This request made him hesitate.

"I beg your pardon," said he, "I think I have made a mistake--I'll speak to Mrs. Kavanagh."

Before I could answer he had run up the stairs nimbly; but I was quick after him; and when I came upon the landing, I could see into the front drawing, room, where there sat the woman herself, a small and oldish man with long black whiskers, and the youth who had just come into the room, but the back room which gave off from the other with folding-doors, was empty; and there was no light in it. All this I perceived in a momentary glance, for no sooner had the servingman spoken to the woman, than she pushed the youth out upon the balcony, and came hurriedly to the landing, closing the door behind her.

"Why, Mr. Sutton," she cried, when she saw me, "this is a surprise; I was just going to bed."

"I was afraid you would have been already gone," said I with the simplest smile possible, "but I found a diamond spray in Lady Faber's hall just after you had left. The footman said it must be yours, and as I am going out of town to-morrow, I thought I would risk leaving it to-night."

I handed to her as I spoke the spray of diamonds I had taken from my own show-case in Bond Street; but while she examined it she shot up at me a quick searching glance from her bright eyes, and her thick sensual lips were closed hard upon each other. Yet, in the next instant, she laughed again, and handed me back the jewel.

"I'm indeed very grateful to you," she exclaimed, "but I've just put my spray in its case; you want to give me some one else's property."

"Then it isn't yours?" said I, affecting disappointment. "I'm really very sorry for having troubled you."

"It is I that should be sorry for having brought you here," she cried.

"Won't you have a brandy and seltzer or something before you go?"

"Nothing whatever, thanks," said I. "Let me apologize again for having disturbed you--and wish you 'Good-night.'"

She held out her hand to me, seemingly much rea.s.sured; and as I began to descend the stairs, she re-entered the drawing-room for the purpose, I did not doubt, of getting the man off the balcony. The substantial lackey was then waiting in the hall to open the door for me; but I went down very slowly, for in the truth the whole of my plan appeared to have failed; and at that moment I was without the veriest rag of an idea. My object in coming to the house had been to trace, and if possible to lay hands upon the woman's a.s.sociates, taking her, as I hoped, somewhat by surprise; yet though I had made my chain more complete, vital links were missing; and I stood no nearer to the forging of them. That which I had to ask myself, and to answer in the s.p.a.ce of ten seconds, was the question, "Now, or to-morrow?"--whether I should leave the house without effort, and wait until the gang betrayed itself again; or make some bold stroke which would end the matter there and then. The latter course was the one I chose. The morrow, said I, may find these people in Paris or in Belgium; there never may be such a clue again as that of the ruby pendant--there never may be a similar opportunity of taking at least three of those for whom we had so long hunted. And with this thought a whole plan of action suddenly leaped up in my mind; and I acted upon it, silently and swiftly and with a readiness which to this day I wonder at.

I now stood at the hall-door, which the lackey held open. One searching look at the man convinced me that my design was a sound one. He was obtuse, patronizing,--but probably honest. As we faced each other I suddenly took the door-handle from him, and banged the door loudly, remaining in the hall. Then I clapped my pistol to his head (though for this offence I surmise that a judge might have given me a month), and I whispered fiercely to him:--

"This house is surrounded by police; if you say a word I'll give you seven years as an accomplice of the woman upstairs, whom we are going to arrest. When she calls out, answer that I'm gone, and then come back to me for instructions. If you do as I tell you, you shall not be charged--otherwise, you go to jail."

At this speech the poor wretch paled before me, and shook so that I could feel the tremor all down the arm of his which I held.

"I--I won't speak, sir," he gasped. "I won't, I do a.s.sure you--to think as I should have served such folk."

"Then hide me, and be quick about it--in this room here, it seems dark.

Now run upstairs and say I'm gone."

I had stepped into a little breakfast-room at the back of the dining-room, and there had gone unhesitatingly under a round table. The place was absolutely dark, and was a vantage ground, since I could see therefrom the whole of the staircase; but before the footman could mount the stairs, the woman came half-way down them, and, looking over the hall, she asked him,--

"Is that gentleman gone?"

"Just left, mum," he replied.

"Then go to bed, and never let me see you admit a stranger like that again."

She went up again at this, and he turned to me, asking,--

"What shall I do now, sir? I'll do anything if you'll speak for me, sir; I've got twenty years' kerecter from Lord Walley; to think as she's a bad 'un--it's hardly creditable."

"I shall speak for you," said I, "if you do exactly what I tell you. Are any more men expected now?"

"Yes, there's two more; the capting and the clergymin, pretty clergymin he must be, too."

"Never mind that; wait and let them in. Then go upstairs and turn the light out on the staircase as if by accident. After that you can go to bed."

"Did you say the police was 'ere?" he asked in his hoa.r.s.e whisper; and I said,--

"Yes, they're everywhere, on the roof, and in the street, and on the balcony. If there's the least resistance, the house will swarm with them."

What he would have said to this I cannot tell, for at that moment there was another knock upon the front door, and he opened it instantly. Two men, one in clerical dress, and one, a very powerful man, in a Newmarket coat, went quickly upstairs, and the butler followed them. A moment later the gas went out on the stairs; and there was no sound but the echo of the talk in the front drawing-room.

The critical moment in my night's work had now come. Taking off my boots, and putting my revolver at the half-c.o.c.k, I crawled up the stairs with the step of a cat, and entered the back drawing-room. One of the folding doors of this was ajar, so that a false step would probably have cost me my life--and I could not possibly tell if the police were really in the street, or only upon their way. But it was my good luck that the men talked loudly, and seemed actually to be disputing. The first thing I observed on looking through the open door was that the woman had left the four to themselves. Three of them stood about the table whereon the lamp was; the dumpy man with the black whiskers sat in his arm-chair.

But the most pleasing sight of all was that of a large piece of cotton-wool spread upon the table, and almost covered with brooches, lockets, and sprays of diamonds; and to my infinite satisfaction I saw Lady Faber's pendant of rubies lying conspicuous even amongst the wealth of jewels which the light showed.

There then was the clue; but how was it to be used? It came to me suddenly that four consummate rogues such as these were would not be unarmed. Did I step into the room, they might shoot me at the first sound: and if the police had not come, that would be the end of it. Had opportunity been permitted to me, I would, undoubtedly, have waited five or ten minutes to a.s.sure myself that Abel was in the street without. But this was not to be. Even as I debated the point, a candle's light shone upon the staircase; and in another moment Mrs. Kavanagh herself stood in the doorway watching me. For one instant she stood, but it served my purpose; and as a scream rose upon her lips, and I felt my heart thudding against my ribs, I threw open the folding doors, and deliberately shot down the gla.s.s of the lamp which had cast the aureola of light upon the stolen jewels.

As the gla.s.s flew, for my reputation as a pistol shot was not belied in this critical moment, Mrs. Kavanagh ran in a wild fit of hysterical screaming to her bedroom above--but the four men turned with loud cries to the door where they had seen me; and as I saw them coming, I prayed that Abel might be there. This thought need not have occurred to me.

Scarce had the men taken two steps when the gla.s.s of the balcony windows was burst in with a crash, and the whole room seemed to fill with police.

I cannot now remember precisely the sentences which were pa.s.sed upon the great gang (known to police history as the Westbourne Park gang) of jewel thieves; but the history of that case is curious enough to be worthy of mention. The husband of the woman Kavanagh--he of the black whiskers--was a man of the name of Whyte, formerly a manager in the house of James Thorndike, the Universal Provider near the Tottenham Court Road. Whyte's business had been to provide all things needful for dances; and, though it astonishes me to write it, he had even found dancing men for many ladies whose range of acquaintance was narrow. In the course of business, he set up for himself eventually; and as he worked, the bright idea came to him, why not find as guests men who may snap up, in the heat and the security of the dance, such unconsidered trifles as sprays, pendants, and lockets. To this end he married, and his wife being a clever woman who fell in with his idea, she--under the name of Kavanagh--made the acquaintance of a number of youths whose business it was to dance; and eventually wormed herself into many good houses. The trial brought to light the extraordinary fact that no less than twenty-three men and eight women were bound in this amazing conspiracy, and that Kavanagh acted as the buyer of the property they stole, giving them a third of the profits, and swindling them outrageously. He, I believe, is now taking the air at Portland; and the other young men are finding in the exemplary exercise of picking oak.u.m, work for idle hands to do.

As for Mrs. Kavanagh, she was dramatic to the end of it; and, as I learnt from King, she insisted on being arrested in bed.

MY LADY OF THE SAPPHIRES.

MY LADY OF THE SAPPHIRES.

A photograph of My Lady of the Sapphires is hung immediately opposite to the writing-table in my private office. It is there much on the principle which compels a monk to set a skull upon his praying-stool, or a son of Mohammed to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e pious phrases at the call of the muezzin.

"_Nemo solus sapit_," wrote Plautus. Had Fate cast him in the mould of a jeweler, rather than that of a playwright, he would have set down a stronger phrase.

I first saw My Lady two years ago, though it was only upon the day of my introduction that I learnt her name. She had then, though I knew it not, been before the town for many weeks as a physiognomist, a mistress of the stars, a reader of faces, and in many other capacities interesting to the idle and the credulous. Society, which laughed at her predictions, paid innumerable guineas for the possession of them; great dames sat in her boudoir and discussed amatory possibilities; even the youth of the city, drawn by the prettiness of her manner and her unquestionable good looks, came cheerfully to hear that they would have money "from two sources," or had pa.s.sed through the uninteresting complaints of infancy without harm. In her way, she was the event of the season. Dowagers scolded her, but came again and again to probe family secrets, and learn the hidden things about their husbands; men flocked to her to know what possibility there was of an early return to the bliss of single life; mere boys ventured upon the hazard of a little mild flirtation--and were at once shown the door by a formidable lackey.

Throughout her career scandal never lifted its voice against her. She was engaged ultimately to Jack Lucas, and her marriage was as brilliant as her career had been fortunate.

When a curious chance and combination of events first brought me to acquaintance with her she was in the very height of her practice.

Carriages crowded daily in Dover Street where, with her mother, she had rooms--and it was the thing to consult her. Yet, until I dined casually one night with Colonel Oldfield, the collector of cat's-eyes, and Bracebridge, at the Bohemian Club, hard by her house, I had never heard of her. The conversation turned during the soup--when talk is always watery--upon the press of broughams in the street without, and Oldfield mentioned her history to me, and the surprising nature of many things she had told him.

"It is easy enough," said he, "to look at a man's hand and deduce scarlet-fever and measles somewhere between two and twelve years of age; but when a woman tells you calmly that you were ready to die for two other women at the age of one-and-twenty, it's a thing to make you pause."

"Which I hope you did," exclaimed Bracebridge. "Love is distinctly a matter for specialization."

"I did pause, sir," said the colonel severely, "and that's where her cleverness comes in. She told me that neither of the women cared the snap of a finger for me, and I have really come to the conclusion that she was right. Years put a glamour upon most things, but it is hard, even at fifty, to recall a woman's 'no' of thirty years ago."

"Memory is a dangerous vice which should be controlled," said Bracebridge; "if you want peace, you must learn to forget. There should be no yesterday for the man of the world. But I know the morbid kind of recollection you speak about. There was a fellow here only the other night who kept a proposal book. He put the 'noes' on one side, and the 'ayes' on the other, and balanced the columns every Christmas. One day he left the book in a cab, and has spent his time since going to Scotland Yard for it. That comes of reminiscences!"