that it seemed to me to point to him as one who had a guilty knowledge.
I spent much time following the clues that turned up in that connection,
all of which however was not entirely misspent, for I discovered the
true name of the dead woman to be Rose Montalbon, and that aided me
greatly in my later work. At last, then, I abandoned the idea that Mr.
Mitchel was guilty and frankly admitted this. He then told me the name
of the jewelry firm from which the buttons had been ordered, and I went
across the Atlantic.

"The button which I had was imperfect. This was my starting-point.
Through letters of introduction which Mr. Mitchel gave me, I succeeded
in obtaining the assistance of the jewellers. They gave me the name of
the man who had carved the cameos for them, but they knew nothing of the
imperfect button. They had also lost track of the cameo-cutter. It took
me over a month to trace that man, even with the aid of the Paris
police. Finally I found him, and he told me that he had sold the button
to a friend. This friend I found after some delay, and he admitted that
he had once had the button, but that he had given it to a woman. More
time was lost in discovering this woman, but when I did she too
recognized the button and said that it had been stolen from her by
another woman, whom she described as a Creole. Thus at last I got on the
track of the Montalbon, for that was the name which she used in France.
Under this name it was easier to follow her. I soon learned that she had
a companion, by the name of Jean Molitaire. I then easily found that
Molitaire had been in the employ of the Paris jewellers as
shipping-clerk. It was he who had written the two descriptions of the
jewels, one of which I found among the woman's effects, and the other in
Mr. Mitchel's possession. This was a suspicious circumstance, but we
know now how it was that the handwriting matched, a fact which had
puzzled me greatly. It seems that Mr. Mitchel at one time had bought
some valuable papers from the Montalbon woman, paying her with
diamonds, and recommending her to his Paris jewellers to dispose of
them."

"That," said Mr. Mitchel, "was partly to get her out of this country,
and partly to recover the diamonds, which I did, through the dealer."

"So he told me. It was when she received the money from them that she
noticed Molitaire. It was not long after that the second set of jewels
were sold to Mr. Mitchel. This clerk of course knew of the tr