Barry Pain

“ I will do you the justice to say that you are not a vain man. The possibility of a woman being"—she hesitated for her word—"interested in you as I have been never occurred to you. I was little more than a servant, and if I was not old I was certainly no longer young. Never mind all that; you don't want to know it. It is enough for you to know that I have watched and questioned. I know why, for instance, when you leave on your motor-car for Brighton you are so late in arriving there." ”

“ It is so easy to make plans for the morrow, not knowing what the morrow will bring forth. That theft was not my last crime nor my worst. I write now with the certainty that my marriage will never take place, and in awful fear of imminent catastrophe.
There is really very little to say as to that theft. An attempt had been made upon Lady Seaforth's jewels sometime before by a man of bad character, whom I afterwards had the privilege of bringing back to the paths of rectitude. Lady Seaforth regularly spent part of the winter in the Riviera, and took her diamonds with her. ”

“ The body has been found and identified; the policeman who saw me in the motor-car has told what he saw. They are watching my house; I can see them from this window. Every moment I expect them to come and take me. I might have got clear away; I might even now, if I had the head for it, manage to show that there was no evidence against me. But I know that it is written that this shall be the end. More evidence will come; it is useless to prolong the struggle. ”

“ It would not be so easy to deceive others if it were not even easier for them to deceive themselves. It always amuses an expert conjurer to hear one of his tricks described by one of the audience. The man in the audience never tells what he really saw, but only what he thought he saw, which is a very different matter. ”

“ In the meantime the excitement about the theft would have died down. It is the want of capital, making an immediate realisation necessary, which causes so many a clever man to lose his liberty. I was in the fortunate position that I could afford to wait.
The whole transaction would have completely satisfied me but for one thing—the time when the diamonds were taken was two o'clock on Sunday morning. I have already stated my views with regard to Sunday work, and my firm conviction that if I ever transgressed in this way disaster would follow. ”

“ I never lock up my diamonds.
I am interested in gardening, and the garden attached to my cottage at Brighton does me some credit. In an unlocked drawer of my writing-table, both at Brighton and at my house at Bloomsbury, I have generally got a collection of flower-seeds in different packets. These packets are labelled in the usual way with the name of the seed and directions for cultivation. You might open a score of them, taken at random from the drawer, and find the contents answer exactly to the printed description on the cover. ”

“ I put the diamonds which I got from Lady Seaforth into three packets. I did this work late at night when the rest of my household were in bed. About a week afterwards it was necessary for me to open one of these packets for the purpose of verifying the weight of one of the diamonds. I found that this packet was missing. Further search showed me that the other two packets were missing as well. I felt sure that my foe was one of my own household. Even then the thought of Mrs Pethwick, my housekeeper, sour and bitter at my approaching marriage and her own dismissal, crossed my mind. ”

“ The man who writes the long memoirs that you write these long winter evenings after dinner, should be particularly careful about his blotting-paper; it is so easy with a looking-glass, you know. It is easy enough, too, when one turns over a packet of seeds to find what one has hunted the whole house for, to notice that these seeds are different sizes and of the wrong weight, and unusually hard. It was all too simple and childish for you to trouble about ”