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A notorious jewel-thief named Hersleton, alias Hugh Martyn, an American, had been arrested at a hotel at Brighton, and had been charged at Bow Street with the murderous attack upon the night watchman at the Chartered Bank of Liberia, his finger-prints, taken some years before, coinciding exactly with those left at the bank.
You married a certain man who is to-day in a monastery at Signa in the Val d'Arno, and though you pose as the loving wife of one of Italy's premier admirals, you are a noted jewel-thief, and commit these robberies in order to supply your bogus banker friend Zuccari with funds.
He had, of course, no proof that Benton and Molly were members of the great criminal organization. He only knew that Benton had been his late father's closest friend. He discussed the situation with the girl jewel-thief as they walked along the busy Carrera de San Jeronimo wherein are the best shops in Madrid, to the great Plaza de Canovas in the leafy Prado.
"Well," he said confidentially, "Isler, the commissary of police, who is now at Berne, once pointed him out to me and said he was a friend, and believed to be one of the accomplices, of Ferdinando Morosini, the notorious jewel-thief who was caught in Milan six months ago and sent to fifteen years at Gorgona." At the mention of jewel theft I at once pricked up my ears.
But, you see, Detective-Sergeant Rodwell here, chanced to see him come out of the shop, and, recognising him as the jewel-thief we've wanted for months past, followed his cab down to Charing Cross Station, and there arrested him and took him to Bow Street." I stood utterly dumbfounded at this sudden ending of what I had believed would be an ideal engagement.
One fact is plain, that you, like myself, are an agent of the man of abnormal brain known as 'The Golden Face, but I tell you I refuse to become a jewel-thief." "Very well, if that is your irrevocable decision I will return to-morrow and report," he answered in very good English, though he was typically Italian. "But I warn you that mischief is meant if you do not obey. Duperré told me so.
Only poor people and fools do that." The car had again undergone a transformation. With a new racing-body, built in Northampton, and painted dead white picked out with gilt, no one would have recognised it as the car which had carried away the clever jewel-thief from Bond Street. Since the adventure at Leghorn I had seen nothing of La Belle Valentine.
But go back to the hotel first, so as to disarm suspicion. When you are safe, wire to the address in the Tottenham Court Road. So long." And without another word the well-dressed jewel-thief turned on his heels, and disappeared in the darkness of the leafy avenue. My feelings were the reverse of happy as I made my way back to the Europäischer Hof.
Petersburg, for New York; the arrest of the notorious jewel-thief, Carl Reichsmann; the discovery of the opal and diamond necklace upon him; the restoration of it to to the brain failed for a moment then with a loud cry of delight, which roused me, I pronounced the words; to Lady Hardon, of 202A, Berkeley Square, London.
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