'Harold,' she would say, 'do you think I'm a fool? If I place the
Crimson Diamond in any safe-deposit vault in New York, somebody will
steal it, sooner or later.' Then she would nibble a sprig of catnip
and peer cunningly at me. I loathed the odor of catnip and she knew
it. I also loathed cats. This also she knew, and of course surrounded
herself with a dozen. Poor old lady! One day she was found dead in her
bed in her apartments at the Waldorf. The doctor said she died from
natural causes. The only other occupant of her sleeping-room was a
cat. The cat fled when we broke open the door, and I heard that she
was received and cherished by some eccentric people in a neighboring
apartment.

"Now, although my great-aunt's death was due to purely natural causes,
there was one very startling and disagreeable feature of the case. The
velvet bag containing the Crimson Diamond had disappeared. Every inch
of the apartment was searched, the floors torn up, the walls
dismantled, but the Crimson Diamond had vanished. Chief of Police
Conlon detailed four of his best men on the case, and, as I had
nothing better to do, I enrolled myself as a volunteer. I also offered
$25,000 reward for the recovery of the gem. All New York was agog.

"The case seemed hopeless enough, although there were five of us after
the thief. McFarlane was in London, and had been for a month, but
Scotland Yard could give him no help, and the last I heard of him he
was roaming through Surrey after a man with a white spot in his hair.
Harrison had gone to Paris. He kept writing me that clews were plenty
and the scent hot, but as Dennet, in Berlin, and Clancy, in Vienna,
wrote me the same thing, I began to doubt these gentlemen's ability.

"'You say,' I answered Harrison, 'that the fellow is a Frenchman, and
that he is now concealed in Paris; but Dennet writes me by the same
mail that the thief is undoubtedly a German, and was seen yesterday in
Berlin. To-day I received a letter from Clancy, assuring me that
Vienna holds the culprit, and that he is an Austrian from Trieste.
Now, for Heaven's sake,' I ended, 'let me alone and stop writing me
letters until you have something to write about.'

"The night-clerk at the Waldorf had furnished us with our first clew.
On the night of my aunt's death he had seen a tall, grave-faced man
hurriedly leave the hotel. As the man passed the desk he removed his
hat and mopped his forehead, and the night-clerk noticed that in the
m