Mr. Birnes stared thoughtfully across the street for a little while.

So there was a woman in it! Mr. Wynne had transferred the contents of the gripsack to her, in a cab, on a crowded thoroughfare, right under his nose!

"I was a little farther down the line there," Johns went on to explain. "About a quarter of four o'clock, I guess, she came along.

She got in, after telling me to drive slowly up Fifth Avenue so I would pa.s.s Thirty-fourth Street five minutes or so after four o'clock. If a young man with a gripsack hailed me at the corner I was to stop and let him get in; then I was to go on up Fifth Avenue.

If I wasn't stopped I was to drive on to Thirty-fifth Street, cut across to Madison Avenue, down to Thirty-third Street, then back to Fifth Avenue and past Thirty-fourth Street again, going uptown. The guy with the gripsack caught us first crack out of the box."

"And then?" demanded the detective eagerly.

"I went on up Fifth Avenue, according to sailing orders, and the guy inside stopped me at Sixty-seventh Street. He got out and gimme a five-spot, telling me to go a few blocks, then turn and bring the lady back to the Sixth Avenue 'L' at Fifty-eighth Street. I done it.

That's all. She went up the steps, and that's the last I seen of her."

"Did she carry a small gripsack?"

"Yep. It would hold about as much as a high hat."

Explicit as the information was it led nowhere, apparently. Mr.

Birnes readily understood this much, yet there was a chance--a bare chance--that he might trace the girl on the 'L,' in which case--anyway, it was worth trying.

"What did she look like? How was she dressed?" he asked.

"She had on one of them blue tailor-made things with a lid to match, and a long feather in it," the cabby answered obligingly. "She was pretty as a--as a--she was a beaut, Cap, sort of skinny, and had all sorts of hair on her head--brownish, goldish sort of hair. She was about twenty-two or three, maybe, and--and--Cap, she was the goods, that's all."

In the course of a day a thousand women, more or less, answering that description in a general sort of way, ride back and forth on the elevated trains. Mr. Birnes sighed as he remembered this; still it might produce results. Then came another idea.

"Did you happen to look in the cab after the young woman left it?" he inquired.

"No."

"Had any fares since?"

"No."

Mr. Birnes opened the door of the closed cab and glanced in. Perhaps there might be a stray glove, a handkerchief, some more definite clew than this vague description. He scrutinized the inside of the vehicle carefully; there was nothing. Yes, by Jingo, here _was_ something--a white streak under the edge of the cushion on the seat!

Mr. Birnes' hopeful fingers fished it out. It was a white envelope, sealed and--_and addressed to him!_

If you are as clever as I imagine you are, you will find this.

My address is No. ---- East Thirty-seventh Street. I shall be pleased to see you if you will call.

E. VAN CORTLANDT WYNNE.

It was most disconcerting, really.

CHAPTER VII

A WINGED MESSENGER

A snow-white pigeon dropped down out of an azure sky and settled on a top-most girder of the great Singer Building. For a time it rested there, with folded pinions, in a din of clanging hammers; and a workman far out on a delicately balanced beam of steel paused in his labors to regard the bird with friendly eyes. The pigeon returned his gaze unafraid.

"Well, old chap, if I had as little trouble getting up here and down again as you do I wouldn't mind the job," the workman remarked cheerfully.

The pigeon cooed an answer. The steel worker extended a caressing hand, whereupon the bird rose swiftly, surely, with white wings widely stretched, circled once over the vast steel structure, then darted away to the north. The workman watched the snow-white speck until it was lost against the blue sky, then returned to his labors.

Some ten minutes later Mr. E. van Cortlandt Wynne, sitting at a desk in his Thirty-seventh Street house, was aroused from his meditations by the gentle tinkle of a bell. He glanced up, arose, and went up the three flights of stairs to the roof. Half a dozen birds rose and fluttered around him as he opened the trap; one door in their cote at the rear of the building was closed. Mr. Wynne opened this door, reached in and detached a strip of tissue paper from the leg of a snow-white pigeon. He unfolded it eagerly; on it was written: Safe.

I love you. D.

CHAPTER VIII

SOME CONJECTURES

Mr. Gustave Schultze dropped in to see Mr. Latham after luncheon, and listened with puckered brows to a recital of the substance of the detective's preliminary report, made the afternoon before.

"Mr. Birnes left here rather abruptly," Mr. Latham explained in conclusion, "saying he would see me again, either last night or to-day. He has not appeared yet, and it may be that when he comes he will be able to add materially to what we now know."

The huge German sat for a time with vacant eyes.

"Der gread question, Laadham," he observed at last, gravely, "iss vere does Vynne ged dem."

"I know that--I know it," said Mr. Latham impatiently. "That is the very question we are trying to solve."

"Und if we don'd solve him, Laadham, ve'll haf to do vatever as he says," Mr. Schultze continued slowly. "Und ve _may_ haf to do vatever as he says, anywhow."

"Put one hundred million dollars into diamonds in one year--just the five of us?" demanded the other. "It's preposterous."

"Id _iss_ brebosterous," the German agreed readily; "but das iss no argument." He was silent for a little while. "Vere does he ged dem?

Vere does he ged dem?" he repeated thoughtfully. "Do you believe, Laadham, it vould be bossible to smuggle in dwenty, d'irty, ein hundred million dollars of diamonds?"

"Certainly not," was the reply.

"Den, if dey were _nod_ smuggled in, dey are somewhere on der records of der Custom House, ain'd id?"

Mr. Latham snapped his fingers with a sudden realization of this possibility.

"Schultze, I believe that is our clew!" he exclaimed keenly.

"Certainly they would have been listed by the customs department; and come to think of it, the tariff on them would have been enormous, so enormous that--that--" and he lost the hopeful tone--"so enormous that we must have heard of it when it became a matter of public record."

"_Yah_," Mr. Schultze agreed. "Diamonds like dose dupligates of der Koh-i-noor, der Orloff und der Regent could never haf pa.s.sed through der Custom House, Laadham, mitoud attracting attention, so?"

Mr. Latham acquiesced by a nod of his head; Mr. Schultze sat regarding him through half-closed eyelids.

"Und if dey are _nod_ on der Custom House records," he continued slowly, "und dey are _nod_ smuggled in, den, Laadham, _den--Mein Gott_, man, don'd you see?"

"See what?"

"Den dey are produced in dis country!"