the same manner as
the upper ones. Of the twelve jewels eight had been now tampered with
in this singular fashion. The setting of the lower four was neat and
smooth. The others jagged and irregular.

"Have the stones been altered?" I asked.

"No, I am certain that these upper four are the same which the expert
pronounced to be genuine, for I observed yesterday that little
discoloration on the edge of the emerald. Since they have not
extracted the upper stones, there is no reason to think the lower have
been transposed. You say that you heard nothing, Simpson?"

"No, sir," the commissionaire answered. "But when I made my round
after daylight I had a special look at these stones, and I saw at once
that someone had been meddling with them. Then I called you, sir, and
told you. I was backwards and forwards all night, and I never saw a
soul or heard a sound."

"Come up and have some breakfast with me," said Mortimer, and he took
me into his own chambers.--"Now, what DO you think of this, Jackson?"
he asked.

"It is the most objectless, futile, idiotic business that ever I heard
of. It can only be the work of a monomaniac."

"Can you put forward any theory?"

A curious idea came into my head. "This object is a Jewish relic of
great antiquity and sanctity," said I. "How about the anti-Semitic
movement? Could one conceive that a fanatic of that way of thinking
might desecrate----"

"No, no, no!" cried Mortimer. "That will never do! Such a man might
push his lunacy to the length of destroying a Jewish relic, but why on
earth should he nibble round every stone so carefully that he can only
do four stones in a night? We must have a better solution than that,
and we must find it for ourselves, for I do not think that our
inspector is likely to help us. First of all, what do you think of
Simpson, the porter?"

"Have you any reason to suspect him?"

"Only that he is the one person on the premises."

"But why should he indulge in such wanton destruction? Nothing has
been taken away. He has no motive."

"Mania?"

"No, I will swear to his sanity."

"Have you any other theory?"

"Well, yourself, for example. You are not a somnambulist, by any
chance?"

"Nothing of the sort, I assure you."

"Then I give it up."

"But I don't--and I have a plan by which we will make it all clear."

"To visit Professor Andreas?"

"No, we shall find our solution nearer than Scotland. I will tell you
what we s