Melville Davisson Post

“ I asked him to look at my diamond when he came out. His face took on a decided expression of interest.
“Go up and see Bartoldi,” he said. “I will be along in an hour.”
He added with a sort of smile:
“There is no leisure in my trade. Somebody’s always either robbing a national bank or trying to rob—boring from within or setting up some game on the outside.”
Then he laughed.
Now, that is how I happened to find Walker—just when I wanted to find him. By accident I stepped into something, as you would say. ”

“ But all this could not obscure the fact that she was pretty, in a sort of way. She had a pliant figure, and the charms that go along with youth. Sleeping in one’s clothes, and the grime of a journey can’t obscure that. ”

“ He has a mammoth place on Fifth Avenue, rather far up—the trade is going up. The big retailers saw that a dozen years ago. Bartoldi is not the greatest jewel dealer in the world, but he is one of the greatest. The greatest jewel-dealer in the world is Mahadol in Bombay; then come Vanderdick in Amsterdam, and Hauseman in Paris.
It is a big shop, as I have said. But you know it—there is no reason to describe it here. A huge place with glass cases like every American shop, and the jewels displayed, as is the almost universal custom in America. ”

“ He took a flat leather case out of his pocket, got out a draft, asked Bartoldi for a pen, or rather indicated the wish for a pen with a fiddling of his fingers, and when he got it, indorsed the draft. Then he showed Bartoldi a letter that was in the envelope that had contained the draft.
I followed them to the door. There was a taxicab waiting; they got in and went up the Avenue.
That type of man ought to have a house somewhere on the Avenue; it was August; the house would be closed; I began to put things together.
I was standing there when Walker came up. I hailed him. ”

“ I said.
“Surely,” said Walker, “that man has been paid for it.”
The taxicab turned out of the Avenue presently when the jam of vehicles was released, and stopped before the Grand Central Station.
Walker paused a moment when we got down.
“If I put the thing together correctly,” he said, “they will be here. The girl came in for her diamond. ... How she earned it puzzles me. ... The man had to get through with it as quickly as he could.”
He made a little gesture.
“From the station to Bartoldi’s in a taxicab and back to the first train out—that would be his plan—to hurry.” ”

“ The girl had been questioned, and the thing was now dear. Walker explained it all on the way to Bartoldi’s in a taxicab. I had my diamond in my pocket, and Walker had Bartoldi’s to exchange for the forged draft. The old man was Vronsky, the most notorious forger in the world. He had bribed this girl, the janitress of the Empire Bank at Bar Harbor, to steal a book of blank, drafts and some sheets of stationery. It was easy to do ”

“ The two persons were an old man and a girl. The two words go together, but the two persons did not go together in any sense. The girl not past sixteen, and the man was past seventy. That would be all right, an old man and his granddaughter, you would say. ”