Part 73 (2/2)
All eyes were turned at once upon the speaker.
”Because I have asked you all to meet me here to-day that I might tell it,” he went on. ”It will contain much that is new to you all, and it will interest you all. I know Miss Wardour will wish you all to hear the end of her diamond case, and the fate of her robbers.”
”Of course! You are perfectly right, Mr. Bathurst,” said Constance.
”Doctor Heath cuts more of a figure than he knows in this business, and Ray has staid out in the cold long enough. Go on, Mr. Bathurst, expose me in all my iniquity. But have you _really_ found the robbers?”
”Listen,” said the detective, and while they all fixed upon him their gravest attention he began.
CHAPTER XLV.
TOLD BY A DETECTIVE.
”For several years past,” began Mr. Bathurst, ”the city and many of the wealthier suburban towns have been undergoing a systematic overhauling.
Through the network of big thefts, and little thefts, pet.i.t larcenies and bank robberies, there has run one clear-cut burglarious specialty--a style of depredations noticeably similar in case after case; alike in 'design and execution,' and always baffling to the officers.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Bathurst telling the story.]
”I allude to a series of robberies of jewelry and plate, a succession of provoking thefts, monstrous, enough to be easily traced, but executed with such exceeding _finesse_ that, in no single instance, has the property been recovered, or the robbers run to earth.
”These fastidious thieves never took money in large amounts, only took plate when it was of the purest metal and least c.u.mbersome sort; and always aimed for the brightest, the purest, the costliest diamonds.
Diamonds indeed seemed their specialty.
”This gang has operated in such a gingerly, gentlemanly, mysterious manner, and has raided for diamonds so long and so successfully, that they have come to be called, among New York detectives, The Diamond Coterie, although no man knew whether they numbered two, or twenty.
”They could always recognize their handiwork, however, and whenever the news came that some lady in the city, or suburbs, had lost her diamonds, and that the thieves had made a 'clean job' of it, the officers said, 'that's the work of the Diamond Coterie.'
”I have been much abroad of late, but every time I came back to New York the Coterie had gathered fresh jewels into its treasure box, and no man had found a clue to the sly fellows.
”I began to feel interested in the clique and resolved to take a hand at them, at the first opportunity. That opportunity came, with the news of the great Wardour robbery, and I came down to W----.
”I saw enough in this robbery to interest me, for various reasons.
”I believed I could see distinctly the handiwork of the Diamond Coterie, and I saw another thing; it was the first piece of work I had known them to bungle. And they had bungled in this.
”I made some of my conclusions known to Miss Wardour and her friends, but I kept to myself the most important ones.
”The story of the chloroform, so carefully administered, was one of the things over which I pondered much; I borrowed the chloroform bottle and the piece of linen that had been used to apply the drug, and that night I accepted the hospitality proffered me by Sir Clifford. I took a wax impression of the vial, at his house, and I made an important discovery while there.
”Sir Clifford found me half famished and ordered his housekeeper to bring in a lunch. Not wis.h.i.+ng my ident.i.ty known, I pretended to be a patient; and just as my host was leaving the room, he tossed me a handkerchief, which he took from a side table, bidding me make myself a bandage to partially conceal my face.
”Now my eyes are trained to see much at a glance, and the moment they fell upon that bit of white linen they were riveted there.
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