re large and valuable; in the second place, they're
well known--every dealer has heard of the Vandrift riviere, and seen
pictures of the shape of them. They're marked gems, so to speak. No,
he played a better game--took a couple of them off, and offered them
to the only one person on earth who was likely to buy them without
suspicion. He came here, meaning to work this very trick; he had
the links made right to the shape beforehand, and then he stole the
stones and slipped them into their places. It's a wonderfully clever
trick. Upon my soul, I almost admire the fellow."

For Charles is a business man himself, and can appreciate business
capacity in others.

How Colonel Clay came to know about that necklet, and to appropriate
two of the stones, we only discovered much later. I will not here
anticipate that disclosure. One thing at a time is a good rule in
life. For the moment he succeeded in baffling us altogether.

However, we followed him on to Paris, telegraphing beforehand to the
Bank of France to stop the notes. It was all in vain. They had been
cashed within half an hour of my paying them. The curate and his
wife, we found, quitted the Hotel des Deux Mondes for parts unknown
that same afternoon. And, as usual with Colonel Clay, they vanished
into space, leaving no clue behind them. In other words, they
changed their disguise, no doubt, and reappeared somewhere else that
night in altered characters. At any rate, no such person as the
Reverend Richard Peploe Brabazon was ever afterwards heard of--and,
for the matter of that, no such village exists as Empingham,
Northumberland.

We communicated the matter to the Parisian police. They were _most_
unsympathetic. "It is no doubt Colonel Clay," said the official
whom we saw; "but you seem to have little just ground of complaint
against him. As far as I can see, messieurs, there is not much to
choose between you. You, Monsieur le Chevalier, desired to buy
diamonds at the price of paste. You, madame, feared you had bought
paste at the price of diamonds. You, monsieur the secretary, tried
to get the stones from an unsuspecting person for half their value.
He took you all in, that brave Colonel Caoutchouc--it was diamond
cut diamond."

Which was true, no doubt, but by no means consoling.

We returned to the Grand Hotel. Charles was fuming with indignation.
"This is really too much," he exclaimed. "What an audacious rascal!
But he will never again take me in, my dear