the exactitude of my subsequent line of
argument.




The Statement of Daisy K. Fairweather Kennedy, late of Necropolis City,
Ohio, at present a resident of 15 Farley Street, Knightsbridge, London.




The Statement of Daisy K. Fairweather Kennedy, late of Necropolis City,
Ohio, at present a resident of 15 Farley Street, Knightsbridge, London.


I believe it is not necessary for me to state how a chamois-skin bag
containing one hundred and sixty-two diamonds came into my hands on the
evening of May 14th. That it did come into my possession was enough for
me. I never before thought that the possession of diamonds could make
a woman so perfectly miserable. When I was a young girl in Necropolis
City I used to think to own a diamond--even one small one--would be
just about the acme of human joy. But Necropolis City is a good way
behind me now, and I have found that the owning of a handful of them
can be about the most wearing form of misery.

I suppose there are fearless, upright people in the world who would
have taken those diamonds straight back to the police station and
braved public opinion. It would have been better to have had your word
doubted, to be tried for a thief, put in jail, and probably complicated
the diplomatic relations between England and the United States, than
to conceal in your domicile one hundred and sixty-two precious stones
that didn’t belong to you. I hope every one understands--and I’m sure
every one does who knows me--that I did not want to keep the miserable
things. What good did they do me, anyway, locked up in my jewel-box,
in the upper right-hand bureau drawer?

We knew no peace from that tragic evening when Major and Mrs.
Thatcher dined with us. First we tried to think of ways of getting
rid of them--of the diamonds, I mean. Cassius, who’s just a simple,
uncomplicated man, wanted to take them right to the nearest police
station and hand them in. I soon showed him the madness of _that_. Was
there a soul in London who would have believed our story? Wouldn’t the
American ambassador himself have had to bow his crested head and tame
his heart of fire, and admit it was about the fishiest tale he had ever
heard?

It would have ruined us forever. Even if Cassius hadn’t been deposed
from his place as the head of the English branch of the Colonial
Box, Tub, and Cordage Company (Ltd), of Chicago and St. Louis, who
would have known me? The trail of the diamonds would have been over
us forever. Lady Sara Gyves would have gone round saying she always
thought I had the face of a thief, and the bishop and the two lords
I’ve collected with such care would have cut me dead in the Park. I
would have received my social quietus forever. And, I just tell you,
when I’ve worked for a thing as hard as I have for that bishop and the
two lords and Lady Sara Gyves, I’m not going to give them up without a
struggle.

Cassius and I spent two feverish, agonized weeks trying to think what
we would do with the diamonds. I never knew before I had so much
inventive ability. It was wonderful the things we thought of. One of
our ideas was to put a personal in the papers advertising for “Amelia.”
We spent five consecutive evenings concocting different ones that would
have the effect of rousing “Amelia’s” curiosity and deadening that of
everybody else. It did not seem capable of construction. Twist and turn
it as you would, you couldn’t state that you had something valuable
in your possession for “Amelia” without making the paragraph bristle
with a sort of mysterious importance. It was like a trap set and
baited to catch the attention of a detective. We did insert one--“Will
Amelia kindly publish her present address, and oblige Major and Mrs.
Thatcher?”--which, after all, didn’t involve us. And for two weeks we
read the papers with beating, hopeful hearts, but there was no reply. I
thought “Amelia” never saw it. Cassius thought there was no such person.

A month dragged itself away, and there we were with those horrible gems
locked in my jewel-box. I began to look pale and miserable, and Cassius
told me he thought the diamonds were becoming a “fixed idea” with me,
and he’d have to take me away for a change. Once I told him I felt as
if I’d never have any peace or be my old gay self again while they were
in my possession. He said, that being the case, he’d take them out some
night and throw them in the Serpentine, the pond where the despondent
people commit suicide. But I dissuaded him from it.

“Perhaps they’ll never be claimed,” I said. “And some day when we’re
old we can have them set and Elaine can wear them.”

“You might even wear them yourself,” Cassius said, trying to cheer me
up.

“What would be the good?” I answered, gloomily. “I’d be at least sixty
before I’d dare to.”

All through June I lived under this wearing strain, and I grew thinner
and more nervous day by day. The season which is always so lovely and
gay was no longer an exciting and joyous time for me. I drove down
Bond Street with a frowning face, and it did not cheer me up at all
to see how many people I seemed to know. Looking down the vistas of
quiet, asphalted streets, where the lines of sedate house fronts are
brightened by polished brasses on the doors and flower-boxes at the
windows, I was no longer filled with an exhilarating determination to
some day be an honored guest in every house that was worth entering.
When I drove by the green ovals of the little parks, which you can’t
enter without a private key, I experienced none of my old ambition to
have a key too, and go in and mingle with the aristocracy sitting on
wooden benches.

Even meeting the Countess of Belsborough at a reception, and being
asked by her, in a sociable, friendly way, if I knew her cousin
John, who was mining somewhere in Mexico or Honduras--she wasn’t sure
which--did not cheer me up at all. The change in me was extraordinary.
When I first came to London, if even a curate or a clerk from the city
had asked me such a question, I’d have made an effort to remember John,
as if Mexico had been my front garden and I’d played all round Honduras
when I was a child. Now I said to Lady Belsborough that neither Mexico
nor Honduras were part of the United States quite snappishly, as if I
thought she was stupid. And all because of those accursed diamonds!

It was toward the end of June, and the days were getting warm, when the
climax came.

The pressure of the season was abating. The rhododendrons were dead in
the Park, and there was dust on the trees. In St. James’ the grass was
quite worn and patchy, and strangely clad people lay on it, sleeping in
the sun. One met a great many American tourists in white shirt-waists
and long veils. I thought of the time when I, too, innocently and
unthinkingly, had worn a white shirt-waist, and it didn’t seem to me
such a horrible time, after all--at least, I did not then have one
hundred and sixty-two stolen diamonds in my jewel-box. My heart was
lighter in those days, even if my shirt-waist had only cost a dollar
and forty-nine cents at a department store in Necropolis City.

The month ended with a spell of what the English call “frightful
heat.” It was quite warm weather, and we sat a good deal on the little
balcony that juts out from my window over the front door. Farley
Street is quiet and rather out of the line of general traffic, so we
had chairs and a table there, and used to have tea served under the
one palm, which was all there was room for. We could not have visitors
there, for it opened out of my bedroom. So our tea-parties on the
balcony were strictly family affairs--just Cassius, and Elaine, and I.

The last day of the month was really very warm. Every door in the
house was open, and the servants went about gasping, with their faces
crimson. I dined at home alone that evening, as one of the members of
the Box, Tub, and Cordage Company was in London, at the Carlton, and
Cassius was dining with him. I did not expect him home till late, as
there would be lots to talk over.

I had not felt well all day. The heat had given me a headache, and
after dinner I lay on the sofa in the sitting-room, feeling quite
miserable. Only a few of the lamps were lit, and the house was dim
and extremely quiet. Being alone that way in the half dark got on my
nerves, and I decided I’d go up-stairs and go to bed early. I always
did hate sitting about by myself, and now more than ever, with the
diamonds on my conscience.

Our stairs are thickly carpeted, and as I had on thin satin slippers
and a crêpe tea-gown I made no noise at all coming up. I always have
a light burning in my room, so when I saw a yellow gleam below the
door I did not think anything of it, but just softly pushed the door
open and went in. Then I stopped dead where I stood. A man with a soft
felt-hat on, and a handkerchief tied over the lower part of his face,
was standing in front of the bureau!

He had not heard me, and for a moment I stood without making a sound,
watching him. The two gas-jets on either side of the bureau were lit,
and that part of the room was flooded with light. Very quickly and
softly he was turning over the contents of the drawers, taking out
laces, gloves, and veils, throwing them this way and that out of his
way, and opening every box he found. My heart gave a great leap when I
saw him seize upon the jewel-box, and my mouth, unfortunately, emitted
some kind of a sound--I think it was a sort of gasp of relief, but I’m
not sure.

Whatever it was, he heard. He gave a start as if he had been
electrified, raised his head, and saw me. For just one second he
stood staring, and then he said something--of a profane character, I
think--and ran for the balcony.

And I ran too. There was something in the way--a little table, I
believe--and he collided with it. That checked him for a moment, and I
got to the window first. I threw myself across it with my arms spread
out, in an attitude like that assumed by Sara Bernhardt when she is
barring her lover’s exit in “Fedora.” But I don’t think any actress
ever barred her lover’s exit with as much determination and zeal as I
barred the exit of that burglar.

“You can’t go!” I cried, wildly. “You’ve forgotten something!”

He paused just in front of me, and I cried again:

“You haven’t got them; they’re in the jewelry-box.”

He moved forward and laid his hand on my arm, to push me aside. I felt
quite desperate, and wailed:

“Oh, don’t go without opening the jewelry-box. There are some things in
it I know you will like.”

He tried to push me out of the way--gently, it is true, but with
force. But I clung to him, clasped him by the arm with what must have
appeared quite an affectionate grip, and continued, imploringly:

“Don’t be in such a hurry. I’m sorry I interrupted you. If you’ll
promise not to go till you’ve looked through my things and taken what
you want, I’ll leave the room. It was quite by accident that I came in.”

The burglar let go my arm, and looked at me over the handkerchief with
a pair of eyes that seemed quite kind and pleasant.

“Really,” he said, in a deep, gentlemanly voice that seemed
familiar--“really, I don’t quite understand--”

“I know you don’t,” I interrupted, impulsively. “How could you be
expected to? And I can’t explain. It’s a most complicated matter, and
would take too long. Only don’t be frightened and run away till you’ve
taken something. You’ve endangered your life and risked going to prison
to get in here; and wouldn’t it be too foolish, after that, to go
without anything? Now, in the jewelry-box”--I indicated it, and spoke
in what I hoped was a most insinuating tone--“there are some things
that I think you’d like. If you’d just look at them--”

“You’re a most persuasive lady,” said the burglar, “but--”

He moved again toward the window. A feeling of absolute anguish that
he was going without the diamonds pierced me. I threw myself in front
of him again, and in some way, I can’t tell you how, caught the
handkerchief that covered his face and pulled it down. There was the
handsome visage and long mustache of Major Thatcher!

I backed away from him in the greatest confusion. He too blushed and
looked uncomfortable.

“Oh, Major Thatcher,” I murmured, “I beg your pardon! I’m so sorry. I
don’t know how it happened. I think the end of the handkerchief caught
in my bracelet.”

“Pray don’t mention it,” answered the major, “nothing at all.”

Then we were both silent, standing opposite one another, not knowing
what to say. It is not easy to feaze me, but it must be admitted that
the situation was unusual.

“How is Mrs. Thatcher?” I said, desperately, when the silence had
become unbearable. And the major replied, in his deepest voice, and
with his most abrupt military air:

“Ethel’s very fit. Never was better in her life, thank you. Mr. Kennedy
is quite well, I hope?”

“Cassius is enjoying the best of health,” I answered. “He’s out
to-night, I’m sorry to say.”

“Just fancy,” said Major Thatcher. Then there was a pause, and he
added: “How tiresome!”

I could think of nothing more to say, and again we were silent. It was
really the most uncomfortable position I ever was in. The major was a
burglar beyond a doubt, but he looked and talked just like a gentleman;
besides, he’d dined with us. That makes a great difference. When a man
has broken bread at your table as a respectable fellow creature, it’s
hard to get your mind round to regarding him severely as a criminal. I
felt that the only thing to do was to graciously ignore it all, as you
do when some one spills the claret on your best table-cloth. At the
same time, there were the diamonds! I could not let the chance escape.

“Oh, Major Thatcher!” I said, with an air of suddenly remembering
something. “I don’t know whether you know that your wife left a little
package here that evening when you dined with us. It was for Amelia.”

Major Thatcher looked at me with the most heavily solemn expression.

“To be sure,” he murmured, “for Amelia.”

“Well,” I went on, trying to impart to my words a light society tone,
“you know we can’t find her. Very stupid of us, I have no doubt. But
we’ve tried, and we can’t, anywhere.”

Major Thatcher stared blankly at the dressing-table.

“Strange, ’pon my word!” he said.

“So, Major Thatcher, if you don’t mind, I’ll give it back to you. I
think, all things considered, it will be best for you to give it to
Amelia yourself.”

I went toward the dressing-table.

“You don’t mind, do you?” I said, over my shoulder, as I opened the
jewelry-box.

“Not at all, not at all,” answered the major. “Anything to oblige a
lady.”

I drew out the sack of chamois-skin. “Here it is,” I said, holding it
out to him. “You’ll find it in perfect condition and quite complete.
I’m so sorry that we couldn’t seem to locate Amelia. Not knowing the
rest of her name was rather inconvenient. There were dozens of Amelias
in the directory.”

The major took the sack, and put it in his breast-pocket.

“Dozens of Amelias,” he repeated, slapping his pocket. “Who’d have
thought it!”

“We even advertised,” I continued. “Perhaps you saw the personal; it
was in the morning _Herald_, and was very short and noncommittal, but
no one answered it.”

“We saw it,” said the major. “Yes, I recollect quite distinctly seeing
it. It--it--indicated to us--aw--aw--”

The major reddened and paused, pulling his mustache.

“That we hadn’t found Amelia and still had the present,” I answered, in
a sprightly tone. “That was just it. And so you came to get it? Very
kind of you, indeed, Major Thatcher.”

The major bowed. He was really a very fine-looking, well-mannered man.
If he only had been the honest, respectable person we first thought him
I would have liked to add him to my collection. I’m sure if you knew
him better he would have been much more interesting than the bishop and
the lords.

“The kindness is on your side,” he said. “And now, Mrs. Kennedy, I
think--I think, perhaps”--he looked at the window that gave on the
balcony--“I think I’d better--”

“You must be going!” I cried, just as I say it to the bishop when he
puts down his cup and looks at the clock. “How unfortunate! But, of
course, your other engagements--”

I checked myself, suddenly realizing that it wasn’t just the thing to
say to the major. When you’re talking to a burglar it doesn’t seem
delicate or thoughtful to allude to his “other engagements.” That I
made such a break is due to the fact that I’d never talked to a burglar
before, and was bound to be a little green.

The major did not seem to mind.

“Exactly so,” he said. “My time is just now much occupied. I--er--I--”

He looked again at the window.

“I--er--entered that way,” he said, “but perhaps--”

“I don’t think I’d go out that way if I were you,” I answered,
hurriedly, “it would look so queer if any one saw you.”

“Would the other and more usual exit be safe?” he asked. His eye, as it
met mine, was charged with a keener intelligence than I had seen in it
before.

“It would have to be,” I answered, with spirit. “What do you suppose
the servants would think if they saw you coming out of here? This,
Major Thatcher, is my room.”

“Dear me!” said the major, “I suppose it is. I never thought of that.”

“Wait here till I see if it is all right,” I said, “and then I’ll come
back and tell you.”

I went into the hall and looked over the banister. The gas was burning
faintly, and a bar of pink lamplight fell out from the half-drawn
portières of the drawing-room. There was not a sound. I knew the
servants were all in the back part of the house, quite safe till eleven
o’clock, when, if we were home, they turned out the lights and locked
up. I stole softly back into my room. The major was standing in front
of the mirror untying the handkerchief that hung round his neck.

“It’s all right,” I assured him, in an unconsciously lowered voice.
“You can go quite easily; I’ll let you out. Only you mustn’t make the
least bit of noise.”

He thrust the handkerchief in his pocket and put on his hat, pulling
the brim down over his eyes. I must confess he didn’t look half so
distinguished this way. When the handkerchief was gone, I saw he wore
a flannel shirt with a turned-down collar, and with his hat shading
his face he certainly did seem a strange sort of man for me to be
conducting down the stairs at half-past ten at night. If Perkins,
who’d come to us bristling with respectability from a distinguished,
evangelical, aristocratic family, should meet us, I would never hold up
my head again.

“Now, if you hear Perkins,” I whispered, “for heavens’ sake, hide
somewhere. Run back to my room, if you can’t go anywhere else. Perkins
_must not_ see you!”

The major growled out some reply, and we tiptoed breathlessly across
the hall to the stair-head. I was much more frightened than he was. I
know, as I stole from step to step, my heart kept beating faster and
faster. Such awful things might have happened: Perkins suddenly appear
to put out the lights; Cassius come home early from the dinner, and
open the front door just as I was about to let the major out! When we
reached the door I was quite faint, while the major seemed as cool as
if he’d been paying a call.

“Very kind of you, I’m sure,” he said, trying to take off his hat. “I
shan’t forget it.”

“Oh, never mind being polite,” I gasped. “You’ve got the diamonds.
That’s all that matters. Good-night. Give my regards to Mrs. Thatcher.”

And he was gone! I shut the door and crept up-stairs. First I felt
faint, and then I felt hysterical. When Cassius came home at eleven I
was lying on the sofa in tears, and all I could say to him was to sob:

“The diamonds are gone! The diamonds are gone!”

He thought I’d gone mad at first, and then when I finally made him
understand he was nearly as excited as I. He went down-stairs and
brought up a bottle of champagne, and we celebrated at midnight up in
our room. We had to tell lies to Perkins afterward to explain how we
came to be one bottle short. But what did lies matter, or even Perkins’
opinion of us? We were no longer crushed under the weight of one
hundred and sixty-two diamonds that didn’t belong to us!

That is the history of my connection with the case. From that night
I’ve never seen or heard of the stones, nor have I seen Major or
Mrs. Thatcher. The diamonds entered our possession and departed from
them exactly as I have told, and tho my statement may call for great
credulity on the part of my readers, all I can say is that I am willing
to vouch for the truth of every word of it.




Statement of Gladys, Marchioness of Castlecourt.




Statement of Gladys, Marchioness of Castlecourt.


I am sure if any one was ever punished for their misdeeds it was I. I
suppose I ought to say sins, but it is such an unpleasant word! I can
not imagine myself committing sins, and yet that is just what I seem
to have done. I couldn’t have been more astonished if some one had
told me I was going to commit a murder. One thing I have learned--you
do not know what you may do till you have been tried and tempted. And
then you do wrong before you realize it, and all of a sudden it comes
upon you that you are a criminal quite unexpectedly, and no one is more
surprised than you. I certainly know I was the most surprised person
in London when I realized that I-- But there, I am wandering all about,
and I want to tell my story simply and shortly.

Everybody knows that when I married Lord Castlecourt I was poor.
What everybody does not know is that I was a natural spend-thrift.
Extravagance was in my blood, as drinking or the love of cards is in
the blood of some men. I had never had any money at all. I used to wear
the same gloves for years, and always made my own frocks--not badly,
either. I’ve made gowns that Lady Bundy said-- But that has nothing to
do with it; I’m getting away from the point.

As I said before, I was poor. I didn’t know how extravagant I was
till I married and Lord Castlecourt gave me six hundred pounds a year
to dress on. It was a fortune to me. I’d never thought one woman
could have so much. The first two years of our married life I did not
run over it, because we lived most of the time in the country, and
I was unused to it, and spent it slowly and carefully. I was still
unaccustomed to it when, after my second boy was born, Herbert brought
me to town for my first season since our marriage.

Then I began to spend money, quantities of it, for it seemed to me that
six hundred pounds a year was absolutely inexhaustible. When I saw
anything pretty in a shop I bought it, and I generally forgot to ask
the price. The shop people were always kind and agreeable, and seemed
to have forgotten about it as completely as I.

After I had bought one thing they would urge me to look at something
else, which was put away in a drawer or laid out in a cardboard box,
and if I liked it I bought that too. If I ever paused to think that I
was buying a great deal, I contented myself with the assurance that I
had six hundred pounds a year, which was so much I would never get to
the end of it.

After that first season a great many bills came in, and I was quite
surprised to see I’d spent already, with the year hardly half gone,
more than my six hundred pounds. I could not understand how it had
happened, and I asked Herbert about it and showed him some of my
bills, and for the first time in our married life he was angry with
me. He scolded me quite sharply, and told me I must keep within
my allowance. I was hurt, and also rather muddled, with all these
different accounts--most of which I could not remember--and I made up
my mind not to consult Herbert any more, as it only vexed him and made
him cross to me, and that I can not bear. All the world must love me.
If there is a servant-maid in the house who does not like me--and I can
feel it in a minute if she doesn’t--I must make her, or she must go
away. But my husband, the best and finest man in the world, to have him
annoyed with me and scolding me over stupid bills! Never again would
that happen. I showed him no more of them; in fact, I generally tore
them up as they came in, for fear I should leave them lying about and
he would find them. If I could help it, nothing in the world was ever
going to come between Herbert and me.

I also made good resolutions to be more careful in my expenditures. And
I really tried to keep them. I don’t know how it happened that they
did not seem to get kept. But both in London and in Paris I certainly
did spend a great deal--I’m sure I don’t know how much. I did little
accounts on the back of notes, and they were so confusing, and I seemed
to have spent so much more than I thought I had, that I gave up doing
them. After I’d covered the back of two or three notes with figures, I
became so low-spirited I couldn’t enjoy anything for the rest of the
day. I did not see that that did anybody any good, so I ceased keeping
the accounts. And what was the use of keeping them? If I had not the
money to pay them with, why should I make myself miserable by thinking
about them? I thought it much more sensible to try to forget them, and
most of the time I did!

It went on that way for two years. When I got bills with things written
across the bottom in red ink I paid part of them--never all; I never
paid all of anything. Once or twice tradesmen wrote me letters, saying
they must have their money, and then I went to see them, and told
them how kind it was of them to trust me, and how I would pay them
everything soon, and they seemed quite pleased and satisfied. I always
intended doing it. I don’t know where I thought the money was coming
from, but you never can tell what may happen. Some friends of Herbert
had a place near the Scotch border, and found a coal-mine in the
forest. Herbert has no lands near Scotland, but he has in other places,
and he may find a coal-mine too. I merely cite this as an example of
the strange ways things turn out. I didn’t exactly expect that Herbert
would find a coal-mine, but I did expect that money would turn up in
some unexpected way and help me out of my difficulties.

The beginning of the series of really terrible events of which I am
writing was the purchase of a Russian sable jacket from a furrier in
Paris called Bolkonsky. It was in the early spring of last year. I had
had no dealings with Bolkonsky before. A friend told me of the jacket,
and took me there. It was a real _occasion_. I knew the moment that I
saw it that it was one of those chances with which one rarely meets.
It fitted me like a charm, and I bought it for a thousand pounds. That
miserable Bolkonsky told me the payments might be made in any way I
liked, and at “madame’s own time.” I also bought some good turquoises,
that were going for nothing, from a jeweler up-stairs somewhere near
the Rue de La Paix, who was selling out the jewels of an actress. It
was these two people who wrecked me.

Not that they were my only debtors. I knew by this time that I owed a
great deal. When I thought about it I was frightened, and so I tried
not to think. But sometimes when I was awake at night, and everything
looked dark and depressed, I wondered what I would do if something
did not happen. In these moments I thought of telling my husband,
and I buried my head in the pillow and turned cold with misery. What
would Herbert say when he found out his wife was thousands of pounds
in debt--the Marquis of Castlecourt, who had never owed a penny and
considered it a disgrace.

Perhaps he would be so horrified and disgusted he would send me away
from him--back to Ireland, or to the Continent. And what would happen
to me then?

That summer we went to Castlecourt Marsh Manor, and there my anxieties
became almost unbearable. Bolkonsky began to dun me most cruelly. Other
creditors wrote me letters, urging for payments. The jeweler from whom
I had bought the turquoises sent me a letter, telling me if I didn’t
settle his account by September he would sue me. And finally Bolkonsky
sent a man over, whom I saw in London, and who told me that unless the
sable jacket was paid for within two months he would “lay the matter
before Lord Castlecourt.”

We went across to Paris in September, and there I saw those dreadful
people. My other French and English creditors I could manage, but I
could do nothing with either Bolkonsky or the jeweler. They spoke
harshly to me--as no one has ever spoken to me before; and Bolkonsky
told me that “it was known Lord Castlecourt was honest and paid his
debts, whatever his wife was.” I prayed him for time, and finally
wept--wept to that horrible Jew; and there was another man in the
office, too, who saw me. But I was lost to all sense of pride or
reserve. I had only one feeling left in me--terror, agony, that they
would tell my husband, and he would despise me and leave me.

My misery seemed to have some effect on Bolkonsky, and he told me he
would give me a month to pay up. It was then the tenth of September.
I waited for a week in a sort of frenzy of hope that a miracle would
occur, and the money come into my hands in some unexpected way. But,
of course, nothing did occur. By the first of October the one thousand
pounds was no nearer. It was then that the desperate idea entered my
mind which has nearly ruined me, and caused me such suffering that the
memory of it will stay with me forever.

The Castlecourt diamonds, set in a necklace and valued at nine thousand
pounds, were in my possession. I often wore them, and they were carried
about by my maid--a faithful and honest creature called Sophy Jeffers.
On one of my first trips to Paris a friend of mine had taken me to the
office of a well-known dealer in precious and artificial stones who,
without its being generally known, did a sort of pawnbroking business
among the upper classes. My friend had gone there to pawn a pearl
necklace, and had told me all about it--how much she obtained on the
necklace, and how she hoped to redeem it within the year, and how she
was to have it copied in imitation pearls. The idea that came to me
was to go to this place and pawn the Castlecourt diamonds, having them
duplicated in paste.

I went there on the second day of October. How awful it was! I wore
a heavy veil, and gave a fictitious name. Several men looked at the
diamonds, and I noticed that they looked at me and whispered together.
Finally they told me they would give me four thousand pounds on them,
at some interest--I’ve forgotten what it was now--and that they
would replace them with paste, so that only an expert could tell the
difference. The next day I went back, and they gave me the money. I do
not think they had any idea who I was. At any rate, while the papers
were full of speculations about the Castlecourt diamonds, they made no
sign.

I paid off all my debts, both in Paris and London; I even paid a year’s
interest on the diamonds. For a short time I breathed again, and was
gay and light-hearted. My husband would never know that I had not paid
my bills for five years and had been threatened with a lawsuit. It was
delightful to get rid of this fear, and I was quite my old self. I
suppose I ought to have felt more guilty; but when one is relieved of
a great weight, one’s conscience is not so sensitive as it gets when
there is really nothing to be sensitive about.

It was after I had grown accustomed to feeling free and unworried
that I began to realize what I had done. I had stolen the diamonds.
I was a thief! It did not comfort me much to think that no one might
ever find it out; in fact, I do not think it comforted me at all, and
I know in the beginning I expected it would. It was what I had done
that rankled in me. I felt that I would never be peaceful again till
they were redeemed and put back in their old settings. That was what I
continually dreamed of. It seemed to me if I could see them once more
in their own case I would be happy and care free, as I had been in
those first perfect years of my married life.

The fear that at this time most haunted me and was most terrifying
was that my husband might discover what I had done. His wife, that he
had so loved and trusted, had become a thief! No one who has not gone
through it knows how I felt. I did not know any one could suffer so.
I went out constantly, to try and forget; and, when things were very
cheerful and amusing, I sometimes did. And then I remembered--I was a
thief; I had stolen my husband’s diamonds, and, if he ever found it
out, what would happen to me?

This was the position I was in when the false diamonds were taken.
It was the last thing in the world I had thought could happen. When,
that night of the Duke of Duxbury’s dinner, I saw the empty case and
Jeffers’ terrified face, the world reeled around me. I could not for
a moment take it in. Only, in my mind, the diamonds had become a sort
of nightmare; anything to do with them was a menace, and I followed an
instinct that had possession of me when I tried to hide the empty case
from my husband.

Then, when my mind had cleared and I had time to think, I saw that if
they recovered the paste necklace they might find out that it was not
real, and all would be lost. It was a horrible predicament. I really
did not know what I wanted. If the diamonds were found, and seen to be
false, it would all come out, and Herbert would know I was a thief.
When I thought of this I tried to divert the detectives from hunting
for them, and I told that silly, sheepish Mr. Brison that I did not see
how he could be so sure they were stolen, that they might have been
mislaid. Mr. Brison seemed surprised, and that made me angry, because,
after all, a diamond necklace is not the sort of thing that gets
mislaid, and I felt I had been foolish and had not gained anything by
being so.

The days passed, and nothing was heard of the necklace. I wished
desperately now that it would be found. For how, unless it was, could
I eventually redeem the real diamonds, and once more feel honest and
respectable? If I suddenly appeared with them, how could I explain it?
Everybody would say I had stolen them, unless I invented some story
about their being lost and then found, and I am not clever at inventing
stories. As to where I should get the money to redeem them, I often
thought of that; but never could think of any way that sounded possible
and reasonable. I have always waited for “things to turn up,” and they
generally did; but in this case nothing that I wanted or expected
turned up. Besides, four thousand pounds is a good deal of money to
come into one’s hands suddenly and unexpectedly. If it were a smaller
sum it might, but four thousand pounds was too much. There was nobody
to die and leave it to me, and I certainly could not steal it, or make
it myself.

So, as one may see, I was beset with troubles on all sides. The season
wore itself away, and I was glad to be done with it. For the first
time, there had been no pleasure in it. Anxieties that no one guessed
were always with me, and always I found myself surreptitiously watching
my husband to see if he suspected, to see if he showed any symptoms of
growing cold to me and being indifferent. As I drove through the Park
in the carriage these dreary thoughts were always at my heart, and it
was heavy as lead. I forgot the passers-by who were so amusing, and,
with my head hanging, looked into my lap. Suppose Herbert guessed?
Suppose Herbert found out? These were the questions that went circling
through my brain and never stopped. Sometimes, when Herbert was beside
me, I suddenly wanted to cry out:

“Herbert, _I_ took the diamonds! _I_ was the thief! I can’t hide it any
more, or live in this uncertainty. All I want to know is, do you hate
me and are you going to leave me?”

But I never did it. I looked at Herbert, and was afraid. What would I
do if he left me? Go back to Ireland and die.

We went to Castlecourt Marsh Manor in the end of June. By this time I
had begun to feel quite ill. Herbert insisted on my consulting a doctor
before I left town, and the doctor said my heart was all wrong and
something was the matter with my nerves. But it was only the sense
of guilt, that every day grew more oppressive. I thought I might feel
better in the country. I had always disliked it, and now it seemed like
a harbor of refuge, where I could be quiet with my children. I had
grown to hate London. It was London that had played upon my weaknesses
and drawn me into all my trouble. I had not run into debt in the
country, and, after all, I had never been as happy as I was the two
years after our marriage, when we had lived at Castlecourt Marsh Manor.
Those were my _beaux jours_! How bright and beautiful they seemed now,
when I looked back on them from these dark days of fear and disgrace!

It was not much better in the country. A change of scene can not make
a difference when the trouble is a dark secret. And that dark secret
kept growing darker every day. I feared to speak of the diamonds to
Herbert, and yet every letter that came for him filled me with alarm,
lest it was either to say that they were found or that they were not
found. Herbert went up to London at intervals and saw Mr. Gilsey, and
at night when he came home I trembled so that I found it difficult to
stand till he had told me all that Mr. Gilsey had said. Once when he
was beginning to tell me that Mr. Gilsey had some idea they had traced
the diamonds to Paris I fainted, and it was some time before they could
bring me back.

July was very hot, and I gave that as the cause of my changed
appearance and listless manner. I was really in wretched health, and
Herbert became exceedingly worried about me. He suggested that we
should go on the Continent for a trip, but I shrank from the thought of
it. I felt as if the sight of Paris, where the diamonds were waiting
to be redeemed, would kill me outright. I did not want to leave
Castlecourt Marsh Manor to go anywhere. I only wanted to be happy
again--to be the way I was before I had taken the diamonds.

And I knew now that this could never be till I told my husband. I knew
that to win back my peace of mind I had to confess all, and hear him
say he forgave me. I tried to several times, but it was impossible.
As the moment that I had chosen for confession approached, my heart
beat so that I could scarcely breathe, and I trembled like a person in
a chill. With Herbert looking at me so kindly, so tenderly, the words
died away on my lips, or I said something quite different to what I
had intended saying. It was useless. As the days went by I knew that I
would never dare tell, that for the rest of my life I would be crushed
under the sense of guilt that seemed too heavy to be borne.

It was late one afternoon in the middle of July that the crash came.
Never, never shall I forget that day! So dark and awful at first, and
then-- But I must follow the story just as it happened.

Herbert and I had had tea in the library. It was warm weather, and the
windows that led to the terrace were wide open. Through them I could
see the beautiful landscape--rolling hills with great trees dotted over
them, all the colors brighter and deeper than at midday, for the sun
was getting low. I was sitting by one of the windows looking out on
this, and thinking how different had been my feelings when I had come
here as a bride and loved it all, and been so full of joy. My hands
hung limp over the arms of the chair. I had no desire to move or speak.
It is so agonizing, when you are miserable, looking back on days that
were happy!

As I was sitting this way, Thomas, one of the footmen, came in with the
letters. I noticed that he had quite a packet of them. Some were mine,
and I laid them on the table at my elbow. Idly and without interest I
saw that in Herbert’s bunch there was a small box, such as jewelry is
sent about in. Thomas left the room, and I continued looking out of the
window until I suddenly heard Herbert give a suppressed exclamation. I
turned toward him, and saw that he had the open box in his hand.

“What does this mean?” he said. “What an extraordinary thing! Look
here, Gladys.”

And he came toward me, holding out the box. It was full of cotton wool,
and lying on this were a great quantity of unset diamonds of different
sizes. My heart gave a leap into my throat. I sat up, clutching the
arms of the chair.

“What are they?” I said, hearing my voice suddenly high and loud.
“Where did they come from?”

“I don’t know anything about them! It’s too odd! See what’s written on
this piece of paper that was inside the box.”

He held out a small piece of paper, on which the creases of several
folds were plainly marked. Across it, in typing, ran two sentences. I
snatched the paper and read the words:

  We don’t want _your_ diamonds. You can keep them, and with them
  accept our kind regards.

The paper fluttered to my feet. I knew in a moment what it all meant.
The thieves had discovered that the diamonds were paste, and had
returned them. I was conscious of Herbert’s startled face suddenly
charged with an expression of sharp anxiety as he cried:

“Why, Gladys, what is it? You’re as white as death!”

He came toward me, but I motioned him away and rose to my feet. I knew
then that the hour had come, and tho I suspect I _was_ very white, I
did not feel so frightened as I had done in the past.

“Those _are_ your diamonds, Herbert,” I said, quietly and distinctly,
“or, perhaps, I ought to say those are the substitutes for them. _Your_
diamonds are in Paris, at Barriere’s, _au quatrème_, on the Rue Croix
des Petits Champs.”

“Gladys!” he exclaimed, “what do you mean? What are you talking about?
You look so white and strange! Sit down, darling, and tell me what you
mean.”

“Oh, Herbert,” I cried, with my voice suddenly full of agony, “let me
tell you! Don’t stop me. If you’re angry with me and hate me, wait till
I’ve finished before you say so. I’ve got to confess it all. I’ve got
to, dear. You must listen to me, and not frighten me till I have done;
for if I don’t tell you now, I shall certainly die.”

And then I told--I told it all. I didn’t leave out a single thing. My
first bills, and Bolkonsky, and the jeweler, and the pawnbroking place,
and everything was in it. Once I was started, it was not so hard, and I
poured it out. I didn’t try to make it better, or ask to be forgiven.
But when it was all finished, I said, in a voice that I could hear was
suddenly husky and trembling:

“And now I suppose you’ll not like me any more. It’s quite natural that
you shouldn’t. I only ask one thing, and I know, of course, I have
no right to ask it--that is, that you won’t send me away from you. I
have been very wicked. I suppose I ought to be put in prison. But, oh,
Herbert, no matter what I’ve been, I’ve loved you! That’s something.”

I could not go any further, and there was no need; for my dear husband
did not seem angry at all. He took me, all weeping and trembling, into
his arms, and said the sweetest things to me--the sort of things one
doesn’t write down with a pen--just between him and me.

And I?--I turned my face into his shoulder and cried feebly. No
one knows how happy I felt except a person who has been completely
miserable and suddenly finds her misery ended. It is really worth being
miserable to thoroughly appreciate the joy of being happy again.

Well, that is really the end of the statement. Herbert went to Paris a
few days later and redeemed the diamonds, and they are now being set in
imitation of the old settings, which are lost. I would not go to Paris
with him. Nor will I go to London next season. Both places are too full
of horrible memories. Perhaps some day I shall feel about them as I
did before the diamonds were taken, but now I do not want to leave the
country at all. Besides, we can economize here, and the four thousand
pounds necessary to get back the stones was a good deal for Herbert to
have to pay out just now. And then it is so sweet and peaceful in the
country. Nothing troubles one. Oh, how delightful a thing it is to have
an easy conscience! One does not know how good it is till one has lost
it.

This finishes my statement. I dare say it is a very bad one, for I am
not clever at all. But it has the one merit of being entirely truthful,
and I have told everything--just how wicked I was, and just why I was
so wicked. Nothing has been held back, and nothing has been set down
falsely. It is an unprejudiced and accurate account of my share in the
Castlecourt diamond case.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.