M. Pigot paused and pa.s.sed his hand across his forehead.

"We were at a loss to understand Crochard's connection with Drouet,"

M. Pigot continued. "Drouet, while a mere hanger-on of the cafes of the boulevards, was not a criminal. Then came the death of that creature Morel, in an effort to gain possession of this cabinet, and we began to understand. We made inquiries concerning the cabinet; we learned its history, and the secret of its construction, and we arrived at a certain conclusion. It was to ascertain if that conclusion is correct that I came to America."

"What is the conclusion?" queried Grady, who had listened to all this with a manifest impatience in strong contrast to my own absorbed interest.

For I had already guessed what the conclusion was, and my pulses were bounding with excitement. "Our theory," replied M. Pigot, without the slightest acceleration of speech, "is that the Michaelovitch diamonds are concealed in this cabinet. Everything points to it--and we shall soon see." As he spoke, he drew from his pocket a steel gauntlet, marvellously like the one G.o.dfrey had used, and slipped it over his right hand. "When one attempts to fathom the secrets of _L'Invincible_" he said with a smile, "one must go armoured. Already three men have paid with their lives the penalty of their rashness."

"Three men!" repeated Grady, wonderingly. "Three," and Pigot checked them off upon his fingers. "First the man who gave his name as d'Aurelle, but who was really a blackmailer named Drouet; second, M.

Vantine, the connoisseur; and third, the creature Morel. Of these, the only one that really matters is M. Vantine; his death was most unfortunate, and I am sure that Crochard regrets it exceedingly. He might also regret my death, but, at any rate, I have no wish to be the fourth. Not I," and he adjusted the gauntlet carefully. "One moment, monsieur," I said, bursting in, unable to remain longer silent. "This is all so wonderful--so thrilling--will you not tell us more? For what were these three men searching? For the jewels?"

"Monsieur is as familiar with the facts as I," he answered, in a sarcastic tone. "He knows that Drouet was killed while searching for a packet of letters, which would have compromised most seriously a great lady; he knows that M. Vantine was killed while endeavouring to open the drawer after its secret had been revealed to him by the maid of that same great lady, who was hoping to get a reward for them; Morel met death directly at the hands of Crochard because he was a traitor and deserved it." More and more fascinated, I stared at him.

What secret was safe, I asked myself, from this astonishing man? Or was he merely piecing together the whole story from such fragments as he knew? "But even yet," I stammered, "I do not understand. We have opened the secret drawer of the cabinet--there was no poison. How could it have killed Drouet and Mr. Vantine?"

"Very simply," said M. Pigot, coldly. "Death came to Drouet and M. Vantine because the maid of Madame la d.u.c.h.esse mistook her left hand for her right. The drawer which contained the letters is at the left of the cabinet--see," and he pressed the series of springs, caught the little handle, and pulled the drawer open. "You will notice that the letters are gone, for the drawer was opened by Madame la d.u.c.h.esse herself, in the presence of M. Lestaire, who very gallantly permitted her to resume possession of them. The drawer which Drouet and M. Vantine opened,"

and here his voice became a little strident under the stress of great emotion, "is on the right side of the cabinet, exactly opposite the other, and opened by a similar combination. But there is one great difference. About the first drawer, there is nothing to harm any one; the other is guarded by the deadliest poison the world has ever known. Observe me, gentlemen!" Impelled by an excitement so intense as to be almost painful, I had risen from my chair and drawn near to him. As he spoke, he bent above the desk and pressed three fingers along the right edge. There was a sharp click, and a section of the inlay fell outward, forming a handle, just as I had seen it do on the other side of the desk. M. Pigot hesitated an instant--any man would have hesitated before that awful risk!--then, catching the handle firmly with his armoured hand, he drew it quickly out. There was a sharp clash, as of steel on steel, and the drawer stood open.

CHAPTER XXV

THE MICHAELOVITCH DIAMONDS

M. Pigot, cool and imperturbable, held out to us, with a little smile, a hand which showed not a quiver of emotion--his gauntleted hand; and I saw that, on the back of it, were two tiny depressions.

At the bottom of each depression lay a drop of bright red liquid-- blood-red, I told myself, as I stared at it, fascinated. And what nerves of steel this man possessed! A sudden warmth of admiration for him glowed within me. "That liquid, gentlemen," he said in his smooth voice, "is the most powerful poison ever distilled by man.

Those two tiny drops would kill a score of people, and kill them instantly. Its odour betrays its origin"--and, indeed, the air was heavy with the scent of bitter almonds--"but the poison ordinarily derived from that source is as nothing compared with this. This poison is said to have been discovered by Remy, the remarkable man who brought about the death of the Duc d'Anjou. Its distillation was supposed to be one of the lost arts, but the secret was rediscovered by this man Crochard. No secret, indeed, is safe from him; criminal history, criminal memoirs--the mysteries and achievements of the great confederacy of crime which has existed for many centuries, and whose existence few persons even suspect--all this is to him an open book.

It is this which renders him so formidable. No man can stand against him. Even the secret of this drawer was known to him, and he availed himself of it when need arose." M. Pigot paused, his head bent in thought; and I seemed to be gazing with him down long avenues of crime, extending far into the past--dismal avenues like those of Pere Lachaise, where tombs elbowed each other; where, at every step, one came face to face with a mystery, a secret, or a tragedy. Only, here, the mysteries were all solved, the secrets all uncovered, the tragedies all understood. But only to the elect, to criminals really great, were these avenues open; to all others they were forbidden. Alone of living men, perhaps, Crochard was free to wander there unchallenged.

Some such vision as this, I say, pa.s.sed before my eyes, and I had a feeling that M. Pigot shared in it; but, after an instant, he turned back to the cabinet.

"Now, M. Simmon," he said, briskly, in an altered voice, "if you will have the kindness to hold the drawer for a moment in this position, I will draw the serpent's fangs. There is not the slightest danger," he added, seeing that Simmonds very naturally hesitated.

Thus a.s.sured, Simmonds grasped the handle of the drawer, and held it open, while the Frenchman took from his pocket a tiny flask of crystal.

"A little farther," he said; and as Simmonds, with evident effort, drew the drawer out to its full length, a tiny, two-tined p.r.o.ng pushed itself forward from underneath the cabinet. "There are the fangs," said M. Pigot. He held the mouth of the flask under first one and then the other, pa.s.sing his other hand carefully behind and above them. "The poison is held in place by what we in French call _attraction capillaire_--I do not know the English; but I drive it out by introducing the air behind it--ah, you see!"

He stood erect and held the flask up to the light. It was half full of the red liquid.

"Enough to decimate France," he said, screwed the stopper carefully into place, and put the flask in his pocket. "Release the drawer, if you please, monsieur," he added to Simmonds.

It sprang back into place on the instant, the arabesqued handle snapping up with a little click.

"You will observe its ingenuity," said M. Pigot. "It is really most clever. For whenever the hand, struck by the poisoned fangs, loosened its hold on the drawer, the drawer sprang shut as you see, and everything was as before--except that one man more had tasted death.

Now I open it. The fangs fall again; they strike the gauntlet; but for that, they would pierce the hand, but death no longer follows. By turning this b.u.t.ton, I lock the spring, and the drawer remains open.

The man who devised this mechanism was so proud of it that he described it in a secret memoir for the entertainment of the Grand Louis. There is a copy of that memoir among the archives of the Bibliotheque Nationale; the original is owned by Crochard. It was he who connected that memoir with this cabinet, who rediscovered the mechanism, rewound the spring, and renewed the poison. No doubt the stroke with the poisoned fangs, which he used to punish traitors, was the result of reading that memoir."

"This Croshar--or whatever his name is,--seems to be a 'strordinary feller," observed Grady, relighting his cigar.

"He is," agreed M. Pigot, quietly; "a most extraordinary man. But even he is not infallible; for, since the memoir made no mention of the other secret drawer--the one in which Madame la d.u.c.h.esse concealed her love letters--Crochard knew nothing of it. It was that fact which defeated his combinations--a pure accident which he could not foresee. And now, gentlemen, it shall be my pleasure to display before you some very beautiful brilliants."

Not until that instant had I thought of what the drawer contained; I had been too fascinated by the poisoned fangs and by the story told so quietly but so effectively by the French detective; but now I perceived that the drawer was filled with little rolls of cotton, which had been pressed into it quite tightly.

M. Pigot removed the first of these, unrolled it and spread it out upon the desk, and instantly we caught the glitter of diamonds --diamonds so large, so brilliant, so faultlessly white that I drew a deep breath of admiration. Even M. Pigot, evidently as he prided himself upon his imperturbability, could not look upon those gems wholly unmoved; a slow colour crept into his cheeks as he gazed down at them, and he picked up one or two of the larger ones to admire them more closely. Then he unfolded roll after roll, stopping from time to time for a look at the larger brilliants.

"These are from the famous necklace which the Grand Duke inherited from his grandmother," he said, calling our attention to a little pile of marvellous gems in one of the last packets. "Crochard, of course, removed them from their settings--that was inevitable. He could melt down the settings and sell the gold; but not one of these brilliants would be marketable in Europe for many years. Each of them is a marked gem. Here in America, your police regulations are not so complete; but I fancy that, even here, he would have had difficulty in marketing this one," and he unfolded the last packet, and held up to the light a rose-diamond which seemed to me as large as a walnut, and a-glow with lovely colour.

"Perhaps you have stopped to admire the Mazarin diamond in the _galerie d'Apollon_ at the Louvre," said M. Pigot. "There is always a crowd about that case, and a special attendant is installed there to guard it, for it contains some articles of great value. But the Mazarin is not one of them; for it is not a diamond at all; it is paste--a paste facsimile of which this is the original. Oh, it is all quite honest," he added, as Grady snorted derisively. "Some years ago, the directors of the Louvre needed a fund for the purchase of new paintings; needed also to clean and restore the old ones. They decided that it was folly to keep three millions of francs imprisoned in a single gem, when their Michael Angelos and da Vincis and Murillos were encrusted with dirt and fading daily. So they sought a purchaser for the Mazarin; they found one in the empress of Russia, who had a craze for precious stones, and who, at her death, left this remarkable collection to her favourite son, who had inherited her pa.s.sion. A paste replica of the Mazarin was placed in the Louvre for the crowds to admire, and every one soon forgot that it was not really the diamond. For myself, I think the directors acted most wisely. And now," he added, with a gesture toward the glittering heaps, "what shall we do with all this?"

"There's only one thing to do," said Grady, awaking suddenly as from a trance, "and that's to get them in a safe-deposit box as quick as possible. There's no police-safe I'd trust with 'em! Why, they'd tempt the angel Gabriel!" and he drew a deep breath.

"Can we find a box of safe-deposit at this hour of the night?" asked M. Pigot, glancing at his watch. "It is almost one o'clock and a half."

"That's easy in New York," said Grady. "We'll take 'em over to the Day and Night Bank on Fifth Avenue. It never closes. Wait till I get something to put 'em in."

He went out and came back presently with a small valise.

"This will do," he said. "Stow 'em away, and I'll call up the bank and arrange for the box."

Simmonds and Pigot rolled up the packets carefully and placed them in the valise, while I sat watching them in a kind of daze. And I understood the temptation which would a.s.sail a man in the presence of so much beauty. It was not the value of the jewels which shook and dazzled me--I scarcely thought of that; it was their seductive brilliance, it was the thought that, if I possessed them, I might take them out at any hour of the day or night and run my fingers through them and watch them shimmer and quiver in the light.

"The Grand Duke Michael must have been considerably upset," remarked Simmonds, who, throughout all this scene, had lost no whit of his serenity of demeanour.

"He has been like a madman," said M. Pigot, smiling a little at Simmonds's unemotional tone. "These jewels are a pa.s.sion with him; he worships them; he never has parted with them, even for a day; where he goes, they have gone. In his most desperate need of money--and he has had such need many times--he has never sold one of his brilliants. On the contrary, whenever he has money or credit, and the opportunity comes to purchase a stone of unusual beauty, he cannot resist, even though his debts go unpaid. Since the loss of these stones, he has raved, he has cursed, he has beat his servants--one of them has died, in consequence. We are all a little mad on some one subject, I have heard it said; well, the Grand Duke Michael is very mad on the subject of diamonds."

"Why didn't he offer a reward for their return?" queried Simmonds.

"Oh, he did," said M. Pigot. "He offered immediately his whole fortune for their return. But his fortune was not large enough to tempt Crochard, for the Grand Duke really has nothing but the income from his family estates, and you may well believe that he spends all of it. It will be a great joy to him that we have found them."

The thought flashed through my mind that doubtless M. Pigot was in the way of receiving a handsome present.

"There they are," said Simmonds, and closed the bag with a snap, as Grady came in again.

"I've arranged for the box," said Grady, "and one of our wagons is at the door. I thought we'd better not trust a taxi--might turn over or run into something, and we can't afford to take any chances--not this trip. Simmonds, you go along with Moosseer Piggott, and put an extra man on the seat with the driver. Maybe that Croshar might try to hold you up."

The same thought was in my own mind, for Crochard must have learned of M. Pigot's arrival; and I could scarcely imagine that he would sit quietly by and permit the jewels to be taken away from him--to say nothing of his chagrin over his unfulfilled boast to G.o.dfrey. So I was relieved that Grady was wise enough to take no risk.

"You'd better get a receipt," Grady went on, "and arrange that the valise is to be delivered only when you and Moosseer Piggott appear together. That will be satisfactory, moosseer?" he added, turning to the Frenchman.

"Entirely so, sir."

"Very well, then; I'll see you in the morning. I congratulate you on the find. It was certainly great work."

"I thank you, sir," replied M. Pigot, gravely. "Au revoir, monsieur,"

and with a bow to me, he followed Simmonds into the outer room.

Grady sat down and got out a fresh cigar.

"Well, Mr. Lester," he said, as he struck a match, "what do you think of these Frenchmen, anyway?"