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14
SYNOPSIS.
The story opens with a scream from
Dorothy March in the opera box of Mrs.
Missioner, a wealthy widow. It is oc
casioned when Mrs. Missioner’s necklace
breaks, scattering the diamonds ail over
the floor. Curtis Griswold and Bruxton
Sands, society men in love with Mrs. Mis
sioner, gather up the gems. Griswold
steps on what is supposed to be the cele
brated Maharanee and crushes it. A Hin
doo declares it was not tile genuine. An
expert later pronounces all the stones
substitutes for the original. One of the
missing diamonds is found in the room
of Elinor Holcomb, confidential compan
ion of Mrs. Missioner. She is arrested,
notwithstanding Mrs. Missioner’s belief
in her innocence. Meantime, in an up
town mansion, two Hindoos, who are in
America to recover the Maharanee, dis
cuss the arrest. Detective Britz takes
up the case. He asks the co-operation of
Dr. Fitch, Elinor’s fiance, in running
down the real criminal. Britz learns that
duplicates of Mrs. Missioner’s diamonds
were made in Paris on the order of
Elinor Holcomb. While walking Britz Is
seized, bound and gagged by Hindoos. He
is imprisoned in a deserted house, but
makes his escape. Britz discovers an in
sane diamond expert whom lie believes
was employed by either Sands of Gris
wold to make counterfeits of the Missfon
pr gems. Griswold intimates that Sands
Is on the verge of failure. Two Hindoos
burglarize the home of Sands and are
captured by Britz. On one of them he
finds a note signed by ’’Millicent” a.id ad
dressed to ’’Curtis." Britz locates a wo
man named Millicent Delaroche.
CHAPTER XX.
Kananda’s Mission.
Kananda and the Swami, in the up
town bachelor apartment whither they
sped from the Fifth avenue ballroom,
bent about a table on which were
spread various diagrams. AH, Mrs.
Missioner’s servant, stood at a re
spectful distance. He wore a con
cerned look that intimated he had
been subjected to some pretty stiff
questioning by his masters. The high
caste Orientals paid little attention to
him. They leaned over the table un
til their heads almost touched, study
ing diligently the papers that lay upon
it, occasionally following the lines
with pencils, and pausing to make
hurried calculations on the margins of
the sheets. At length the Swami
leaned back and gazed fixedly at the
prince.
“It is evident we're on the right
track at last,” he said. “Chunda and
Gazim could not have done their
work thoroughly.”
“They didn’t do it at all, when it
comes to that,” answered the prince.
“Instead of finding only a loose end
of the thread, they ought to have un
tangled the whole skein.”
“However,” said the Swami, “this
note shows my original suppositions
were accurate. The jewels w’ere ta
ken by the man who trod on the false
diamond in the opera box.”
“It looks as if it were so,” Kananda
replied. “The question is, where are
they now?”
“The woman has them,” returned
the scholar.
"Unless,” sneered Nandy, “she is
beating our enterprising clubman at
his own game. How do you know
she hasn't sold them?”
, "This note —” ,
“Oh, I know all about that,” laughed
the prince. “It is plain you have not
given sufficient thought to the ways
of these western women. If only you
would take your head out of those
esoteric clouds once in a while, and
come to earth for a look around, you
wouldn’t be quite so ingenuous.”
“But she says in this note she will
have to sell some of the jewels,” the
Swami persisted. “That certainly in
dicates they are still in her posses
sion.”
“On the surface it does,” said
Kandy.
“But the woman when she wrote
It could not have supposed It was to
be read by anyone save Griswold.”
“How do you know she didn’t in
tend to deceive him?” asked Kananda.
"It’s a good thing you< chose the schol
ar’s life in early youth, my friend.
As a society man, you’d make an ex
ceedingly interesting, but distressing
ly hopeless ‘innocent abroad.’ ”
Nandy had learned his philosophy
of femininity in ope of the swiftest
sets of Cambridge town; in the most
exclusive London clubs; in the Olymp
ian gatherings of Heidelberg stu
dents, and in the most fin-de-slecle
circles of the gay capital. Whatever
his theory, there was nothing hesi
tant about it. He held in regard to
the sex only the most settled opin
ions.
“It seems to me,” said the Swami,
“that your conclusions are pretty far
fetched. But I bow to you, prince, in
the matter of social law. Perhaps I
know a little more about the higher
mysteries, but when it comes to cotil
lons, you take the baccalaureate de
gree.”
There may have been a shade of
irony in his words. If so, Kananda,
for all his subtlety, failed to notice it.
"I think you are clouding the ques
tion needlessly when you take it for
granted the woman who wrote this
note is not true to Curtis Griswold’s
interests.” And the Swami tapped
the table meditatively with the scrap
of paper the man with the glistening
eyes had filched from the camera
board in Burien’s workshop
"Wouldn’t it be a good deal more di
rect,” said the Swami, “to continue tc
take it for granted she is sincere—that
she received the jewels from Gris
wold, that she still has them, and that
she will not part with any of then
until the clubman has refused to com
ply with her request for money?”
“Yes,” Kananda admitted. “We’ll
work along that line for the present.
Now, then, where’s the woman?”
He turned to Ali with a piercing
look. The servant "salaamed.
“Excellency,” said he, “we have
verified the address heading the sec
ond note. She is there.”
"It is well,” said the prince curtly.
“Go!”
He turned to the Swami and, stand
ing with one foot on his chair, raised
his elbow to his knee and lowered his
cbin to his hand.
“I believe we’re close to the end of
our quest,” he mused. “I have a feel
ing we must get the Maharanee to
night, if we are to recover it at all.
We have played, a waiting game for
many months, and it is time now to
act. Are you prepared?”
“I am prepared.”
“You will not stay your hand when
it comes to the point?”
The Swami did not answer. He sat
with folded arms staring at the docu
ments on the table. It was in an al
tered voice that at length he spoke:
“Prince,” he said, “already the sa
cred gem should be ruby red with the
blood that has been spilled for it.
There is something in the air of this
strange land that makes it distaste
ful to me —the thought of further
bloodshed. Regain the jewel we must;
but I would it could be done without
new sacrifice of life.”
An expression of demoniacal scorn
overspread Kanada’s features until he
confronted the sage with the face of
a gargoyle.
“And the brethren?” he asked angri
ly. “Can it be you have a thought
for these western dogs when your
own brothers of the faith are suffer
ing the shame and pain in which we
left them? Has your heart turned
to water?”
The Swami did not answer. Still
with folded arms, he kept his gaze
on the papers, his features set in quiet
determination.
“Are you afraid?” pursued the
prince. “Does your soul shrink, your
hand draw back, now that the ap
pointed hour Is nigh? Are you a true
believer and master of the faith, or —”
and he almost screamed, “an apos
tate?”
The Swami’s copper face turned a
darker shade. A flash of fury seared
his eyes as he raised them to those
of the prince. He lowered them
again, however, and said, stolidly;
“I am unable to conquer the feeling
that it cannot be for the good of the
brothers to wade through blood as
did our fathers for possession of what,
after all, is simply a stone. I know
what it means to the chosen ones —to
have that stone taken back to the
Temple. I feel more keenly than
you can feel the yearning they send
across the seas for the success of our
mission. But, prince, the Maharanee
diamond, in its journey across the
world, has been purged perhaps of the
scarlet stains that were upon it. Can
we not take it back in all its present
purity? Are we not skilled enough
in the ways of the East to recover our
own without bearing death to the
men of the West?”
Kananda spurned the chair away
and, gripping the table with both
hands, leaned toward the scholar.
“Listen to me, master!” he said
savagely. “It was all these possibili
ties my father anticipated when he
sent me as your companion in this en
terprise. He knew I was experienced
in the wiles of these Western dogs.
He was aware that in the English uni
versity and the British capital, as well
as in the cities of the European conti
nent, I had mingled with them in
their pastimes and in their homes—
that I had seen and heard their puer
ile philosophy—that I had studied
their womanish religions, and that I
had experienced all the soul poison
by which their so-called civilization
turns men to children. Can you guess
the orders the Maharajah laid upon
me when he bade me come with you?”
The Swami still maintained a dig
nified silence.
"I will tell you,” continued the
prince. "My father said: ‘The time
may come, my son, when your friend,
the great teacher, quails from that
which is before him. If it comes, then
when it comes, strike as swiftly and
surely as you would strike to save
your throne.’ And I will strike, my
master!” Kananda added grimly res
olute. “If you flinch from any neces
sity that arises In carrying out this
task of ours, I will warn you once —
even as I am warning you now —and
then, if you still stay your hand or seek
to save the least of those who may
stand between us and the sacred
jewel, by God I’ll kill you!”
The scholar’s Imperturbability was
proof against Kananda’s violence of
word and manner. The only sign he
gave was a slight tightening of his
fingers as they clasped his arms, and
a lightning look straight into the eyes
of the young man across the table. It
was in a tone of perfect control that
he replied:
“Death, when it comes to myself.
Is the least of my concerns. You may
strike when you will, Your Highness.
I am a master of the faith, but, none
the less, a servant of the throne. My
life belongs to your royal father to do
with, it as he pleases. And since you
tell me that you are the long arm of
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“I Had No Thought of Giving Up the Quest.
the Maharajah, it is at your disposal,
too.”
His calmness reminded the Prince
of his own Oriental origin. The ve
hemence he had acquired in western
lands slipped from him like a loosened
robe. In an instant, under his out
ward seeming of an English or Amer
ican man-about-town, he repossessed
the composure of his race.
“Sorry,” he said with a little forced
laugh. “Rather bad, you know, to
take things to heart that way, but
this really Is a serious proposition,
and we mustn’t fall down on it. As
we are so near success, I will tell
you It is a question not only of piety,
but of politics. There is a dash of
mild statecraft in it. The Maharajah
has a pretty well-rooted idea that the
permanence of his reign depends on
restoring the diamond to the Temple.”
The sage looked at him interioga
tively.
“Funny, I know,” continued Nandy,
“but, after all, it is the twentieth
century, and the P. and O. boats take
some pretty restless people to India.
Those busy-bodies have stirred up a
good deal of discontent in our part of
the world, and my father is an ob
servant man.”
“I had no thought of giving up the
quest,” the Swami explained. “All
I wished to do was to move more de
liberately. I believe we can recover
the stone without great violence, and
I incline to these Westerner’s views
far enough to think it would be better
for our religion, for your father, and
for the brethren —to say nothing of
ourselves —if we could do so. The
easiest way sometimes really is the
best.”
“I know all that,” insisted the
Prince, “but we have not the time.
This hunt is drawing close to a hot
finish. You forget that we have the
cleverest detective in New York —one
of the cleverest in the world —
to beat. If he got the diamond, he
would not recognize our claim to it
for an instant. He’d turn it over to
Mrs. Missioner, and we would not
stand the ghost of a chance in any
court of law r . This is a case where
we must help ourselves to our own.
Besides, there is Griswold. How do
we know he is not getting ready to
flee with the jewels tonight? They
may be in his possession, or he may
have given them to the woman who
signs herself Millicent.”
The Prince paused, framed his fin
gers tip to tip, and looked between
them at the note as if peering into a
crystal gazer’s globe.
“I am convinced the woman has the
necklace,” he went on. “Our men
have had time to search Griswold’s
apartment from end to end, and the
other men’s, too. If they found the
jewels in either place, we would know
it by now. The whole question pre
sents itself clearly enough to my
mind. The old French proverb holds
good, cherchez la femme.”
The Swami arose. As he did so, Ali
re-entered the room with more
salaams, and extended toward his
master a silver tray on which lay a
tiny scroll, written in minute hiero
glyphs of the Orient. The scholar
broke the seal and scanned the paper
swiftly. A slight exclamation be
trayed that the information contained
in the little scroll broke through even
bls magnificent reserve. His hand
trembled a little as he handed the
paper to the Prince. A hurried read
ing sufficed to destroy all of that
young man’s recently gained calm. He
fairly hurled himself into a sealskin
coat, and thrust his head Into an
opera hat.
“Quick!” he said, ‘we have not a mo
ment to lose!”
It would have been well for Britz if
the young photographer had acquaint
ed him promptly with the fact of the
disappearance of the Millicent note.
The detective’s acute intelligence
would have argued from that Incident
the need of even greater haste than he
was making in pushing his pursuit of
the Missioner diamond to a close. But
Burien, conscience-stricken though he
was, was loath to send the information
to the Headquarters man until he could
have time to make further and more
exhaustive search of his shop, as well
as of the courtyard in the rear of the
building on which its windows gave. It
was dark in the court, and the imper
fect light of his candle made his
search so slow that by the time he
was sure the note was gone beyond
possibility of its recovery, it was too
late for him to find Detective Britz at
Police Headquarters. When his mes
senger returned with the report that
the Central Office man had left his
room, and that no one in the Mulberry
street building knew where to find him,
Burien became so alarmed that he
hastened to Headquarters to try to
take up the hunt for Britz from that
point. He was as unsuccessful as his
emissary, and he spent many anxious
hours in the waiting room hoping for
the detective's return. The photo en
graver tried to console himself with
the thought that the negative had been
spared, and he therefore had been able
to send to Britz’s office the hundred
facsimiles of the “Curtis dear" missive
his customer had ordered. But it was
poor consolation when he recalled the
earnestness with which the detective
had enjoined upon him not to let the
original leave his hands. Burien was
an exceedingly uncomfortable young
man during all the time he awaited
the sleuth’s return. His discomfort did
not decrease as the hours dragged by.
But it would have been well for
Britz to have that knowledge in re
gard to the strange vanishment of the
Griswold note, it ■would have been bet
ter for Curtis ■ Griswold if Dorothy
March had not become conscience
stricken in respect of him that same
evening. For little Miss March, being
of Puritan stock, as soon as she per
suaded herself that she might have
made trouble for Mrs. Missioner’s ad
mirer by talking too freely to the
bland man from Mulberry street in
the cozy corner of the Forrest theater,
resolved to repair the mischief as rap
idly as possible. She, therefore, sent
a little note to the clubman, asking
that he make it a point to see her in
the course of the evening; and in the
note she gave him a list of the several
functions she intended to take in.
The ball Mrs. Missioner attended, and
at which Griswold scored what he re
garded as a distinct gain in parading
the wealthy widow before many of
their acquaintances as a receptive re
cipient of his attentions, was only one
of the affairs on Dorothy’s list. Gris
wold received the note too late to
come up with Miss March before the
ball, so he decided to meet her at a
later dance. That decision upset "ne
of his plans—the most important he
had formed in many months, although
he did not know its importance at the
time. It had been his intention to go
from the Fifth Avenue ballroom to the
Hotel Renaissance, and if he had not
received the note from Miss March, he
would have done so even though he
might have escorted Mrs. Missioner to
her home and passed a short time with
her in the interval.
Dorothy’s request flattered the club
man’s vanity so greatly, however, that
he did not hesitate to defer his visit
to the Renaissance in order to keep
the interesting appointment the debu
tante, with more conscience than dis
cretion, made for him. The conse
quence was that by the time Gris
wold’s interview with little Dorothy
March was at an end, the hours had
passed beyond a point to which even
his ingenuity could stretch conven
tionality far enough to make it practi
cable for him to see Mrs. Delaroche
that night.
Dorothy was dancing abstractedly
when Griswold found her. She was so
Impatient to adjust the harm she felt
she had done fiim that she saw him
from her partner’s shoulder before he
picked her out from a score of other
comely young women on the floor.
Miss March instantly wearied of the
waltz, to the dismay of the youth
whose arm encircled her, and who
rather fancied himself as , a dancer.
She lost no time in having herself es
corted to a small conservatory, where
she dismissed her partner with scant
ceremony, and where, a few moments
afterward, she was joined by Gris
wold.
Even then the debutante’s unwitting
tangling of the threads of Griswold's
fate might not have had such influence
upon his future if she had approached
her subject with directness. Had she
told Griswold at once what she had
said to the detective concerning his
skill as a draughtsman, the clubman's
suspicions would have been aroused,
and he might have taken steps that
would have had a marked effect upon
the development of the great Mission
er mystery. But Dorothy was too flut
tered, too prettily remorseful, to go
straight to the heart of the subject,
and in her innocent endeavor to post
Griswold in respect of her chat with
Britz without making him think she
was a gossiping little busybody, she
protracted her interview with the club
man through so many dances that
when it ended Griswold persuaded him
self the morning would be ample time
to do that which he felt must be done
to avert the probable consequences of
Dorothy’s girlish frankness. His van
ity again played its part, too, for when
he had thanked little Miss March for
what he pleased to consider her inter
est in him, and when Dorothy, having
signally failed to impress upon him the
impersonal nature of her conscience
stroke, found herself in a further flut
ter of bewilderment, Curtis Griswold
proceeded to parade her up and down
the dancing floor as effectively as he
had shown off the rich and beautiful
widow in the larger ballroom a little
farther up the avenue. Griswold,
prided himself on his versatility. He
argued that it was as easy for him,
as he would have expressed it to his
club intimates, “to put a filly through
her paces” as it had been to advertise
the fact before the whole ballroom
that Doris Missioner, the fastidious
beauty and worshiped possessor of
many millions, apparently was on the
point of accepting him as her second
matrimonial venture.
All of which resulted in Griswold’s
long stay at the dance, in his ride with
Dorothy to her home in an automobile
otherwise occupied only by a satisfac
torily self-centered chaperon; and in
his waste of further time at one of his
clubs after parting with Miss March
and herdduenn a waste of hours any
one of which might have been made as
useful to him as a year of ordinary
time. He was further disposed to pro
crastinate in this crucial moment by
the success of the Headquarters man
in throwing all suspected persons off
their guard by keeping Elinor Hol
comb in the Tombs. Through all his
work on the Missioner case, Britz had
been beset with requests from Mrs.
Missioner, Sands and other friends of
the widow’s secretary, to permit them
to give bail for her. Sands and Mrs.
Missioner were particularly insistent
in their desire to see Elinor at liberty.
Fitch, though normally his wish to see
his fiancee free must have been
stronger than that of anyone else, was
partly reconciled to her protracted im
prisonment by the detective’s frequent
assurance of her ultipiate vindication.
Moreover, the doctor, in consequence
of his work on the case with Britz, had
direct knowledge of the importance
that the suspicions of others should
not be alarmed. He had been with the
detective when the card of Bruxton
Sands was discovered in the posses
sion of the old curiosity shop man; he
knew of the note addressed to “Curtis
dear” and signed “Millicent,” and also
Strategy of Cecil Rhodes
How He Got Ahead of His Brother In
Matter of Boiled
Shirt.
The late Sir William Butler, in his
autobiography, which has just been
published posthumously, tells the fol
lowing story of Cecil Rhodes, which
Cecil’s brother, Frank Rhodes, told
him:
“My brother,” said Frank Rhodes,
“is a strange man. We were young
chaps together, and there wasn't too
much money or too many things
among us.
“One day Cecil came and asked me
to let him have one of my shirts, as
he wanted to go to an evening party
in London. Well, I wanted the shirt
myself that evening and I told him
he couldn’t have it. He said nothing,
but I knew he didn’t like losing a
chance, so I watched him.
“I saw him off to the train. He had
neither the shirt on him nor had he
of the desperate attempts made by the
Hindoos to find the diamonds. So Fitch
did not bother the sleuth as much as
did other friends of Elinor’s, and it
was weli; for Britz several times was
at his wits’ ends to dissuade Mrs. Mis
sioner and Sands from going to the
District Attorney and offering a heavy
security for Miss Holcomb’s appear
ance in the trial court. However,
Britz had held them off, and it fol
lowed that Griswold nursed the delu
sion that Elinor and Fitch and Sands j
were suspected so strongly by the *
Central Office men that no search for
evidence against anybody else was in
progress. Donnelly and Carson also
had fostered that misconception on the
clubman's part by their unabated ac
tivity in hunting proofs of the girl sec
retary’s guilt. Those worthies spent
every day of their work on the case
in tracing Elinor's past, and in efforts
to couple Fitch with her suspicious
theft of the jewels. Furthermore, be
ing the sort of men who would rather
win credit for detective work than do
anything quietly in the way of real
detection of crime or criminals, they
could not refrain from expressing their
belief in Elinor’s dishonesty at every '
turn. They talked liberally to the sea
soned reporters in the newspaper
rookeries opposite Police Headquar
ters, to the newspaper men in the po
lice stations, xnd the magistrates’
courts, and » ’be several star repor
ters of the more KAerprising papers
who had been assigned especially on
the case. Every word they uttered
hinged on their evidence in the return
of a verdict against Miss Holcomb,
and, with the exception of two or three
unusually sapient newspaper men who
discounted the opinions of Donnelly
and Carson because they knew Brita
was doing the real work, and because
Britz had as yet made no revelations,
the reporters quoted them at great
length.
Therefore, practically all the New
York papers published stories in which
Elinor Holcomb was tried, convicted,
and sentenced in advance of her ar
raignment for the theft of the Mission
er necklace. Over-enterprising Sunday
papers went so far as to publish page
stories, purporting to be psychological
studies of the mental bent that made
the trusted secretary of a multimil
lionaire society woman, with a com
fortable career in expectation, throw
all chances to the winds by yielding
to a momentary feminine impulse to
possess herself of glittering baubles.
Those psychological studies were in
teresting to the multitude, and might
have been worth publishing had they
been based on either psychoolgy or
truth. They had their effept on Gris
wold, though, and a consequence of
that fact was that the clubman’s mind
was at ease so far as the possibility
that he W’ould be connected with the
disappearance of the gems was con
cerned.
So Griswold did not go to the
Renaissance that night, nor did he dis
turb Mrs. Delaroche with a telephone
message, although an instrument stood
on a convenient desk in her boudoir,
and an extension wire connected It
with a duplicate device that rested
on a little Russian table beside her
bed. It would have been the work
of a moment for Griswold to get into
conversational touch with Mrs. Dela
roche, and he would have had the ex>
cuse of replying to her urgent and
somewhat petulant note —if he had
received it; unfortunately for him, he
never had sden that missive. Kanan
da’s guess in regard to the activity of
his followers, Chunda and Gazim, was
accurate, for these adroit Orientals
had stolen the missing note from Gris
wold’s apartment before it came un
der the observation of "Curtis dear,”
to whom it was addressed. Altogeth
er, once more, as he would have ex
pressed it, things were not “breaking”
for the suave secretary of the Iroquois
Trust Company.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
bag and baggage with him; but 1
thought that I’d go to the drawer and
just make sure of my shirt. It was
gone! Cecil came back that night.
“ ‘Well, Cecil,’ I said, ‘you won over
that shirt of mine; but just tell ma
how you did it, for it wasn’t on you
when you left here and you had no
parcel with you. What did you do
with it?’
“He chuckled a little and said, dry
ly, ‘I put it on under the old ona.'
Now, that’s Cecil.”
Surfeited.
“Can’t I persuade you to subscribe
for a copy of our latest book on north
polar exploration?”
“No, sir; you couldn’t persuade mo
to take it as a gift I spent four years
carrying malls In North Dakota, two
years driving a cab in Minneapolis,
and I’ve just escaped from Duluth.
Got a book on hunting In central Ai
rica?”
