to this day. Suffice it to say that we found indisputable evidence of a raid upon the vault; and discovered that the necklace had been torn from the body of the woman. When nothing more was to be learnt, I took my friend back to Paris. There I found a letter from the office of Paris et Londres saying that Galimard was at Dieppe but would be with us in the evening.

The mystery had now taken such hold of me that I could not rest. Brewer, whose calm was rather dangerous than reassuring, seemed strangely lethargic when he reached his rooms, and began to doze in his arm-chair. This was the best thing he could have done; but I had no intention of dozing myself;[ 45] and when I had wormed from him the address of the shop where the sham necklace had been purchased—it proved to be in the Rue Stockholm—I took a fiacre at once and left him to his dreaming. The place was a poor one, though the taste of a Frenchman was apparent in the display and arrangement of the few jewels, bronzes, and pictures which were the stock-in-trade of the dealer. He himself was a lifeless creature, who listened to me with great patience, and appeared to be completely astounded when I told him that I desired to have an interview with the vendor of the necklace and the green diamonds.

[ 45]

"You could not have come at a more fortunate moment," said he, "the stones were pretty, I confess and I fear to have sold them for much less than they were worth; but my client will be here in half an hour for his money, and if you come at that time you can meet him."

This was positive and altogether unlooked-for luck. I spent the thirty minutes' interval in a neighboring café, and was back at his shop as the clocks were striking seven. His customer was already there; a man short and thick in figure, with a characteristic French low hat stuck on the side of his head; and an old black cutaway coat which was conspicuously English. He wore gaiters, too—a strange sight in Paris; and carried under his arm a rattan cane which was quite ridiculously short. When he turned his head I saw that his hair was cropped quite close, and that he had a great scar down one side of his face, which gave him a hideous appearance.[ 46] Yet he could not have been twenty-five years of age; and he was one of the gayest customers I have ever met.

[ 46]

"Oh," he said, looking me up and down critically, and with a perky cock of his head, "you're the cove that wants to speak to me about the sparklers, are you? and a damned well-dressed cove, too. I thought you 

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