Part 8 (1/2)

”When you told me, Mr. Latham, that the gripsack had contained diamonds when Mr. Wynne left here I knew instantly how he got rid of them. He transferred them to some person in the cab, in accordance with a carefully prearranged plan. That person was a woman!”

”A woman!” Mr. Latham repeated, as if startled.

”Dere iss alvays wimmins in id,” remarked Mr. Schultze philosophically. ”Go on.”

Mr. Birnes was not at all backward about detailing the persistence and skill it had required on his part to establish this fact; and he went on at length to acquaint them with the search that had been made by a dozen of his men to find a trace of the woman from the time she climbed the elevated stairs at Fifty-eighth Street. He admitted that the quest for her had thus far been fruitless, a.s.suring them at the same time that it would go steadily on, for the present at least.

”And now, Mr. Latham,” he went on, and inadvertently he glanced at Mr. Czenki, ”I have been hampered, of course, by the fact that you have not taken me completely into your confidence in this matter. I mean,” he added hastily, ”that beyond a mere hint of their value I know nothing whatever about the diamonds which Mr. Wynne had in the gripsack. I gathered, however, that they were worth a large sum of money--perhaps, even a million dollars?”

”Yah, a million dollars ad leasd,” remarked Mr. Schultze grimly.

”Thank you,” and the detective smiled shrewdly. ”Your instructions were to find where he got them. If there had been a theft of a million dollars' worth of diamonds anywhere in this world, I would have known it; so I took steps to examine the Custom House records of this and other cities to see if there had been an unusual s.h.i.+pment to Mr. Wynne, or to any one else outside of the diamond dealers, thinking this might give me a clew.”

”And what was the result?” demanded Mr. Latham quickly.

”My agents have covered all the Atlantic ports and they did not come in through the Custom House,” replied Mr. Birnes. ”I have not heard from the western agents as yet, but my opinion is--is that they were perhaps smuggled in. Smuggling, after all, is simple with the thousands of miles of unguarded coasts of this country. I don't know this, of course; I advance it merely as a possibility.”

Mr. Latham turned to Mr. Schultze and Mr. Czenki with a triumphant smile. Diamonds in meteors! Tommyrot!

”Of course,” the detective resumed, ”the whole investigation centers about this man Wynne. He has been under the eyes of my agents as no other man ever was, and in spite of this has been able to keep in correspondence with his accomplices. And, gentlemen, he has done it not through the mails, not over the telephone, not by telegraph, and yet he has done it.”

”By wireless, perhaps?” suggested Mr. Czenki. It was the first time he had spoken, and the detective took occasion then and there to stare at him frankly.

”And not by wireless,” he said at last. ”He sends and receives messages from the roof of his house in Thirty-seventh Street by homing pigeons!”

”Some more fandastics, eh, Laadham?” Mr. Schultze taunted. ”Some more chimericals?”

”I demonstrate this much by the close watch I have kept of Mr. Wynne,”

the detective went on, there being no response to his questioning look at Mr. Schultze. ”One of my agents, stationed on the roof of the house adjoining Mr. Wynne's” (it was the maid-servant next door) ”has, on at least one occasion, seen him remove a tissue-paper strip from a carrier pigeon's leg and read what was written on it, after which he kissed it, gentlemen, kissed it; then he destroyed it. What did it mean? It means that that particular message was from the girl to whom he transferred the diamonds in the cab, and that he is madly in love with her.”

”Oh, dese wimmins! I dell you!” commented Mr. Schultze.

There was a little pause, then Mr. Birnes continued impressively:

”This correspondence is of no consequence in itself, of course. But it gives us this: Carrier pigeons will only fly home, so if Mr.

Wynne received a message by pigeon it means that at some time, within a week say, he has s.h.i.+pped that pigeon and perhaps others from the house in Thirty-seventh Street to that person who sent him the message. If he sends messages to that person it means that he has received a pigeon or pigeons from that person within a week. And how were these pigeons s.h.i.+pped? In all probability, by express. So, gentlemen, you see there ought to be a record in the express offices, which would give us the home town, even the name and address, of the person who now has the diamonds in his or her keeping. Is that clear to all of you?”

”It is perfectly clear,” commented Mr. Laadham admiringly, while the German nodded his head in approval.

”And that is the clew we are working on at the moment,” the detective added. ”Three of my men are now searching the records of all the express companies in the city--and there are a great many--for the pigeon s.h.i.+pments. If, as seems probable, this clew develops, it may be that we can place our hands on the diamonds within a few days.”

”I don'd d'ink I vould yust blace my hands on dem,” Mr. Schultze advised. ”Dey are his diamonds, you know, und your hands might ged in drouble.”

”I mean figuratively, of course,” the detective amended.

He stopped and drummed on his stiff hat with his fingers. Again he glanced at the impa.s.sive face of Mr. Czenki with keen, questioning eyes; and for one bare instant it seemed as if he were trying to bring his memory to his aid.

”I've found out all about this man Wynne,” he supplemented after a moment, ”but nothing in his record seems to have any bearing on this case. He is an orphan. His mother was a Van Cortlandt of old Dutch stock, and his father was a merchant downtown. He left a few thousands to the son, and the son is now in business for himself with an office in lower Broad Street. He is an importer of brown sugar.”