I laughed, and said:

"Then if not, why may I not be permitted to look inside your husband's family heirloom?"

She was silent for a moment. My question nonplussed her. I was, I confess, bitter because of the deliberate attempt to kill me.

"I will not allow any stranger to tamper with our Silver Spider!" she cried resentfully.

"Very well. Then I shall take my own course, and I shall inform your husband that you stole the Princess's pearls, that your banker friend acts as intermediary in your clever thefts, and that Hauser disposes of the jewels in Amsterdam."

"I--I----" she gasped.

"I know everything," I said, while she looked around bewildered. "I know that you are playing a crooked game even with those who played straight with you before your marriage to the Marchese. He is in ignorance of your past. But I know it. Listen!" and I paused and looked straight into her eyes.

"You were a widow with a young daughter before you married the Marchese. That was nine years ago. To him you pa.s.sed yourself off as the widow of an Italian advocate named Terroni, of Perugia; but you were not. You are Austrian. Your name is Frieda Hoheisel, and you were an adventuress and a thief! 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. Now," I added, "I will take the Princess's necklace from the Silver Spider and you will, in my presence, pack it up and address it to her. I will post it."

"Never! I risked too much to get it!" she cried, her face aflame.

"Very well. Then within an hour your husband and the police will know the truth. Remember, I have been suspected of making inquiries by your friends and have very nearly lost my life in consequence."

"But--oh! I can't----"

"You shall, woman!" I thundered. "You shall give back those stolen pearls!"

And crossing to the table whereon stood the Silver Spider, I opened it, and there within reposed the pearls in a place that n.o.body would suspect.

I stood over her while she packed them into a common cardboard box and addressed them to the Princess in Rome. At first she demurred about her handwriting, but I insisted. I intended her to take the risk--just as I had taken a risk.

And, further, I compelled her to order her car, and we drove to the General Post Office in Naples, where I saw that she registered the valuable packet.

The anonymous return of the pearls was a nine days' wonder throughout Italy; but the Marchesa never knew how I had obtained my information, and never dreamed that I had come to her upon a mission of inquiry from the one person in all the world whom she feared, the man in whose clutches she had been for years--the mysterious "Golden Face."

When, with Lola and Madame, I returned home a week later and explained the whole of my adventures, Rayne sat for a few moments silent. Then, as I looked, I saw vengeance written upon his face.

"I suspected that she was playing me false, and selling stuff in secret through that fellow Zuccari! She is carrying on the business by herself. I now have proof of it--and I shall take my own steps! You will see!"

He did--and a month later the Marchesa Romanelli was arrested and sent to prison for the theft of a pair of diamond earrings belonging to a fellow-guest staying at one of the great palaces of Florence.

It was a scandal that Italy is not likely to easily forget.

CHAPTER XIII

ABDUL HAMID'S JEWELS

Rudolph Rayne, though the ruler of aristocratic Crookdom, was sometimes most sympathetic and generous towards lovers.

The following well ill.u.s.trates his strange abnormal personality and complex nature:

One night I chanced to enter his bedroom at Half Moon Street, when I found him looking critically through a quant.i.ty of the most magnificent sparkling gems my eyes had ever seen. Some were set as pendants, brooches, and earrings, while others--great rubies and emeralds of immense value--were uncut.

As I entered he put his hands over them in distinct annoyance. Then, a few seconds later, removed them, saying with a queer laugh:

"A nice little lot this, eh? One of the very finest collections I've seen."

On the table lay a pair of jewelers' tweezers and a magnifying gla.s.s, therefore it was apparent that, as a connoisseur of gems, he had been estimating their value.

"By Jove!" I exclaimed. "They certainly are magnificent! Whose are they?"

"They once belonged to the dead Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey," he replied; "but at present they belong to me!" He laughed grimly.

Inwardly I wondered by what means the priceless gems had fallen into his hands. He read my thoughts at once, for he said:

"You are curious, of course, as to how I became possessed of them.

Naturally. Well, Hargreave, it's a very funny story and concerns a real good fellow and, incidentally, a very pretty girl. Take a cigar, sit down, and I'll tell you frankly all about it--only, of course, not a word of the facts will ever pa.s.s your lips--not to Lola, or to anybody else. Your lips are sealed."

"I promise," I said, selecting one of his choice cigars and lighting it, my curiosity aroused.

"Then listen," he said, "and I'll tell you the whole facts, as far as I've been able to gather them."

What he recounted was certainly romantic, though a little involved, for he was not a very good _raconteur_. However, in setting down this curious story--a story which shows that he was not altogether bad, and was a sportsman after all--I have rearranged his words in narrative form, so that readers of these curious adventures may fully understand.

"How horribly glum you are to-night, dear! What's the matter? Are you sad that we should meet here--in Paris?" asked a pretty girl.

"Glum!" echoed the smooth-haired young man in the perfectly fitting dinner-jacket and black tie. "I really didn't know that I looked glum," and then, straightening himself, he looked across the _table a deux_ in the gay Restaurant Volnay at the handsome, dark-haired, exquisitely dressed girl who sat before him with her elbows on the table.

"Yes, you really are jolly glum, my dear Old Thing. You looked a moment ago as serious as though you were going to a funeral," declared the girl. "The war is over, you are prospering immensely--so what on earth causes you to worry?"

"I'm not worrying, dearest, I a.s.sure you," he replied with a forced smile, but her keen woman's intuition told her that her lover was not himself, and that his mind was full of some very keen anxiety.

Charles Otley had taken her to a most amusing play at the Palais-Royal, a comedy which had kept the house in roars of laughter all the evening, and now, as they sat at supper, she saw that his spirits had fallen to a very low ebb. This puzzled her greatly.

Peggy Urquhart, daughter of Sir Polworth Urquhart, of the Colonial Service, who until the Armistice had held a high official appointment at Hong Kong, was one of the smartest and prettiest young women in London Society. She was twenty-two, a thorough-going out-of-door girl who looked slightly older than she really was. Her father had retired as soon as war was over, and they had come to England. By reason of her mother being the daughter of the Earl of Carringford, she had soon found herself a popular figure in a mad, go-ahead post-war set.

She had known Charlie Otley soon after she had left Roedene--long before they had gone out to Hong Kong--and now they were back they were lovers in secret.

Charlie, who had been a motor engineer before he "joined up" in the war and got his D.S.O. and his rank as captain, had done splendidly.

On being demobilized he had returned to his old profession, taking the managership of a very well-known Bond Street firm.

The directors, finding in Otley a man who knew his business, whose persuasive powers induced many persons to purchase cars, and whose fearless tests at Brooklands were paragraphed in the daily newspapers, treated him most generously and left everything, even many of their financial affairs, in his hands.

Lady Urquhart was, however, an ambitious woman. She inherited all the exclusiveness of the Carringfords, and she was actively scheming to marry Peggy to Cis Eastwood, the heir to the estates of old Lord Drumone. It was the old story of the ambitious mother. Peggy knew this, and, smiling within herself, had pledged her love to Charlie.

Hence, with the lat.i.tude allowed to a girl nowadays, she went about a good deal with him in London--to the Emba.s.sy, the Grafton, the Diplomats, and several of the smartest dance-clubs, of which both were members.