He opened his palm and disclosed to the horrified woman's gaze and to the amazement of the other occupants of the room two beautiful crescents of blazing diamonds.

"Heavens! where did you get them? Oh, I know--I know!" shrieked the unhappy creature, cowering and shrinking from the sight as if blinded by it, and sinking upon the nearest chair.

"Yes, I reckon you do," grimly remarked Detective Rider, for it was he, "and this clears up the Bently affair of Chicago, for here, on the back of the settings, is the very mark which Mr. Arnold of that city put upon them more than three years ago. Well, so much for that charge. Now, if Mr. Palmer will just step this way, maybe he'll recognize some of his property, and we'll explain the second and third charges."

Ray looked astonished as he went forward, but he was even more so when Mr. Rider held up before him an elegant diamond cross, which he instantly identified as one of the ornaments which the beautiful Mrs. Vanderbeck had selected on that never-to-be-forgotten day when he was decoyed into Doctor Wesselhoff's establishment and left there a prisoner, while the woman made off with her booty.

"Where did you get it?" he exclaimed, while Mrs. Montague fell back among the cushions of her chair and covered her face with her trembling hands, utterly unnerved.

"That remains to be explained, together with some other things which are no less interesting and startling," the detective returned, with an air of triumph. "And now," raising his voice a trifle, "if a certain little lady will show herself, I imagine we can entertain you with another act in this strange comedy."

As he spoke the drawing-room door, which the man had left slightly ajar when he entered, was pushed open, and Mona made her appearance with her arms full of clothing.

She glided straight to the detective's side, and handed him something which, with a dextrous movement, he clapped upon Mrs. Montague's bowed head.

It was a wig of rich, dark-red hair, which fell in lovely rings about the woman's fair forehead and white neck.

She lifted her face with a cry of terror at Mr. Rider's act, and behold!

the beautiful Mrs. Vanderbeck was before them!

Ray knew at once why Mrs. Montague had looked so strangely to him as she arose to greet him when he entered.

Her face had been artistically made up, with certain applications of pencil and paint, to give her the appearance of being considerably older than she was. But he wondered how she happened to be so made up that morning.

"That is not all," Mr. Rider resumed, as he took a costly tailor-made dress from Mona's arm and held it up before his speechless auditors.

"Here is the robe which was so badly rent at the time that Mrs.

Vanderbeck escorted Mr. Raymond Palmer to the great Doctor Wesselhoff for treatment, while the fragment that was torn from it will fit into the hole. And here," taking another garment from Mona, "is a widow's costume in which the fascinating Mrs. Bently figured in Chicago, when she so skillfully duped a certain Mr. Cutler, swindling him out of a handsome sum of money, and giving him paste ornaments in exchange. No one would ever imagine the elegant Mrs. Richmond Montague and the lovely widow to be one and the same person, for they were entirely different in figure as well as face, the former being very slight, while the latter was inclined to be decidedly portly, as was also Mrs. Vanderbeck.

"But, gentlemen, that is also easily explained, as you will see if you examine these costumes, for there must be five pounds, more or less, of cotton wadding used about each to pad it out to the required dimensions.

Clever, very clever!" interposed Mr. Rider, bestowing a glance of admiration upon the bowed and shivering figure before him. "I think, during all my experience, I have never had so complicated and interesting a case. I do not wonder that you look dazed, gentlemen," he went on, with a satisfied glance at his wide-eyed and wondering listeners, "and I imagine I could have surprised you still more if I had had time to examine a certain trunk which stands open up stairs in the lady's chamber. I think I could find among its contents a gray wig and other garments belonging to a certain Mrs. Walton, so called, and perhaps a miner's suit that would fit Mr. Louis Hamblin, alias Jake Walton, who in St. Louis recently tried to dispose of costly diamonds which he had brought all the way from Australia, for his rustic sweetheart--eh? Ha, ha, ha!" and the jubilant man burst into a laugh of infinite amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Truly, Mr. Rider, your discoveries are somewhat remarkable; but will you allow me to examine that cross?" a new voice here remarked, and Mr. Amos Palmer arose from a mammoth chair at the other end of the drawing-room, where he had been an unseen witness of and listener to all that had occurred during the last half hour.

It was he who had rung the bell just as Mona was about to enter Mrs.

Montague's boudoir in search of her scissors, and who, upon being told that the lady was out, had said he would wait for her. He had called to ask his _fiancee_ to go with him to select the hangings for the private parlor which he was fitting up for her in his own house.

His face, at this moment, was as colorless as marble; his eyes gleamed with a relentless purpose, and his manner was frigid from the strong curb that he had put upon himself.

At the sound of his voice Mrs. Montague lifted a face upon which utter despair, mingled with abject terror, was written. She bent one brief, searching glance upon the man, and then shrank back again into the depths of her chair, shivering as with a chill.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOW IT HAPPENED.

Mr. Rider pa.s.sed Mr. Palmer the diamond cross, which he took without a word, and carefully examined, turning it over and over and scrutinizing both the stones and the setting with the closest attention, though Ray could see that his hands were trembling with excitement, and knew that his heart was undergoing the severest torture.

"Yes," he said, after an oppressive silence, during which every eye, except Mrs. Montague's, was fixed upon him, "the cross is ours--my own private mark is on the back of the setting. And so," turning sternly to the wretched woman near him, "you were the thief; you were the unprincipled character who decoyed my son to that retreat for maniacs, and nearly made one of me! Then, oh! what treachery! what duplicity!

When you feared that the net was closing about you and you would be brought to justice, you sought to make a double dupe of me by a marriage with me, imagining, I suppose, that I would suffer in silence, if the theft was ever discovered, rather than have my name tarnished by a public scandal. So you have sailed under many characters!" he went on, in a tone of biting scorn. "You are the Mrs. Bently, of Chicago! the Mrs. Bent, of Boston; Mrs. Vanderbeck and Mrs. Walton, of New York; and the woman in St. Louis, who gave bail for the rascally miner, who tried to dispose of the unset solitaires. Fortunately those have been proven to be mine and returned to me; but where are the rest of the stones? I will have them, every one," he concluded, in a tone so stern and menacing that the woman shivered afresh.

"They were all together--they were all yours except two; but the cross, we--we--"

Mrs. Montague proceeded thus far in a m.u.f.fled, trembling tone, and then her voice utterly failed her.

"You did not dare to try to sell too many at one time, and so you reserved the cross for future use," Mr. Palmer supplemented. "Perhaps you even intended to wear it under my very eyes, among your wedding finery.

I verily believe you are audacious enough to do so; but, madame, it will be safe to say that there will be no wedding now, at least between you and me."

The man turned abruptly, as he ceased speaking, and left the room, looking fully a dozen years older than when, an hour previous, he had come there, with hope in his heart, to plan with his bride-elect how they could make their future home most attractive for her reception.

Ray felt a profound pity for his father, in this mortifying trial and disappointment, and he longed to follow him and express his sympathy; but his judgment told him that it would be better to leave him alone for a time; that his wounded pride could ill-brook any reference to his blighted hopes just then.

It may as well be related just here how Detective Rider happened to appear so opportunely, and how Mona found the robes in which Mrs.

Montague had so successfully masqueraded to carry out her various swindling operations.

It will be remembered that Mona, after she had gathered up the keepsakes belonging to her mother and returned them to the table, had found another box upon the floor of Mrs. Montague's boudoir.

When she had removed the rubber band that held the cover in its place, her astonished eyes fell upon a pair of exquisite diamond crescents for the ears, and a cross, which, from the description which Ray had given her, she knew must have been among the articles stolen from Mr. Palmer.

Instantly it flashed across her what this discovery meant.

She felt very sure that Mrs. Montague must have been concerned in the swindling of Mr. Cutler, more than three years previous, and also of Mrs.

Vanderbeck in Boston, besides in the more recent so-called Palmer robbery.

Still, there were circ.u.mstances connected with these operations that puzzled her.

Mrs. Bently, the crafty widow of Chicago, had been described to her as a stout woman with red hair. Mrs. Vanderbeck had also been somewhat portly, likewise Mrs. Walton, whom she had seen in St. Louis, and these latter were somewhat advanced in years also.

Mrs. Montague, on the contrary, was slight and sylph-like in figure; a blonde of the purest type, with light golden hair, a lovely complexion, with hardly the sign of a wrinkle on her handsome face.

But she did not speculate long upon these matters, for, having made this discovery, she was more anxious than before to be released from her place of confinement. So she had gone into the adjoining room, and tried the door leading into the hall.

That, too, as we know, she had found locked, and then, as she turned to retrace her steps, she was stricken spellbound by something which she saw upon the bed.

It was nothing less than a widow's costume, comprising a dress, bonnet, and vail, together with a wig of short, curling red hair!

Yes, Mrs. Montague was the "widow!" or woman in black whom Detective Rider had observed and followed only a little while previous. When she found that the man was on her track she had slipped into the carriage and ordered the driver to take her with all possible speed to a certain store on Broadway. Arriving there, she had simply pa.s.sed in at one door and out of one opposite leading upon a side street, where she hailed a car, and, thoroughly alarmed, went directly home instead of going to the room where she usually made these changes in her costume.

Upon reaching her own door, she quietly let herself in with her latch-key, and going directly to her chamber, tore off her widow's weeds, and wig, and threw them hastily upon the bed. She hurriedly donned another dress, and was about to remove the cleverly simulated signs of age from her face, when she heard the bell ring, and went into the hall to ascertain who had called. We know the rest, how she recognized the lawyer, and imagined he had come again to annoy her further upon the subject of Mona Forester's child; how, almost at the same moment, she discovered Mona's presence in the house, and instantly resolved to lock her up until she could decide what further to do with her. And thus, laboring under so much excitement, she entirely forgot about the wrinkles and crow's-feet upon her face, and which so changed its expression.

The moment Mona saw the costume upon the bed everything was made plain to her mind. Mrs. Bently, of the Chicago and Boston crescent swindle, was no other than Mrs. Montague in a most ingenious disguise.

Glancing about the room for further evidences of the woman's cunning, she espied a trunk standing open at the foot of the bed, as if some one had been hastily examining the contents and forgotten to shut it afterward.

She approached it, and on top of the tray there lay the very dress of gray ladies' cloth which she had seen hanging in the closet of a certain room in the Southern Hotel in St. Louis. Then she knew, beyond a doubt, that Mrs. Montague had also figured as Mrs. Walton, the mother of the miner, in that city.

But who was the miner?