Robert Welles Ritchie

“ A few minutes later, they were seated, with the rest of the party, in the Miles section of that glittering half circle of puissance, most coveted display space in America—the horseshoe of the Metropolitan. Musky darkness about them and on the great stage; far down in the well of blackness, hot love of Egypt swept to tragedy under nodding palms.
Detournelles had a seat directly behind his hostess. Back of him, the curtains. So close the great stones of the collar that, under fugitive tendrils of hair, he could see their squared surfaces, now blue-black in the dusk of the box. ”

“ On a day in early November, a week before the opening of the opera season, the Miles electric brougham threaded a way through crowded traffic on Nassau Street, turned into Maiden Lane, and drew up at the curb before a jewel house known to connoisseurs above all the flash and pomp of larger establishments on Fifth Avenue. Mrs. Edgerton Miles stepped out, and into a waiting elevator. ”

“ Miles started for the telephone, but afterthought stopped him.
“Say, look-a-here, Boylan,” he began, a sheepish grin slitting his features, “you’re such a clever detective, you’ll get me in a jam before I know it. Going too fast altogether, that’s what you're doing. I don’t want anybody arrested—don’t want some geezer to get on the witness stand in his own defense and tell the wide world there’s two sapphire collars, one phony—which is the wife’s—and one genuine—which wasn’t intended to be the wife’s. ”

“ While attendants hurried to search every inch of the Miles box with electric torches, the manager of the house, desirous of soft-pedaling so painful an incident, gently insinuated Miles and his male guests into the office. There they ranged themselves in a fidgety group, each man casting dubious glances at his neighbor, all save Miles suffering acute mortification. ”

“ Then:
“I will accompany you to Henri. It is safe, and may be necessary.”
Before he stripped off his smoking gown, he took the jeweled collar from the pocket and laid it on the table. Detournelles pounced upon it eagerly, held it stretched between his fingers, and lovingly fondled with his gaze each soft spot of royal color.
“Yes, a good haul—a very good haul,” the Phantom commented, as he slipped his arms into jacket sleeves and next buried himself in the lapping folds of a heavy fur coat. “Come! We will put the little beauty away for the night.” ”

“ The opera came to the final intermission before the last act plumbs the depths of tragic dissonances. With Miles and the other gentlemen of the party, Detournelles left the box for the herding place of the Metropolitan’s bored masculine contingent—the lounge. As he was passing the foyer, the Frenchman’s quick eye leaped for an instant to a face in the crowd and then away. A most unusual and striking face it was: Dead white, under a high, white pompadour of hair, and with a thin white goatee, wire-waited, shooting out from the heel of the chin ”

“ His appearance at the Metropolitan on the night Mrs. Miles’ sapphire collar disappeared had been his first venture abroad; nor would he have dared that had not necessity compelled. A worm of lights, which was the New York train bound to the end of the island, crawled to a stop at the packing-box station that lay a mile below the Phantom’s house on the bayward sweep of the highlands. Detournelles, Viscount Allaire, was the only passenger to step onto the dark platform ”

“ But Henri did not work at night—not at his bench, that is. After leaving the Maiden Lane jewel establishment, at the close of the day when his arduous task had been set for him, Henri did some telephoning, then took the elevated to Christopher Street. A few minutes’ walk from the elevated stairs brought him to the Grape Arbor. Now, the Grape Arbor is one of the relics of Greenwich Village’s elder day, before all. the world flooded down into that quiet and homy district to disrupt its neighborhood intimacy and fill its quaint streets with alien tongues. ”

“ Pencil and paper lay to hand on the table; a strong reading glass was brought to bear on each blue blot in the gold filigree, and the column of estimated values grew with every lowering of the glass. The face of the man, white and cold as the face of one dead, was set in lines of complete absorption.
A knock sounded hollowly. The Phantom leaped to his feet and snatched a black automatic from the hollow of his armchair. Three other knocks came, accurately spaced. He dropped the collar in a pocket of his smoking gown, went to the front door, and admitted Detournelles. ”

“ Miles withered her husband with a glance, and closed the door. Detournelles bowed punctiliously toward his host and stepped back to his place. A sense of strain in the green-lit office gripped every man there. It was increased when the attendants returned to report that there was no trace of the missing collar in the box, nor in the alley leading to the stairs. ”

“ Miles’ collar. Now that we have the model to work from, we can turn out a collar that Mrs. Miles herself could not distinguish from her own—and do it in six days, too."
“Well—er—the person who's interested in this business says she won’t be satisfied unless it’s just the same,” Miles mumbled. “You know what women are—what they want they want. But, Sutton, this is way on the low-down, you know. If Mrs. M. should ever get wise—why, good night for E. Miles, esquire!" ”

“ Miles and Sutton looked expectantly into Boylan’s bright eyes.
“Well, Henri seems to have cleared himself?” Sutton ventured.
“On the contrary.” the detective took him up, “Henri has proved himself one of the crowd that got away with Mrs. Miles’ collar—that is, the genuine collar, which was sent by design to Mrs. Miles, in place of her paste collection.”
“I don’t make you,” Miles cut in. “First place, I don't believe for a minute my wife would lose a fifty-thousand-dollar sapphire collar and then try to get away with it by wearing phony stuff. She’s not that kind.” ”

“ With a trembling hand, Sutton fumbled in a drawer for his glass, screwed it in his eye, and picked up the collar. He stepped to the window, where light was strongest, and began turning the ornament slowly under the glass. Boylan, watching him keenly, saw little beads of sweat start above the eyebrows, noted the increased trepidation of the hands.
“Paste!” The admission came with a groan. “Paris paste, every one of them—even the diamond chips!”
“Case of substitution, then?” Boylan put the question tentatively.
“Why, it must be! No other explanation!” the distraught senior partner retorted. ”

“ Boylan turned his boyish smile on Miles. “This was the collar Mrs. Miles gave you to bring down to Mr. Sutton to have the settings tightened. I thought from the first Henri was telling the truth about that. I was positive when he rattled off so easily the inscription, which, as you see, was on the collar, not the case, and which he was careful to blot out before he delivered the two collars to Mr. Sutton yesterday. The full name and address of a person entirely unknown to our little jewel setter would not have stuck in his memory unless he’d had reason to observe it carefully. ”

“ With all the evidences of premature age, and even decrepitude, about the features, there was indomitable spirit in the carriage of head and shoulders and the cold, searching gaze from the sunken eyes. ”

“ Jewelers here all go in for ‘reconstructed’ stones, which are quite different things.”
“That lets your little lady of the furs out,” Boylan said to the stock juggler. The latter, who had followed with difficulty the trend of the detective’s questioning, started with an inquiring “Huh?”
“Why, if an expert diamond setter, familiar with the trade, could not duplicate the stones in Mrs. Miles’ collar by paste ones in six days, Miss—er—Dandelion couldn’t have taken good stones out of her sapphire collar and substituted false ones overnight.” ”

“ Miles should be robbed of a sapphire collar on the very night of its return from the jeweler’s was an interesting coincidence; that if substitution of genuine for imitation had not previously been made, the thief would have got paste jewels worth half a thousand dollars instead of real stones valued at fifty thousand, was a still more striking coincidence. Granting as true the jewel setter’s assertion that the collar put into his hands to model from was the false one there on Sutton’s desk, substitution could have been made in no other place than Sutton & Sutton’s factory, unless——
“Mr. ”

“ So, instead of a wild-goose chase after—er—Miss Dandelion—allowing they could trace the real gems to her, they played safe by having Henri make the substitution right here.”
“Then the thief was in my box last night, after all!” Miles brought his hand down on his knee with a slap. “By gad, I searched the three men, at least, down to the bone, and didn’t find a trace of that collar. As for the women——”
“I think we can discount the women in this thing,” Boylan interrupted. “And you overlook the certain fact that when the collar was slipped from Mrs. ”

“ Miles."
Before the door of the brougham had closed behind the possessor of the famous sapphire collar, Mr. Sutton was at his desk, with a telephone receiver at his ear. He called for a number.
“Ah—Mr. Miles? This is Mr. Sutton. I wished to tell you that—er—you may come over to the office at any time that suits your convenience, and we can talk over that little matter between us. What’s that? Oh, yes, she brought it down. She has just left, in fact. Right away? Very well, Mr. Miles.”
The senior partner of Sutton & Sutton, jewelers, permitted himself a quiet grin. Mr. ”