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a: ki7 r.-· LBJIIUI Y a TUJATLŽ¶UI 0(ýMýQ an ýj s r 1ý?PýP ,9/,B/1AfRYRDAYlý/'P/1)' p SYNOPSIS. The story opens with a scream from Dorothy March in the opera box of Mrs. Missioner, a wealthy widow. It is oc casioned when Mrs. Missioner's necklace breaks, scattering the diamonds all over the floor. Curtis Griswold and Bruxton Sands, society men in love with Mrs. Mis sloner, gather up the gems. Grlswold steps on what is supposed to be the cele brated Maharanee and crushes it. A IHin Coo declares it was not the genuine. An txpert later pronounces all the stones substitutes for the original. One of the missing diamonds is found in the room of Elinor Holcomb, confidential cornpan Soil of Mrs. Missioner. She is arrested. notwithstanding Mrs. Missioner's belief Sn her innocence. Meantime, in an up town mansion, two Hindoos, who are in America to recover the Maharanee, dis Cuss the arrest. Detective Britz takes up the case. He asks the co-operation of Dr. Fitch, Ellnor's fiance, in running down the real cfiminal. Britz learns that duplicates of Mrs. Missioner's diamonds were made in Paris en the order of Ellnor Holcomb. While walking Britz is seized, bound.and gagged by Hindoos. He Is imprisoned in a deserted house, but makes his escape. Britz discovers an in sane diamond expert whom he believes was employed by either Sands of Gris wold to make counterfits of the Mission er gems. Griswold intimates that Sands is on the verge of failure. Two Hindoos burglarize the home of Sands and are 'captured by Britz. On one of them he finds a note signed by "Millicent" and ad dressed to "Curtis." Hrltz locates a wo -an named Millicent Delaroche. CHAPTER XX. Kananda's Mission. Kananda and the Swami, in the up town bachelor apartment whither they sped from the Fifth avenue ballroom, bent about a table on which were spread various diagrams. All, Mrs. Missioner's servant, stood at a re spectful distance. He wore a con cerned look that intimated he had been subjected to some pretty stiff questioning by his masters. The high caste Orientals paid little attention to him. They leaned over the table un til their heads almost .touched, study ing diligently the papers that lay upon it, occasionally following the lines with pencils, and pausing to make hurried calculations on the margins of the sheets. At length the Swami leaned back and gazed fixedly at the prince. "It is evident we're on the right track at last," he said. "Chunda and Gazim could not have done their work thoroughly." "They didn't do it at all, when it comes to that," answered the prince. "Instead of finding only a loose end of the thread, they ought to have un tangled the whole skein." "However," said the Swami, "this note shows my original suppositions were accurate. The Jewels were ta ken by the man who trod on the false diamond in oppa b x.", .: replied. "The question is, where are they now?' "The woman has them," returned the scholar. "Unless," sneered Nandy, "she is beating our enterprising clubman at his, own game. How do you know she hasn't sold them?" "This note-" "Oh, I know all about that," laughed the prince. "It is plain you have not given sufficient thought to the ways of these western women. If only you would take ,your head out of those esoteric clouds once in a while, and come to earth for a look'around, you wouldn't be quite so ingenuous." "But she says in this note she will have to sell some of the jewels," the Swaml persisted. "That certainly In dicates they are still in her posses sion." "On the surface it does," said Nandy. "But the woman when she wrote It could not have supposed it was to be read by anyone save Griswold." "How do you know she didn't in tend to deceive him?" asked Kananda. "'t's a good thing you chose the schol ar's life in early youth, my friend. As a society man, you'd make an ex ceedingly interesting, but distressing ly hopeless 'innocent abroad.'" Nandy had learned his philosophy of femininity in one of the swiftest sets of Cambridge town; in the most exclusive London clubs; in the Olymp lan gatherings of Heidelberg stu dents, and in the most fin-de-siecle circles of the gay capital. Whatever his theory, there was nothing hesi tant about it. He held in regard to the sex only the most settled opinm Ions. "It seems to me," sid the Swaml, "that your conclusions are pretty far fetched. But I bow to you, prince, in the matter of social law. Perhaps I know a little more about the higher mysteries, but when it comes to cotil ions, you take the baccalaureate de gree." There may have been a shade of irony in his word' If so, Kananda, for all his subtlety, failed to notice it. "I think you are clouding the ques tion needlessly when you take it for granted the woman who wrote this note is not true to Curtis Griswold's Interests." And the Swami tapped the table meditatively with the scrap of paper the man with the glistening eyes had filched from the camera board in Burlen's workshop. "Wouldn't it be a good deal more' di rect," said the Swami, "to continue to take it for granted shetls sincere-that she received the Jewels from Grls wold,. that the still has them, and that she will t~Ot part with any of them until the c!ubmani hss.refu~ed to com a wi th her request for mosh?' "Yes," Kananda admitted. "We'll work along that line for the present. Now, then, where's the woman?" He turned to All with a piercing look. The servant salaamed. "Excellency," said he, "we have verified the address heading the sec ond note. She is there." "It is well," said the prince curtly. "Go!" He turned to the Swami and, stand ing with one foot on his chair, raised his elbow to his knee and lowered his chin to his hand. "I believe we're close to the end of our quest," he mused. "I have a feel ing we must get the Maharanee to night, if we are to recover it at all. We have played a waiting game for many months, and it is time now to act. Are you prepared?" "I am prepared." "You will not stay your hand when it comes to the point?" The Swami did not answer. He sat with folded arms staring at the docu ments on the table. It was in an al tered voice that at length he spoke: "Prince," he said, "already the sa cred gem should be ruby red with the blood that has been spilled for it. There is something in the air of this strange land that makes it distaste ful to me-the thought of further bloodshed. Regain the Jewel we must; but I would it could be done without new sacrifice of life." An expression of demoniacal scorn overspread Kanada's features until he confronted the sage with the face of a gargoyle. "And the brethren?" he asked angri ly. "Can it be you have a thought for ,these western dogs when your own brothers of the faith are suffer ing the shame and pain in which we left them? Has your heart turned to water?" The Swami did not answer. Still with folded arms, he kept his gaze on the papers, his features set in quiet determination. "Are you afraid?" pursued the prince. "Does your soul shrink, your hand draw back, now that the ap pointed hour is nigh? Are you a true believer and master of the faith, or-" and he almost screamed, "an apos tate?" The Swami's copper face turned a darker shade. A flash of fury seared his eyes as he raised them to those of the prince. He lowered them again, however, and said, stolidly: "I am unable to conqiter the feeling that it cannot bfer, thegood ,o Ve Sor faters for possession of what, after all, is simply a stone. I know what it means to the chosen ones-to have that stone taken back to the Temple. I feel more keenly than you can feel the yearning they send across the seas for the success of our mission. But, prince, the Maharanee diamond, in its journey across the world, has been purged perhaps of the scarlet stains that were upon it. Can we not take it back in all its present purity? Are we not skilled enough in the ways of the East to recover our own without bearing death to the men of the West?" Kananda spurned the chair away and, gripping the table with both hands, leaned toward the scholar. "Listen to me, master!" he said savagely. "It was all these possibili ties my father anticipated when he sent me as your companion in this en terprise. He knew I was experienced in the wiles of these Western dogs. He was aware that in the English uni versity and the British capital, as well as in the cities of the European conti nent, I had mingled with them in their pastimes and in their homes that I had seen and hekrd their puer ile philosophy-that I had studied their womanish religions, and" that 1 had experienced all the soul poison by which their so-called civilization turns men to children. Can you guess the orders the Maharajah laid upon me when he bade me come with you?" The Swami still maintained a dig nified silence. "I will tell you," continued the prince. "My father said: 'The time may come, my son, when your friend, the great teacher, quails from that which is before him. If it comes, then when it comes, strike as swiftly and surely as you would strike to save your throne.' And I will strike, my master!" Kananda added grimly res olute. "If you flinch from any neces sity that arises in carrying out this task of ours, I will warn you once even as I am warning you now-and then, if you still stay your hand or seek to save the least of those who may stand between us and the sacred Jewel, by God I'll kill you!" The schdlar's imperturbability was proof against Kananda's violence of word and manner. The only sign he gave was a slight tightening of his fingers as they clasped his arms, and a lightning look straight into the eyes of the young man across the table. It was in a tone of perfect control that he replied: "Death, when it comes to myself, is the least of my concerns. You may strike when you will, Your Highness, I am a master of the faith, but, none the less, a servant of the throne. Myp life belongs to your royal father to do with it as he pleases. And since yOUea tell me that you are the long arm .or 7 1 " I -it "I Had No Thought of 4ing Up the Quest the Maharajah, it is at your disposal,: too." His calmness reminded the Prince of his own Oriental origin. The ve hemence he had acquired in western lands slipped from him like a loosened robe. In an instant, under his out ward seeming of an English or Amer Ican man-about-town, he repossessed the composure of his race. "Sorry," he said with a little forced laugh. "Rather bad, you know, to take things to heart that way, but this really is a serious proposition, and we mustq't fall down on it. As we are so near success, I will tell you it is a question not only of piety, but of politics. There is a dash'. f mild statecraft in it. The Maha has a pretty well-rooted idea permanence of his reign depen,ý;i restoring the diamond to'the Tenq ' The sage looked at him in tively. - . "Funny, I know," continued" "but, after all, it i ;the 'f century asd t a good deal of discontent in our part of the world, and my father is da of servant man." "I had no thought of giving up the quest," the Swami explained. "All I wished to do was to move more de liberately. I believe we can recover the stone without great violence, and I incline to these Westerner's views far enough to think it would be better for our religion, for your father, and for the brethren-to say nothing of ourselves--if we could do so. The easiest way sometimes really is the best" "I know all that," Insisted the Prince, "but we have not the time. This hunt is drawing close to a hot finish. You forget that we have the cleverest detective in New York-one of the cleverest in the world to beat. If he got the diamond, he would not recognize our claim to it for an instant. He'd turn it over to Mrs. Missioner, and we would not stand the ghost of a chance in any court of law. This is a case where we must help ourselves to our own. Besides, there is Griswold. How do we know he is not getting ready to flee with the jewels tonight? They may be in his possession, or he may have given them to the woman who signs herself Millicent." The Prince paused, framed .his flti gers tip to tip, and looked between them at the note as if peering into a crystal gazer's globe. "I am convinced the woman has the necklace," he went on. "Our men have had time to search Griswold's apartment from end to end, and the other men's, too. If they found the jewels in either place, we would know it by now. The whole question pre sents itself clearly enough to my mind. The. old French proverb holds good, cherches la femme." The Swami arose. As he did so, All re-entered the room with more salaams, and extended toward his master a silver tray on which lay a tiny scroll, written in minute hiero glyphs of the Orient. The scholar broke the seal and scanne4 the paper swiftly. A slight exclamation be' trayed that the information contained in the little scroll broke through even his magnificent reserve. His hand trembled a little as he handed the paper to the Prince. A hurried read ing sufficed to destroy all of that young man's recently gained calm. He fairly hutirled himself into a sealskin coat, and thrust his head into an opera hat. "Quick!" he said, 'we have not a mo ment to lose!" It would have been well for Britz if the young photographer had acquaint ed him promptly with the fact of the disappearance of the Millicent note. The detective's acute intelligenor Wouldl have ~zsen from that Incident need of even greater haste than he making in pushing his pursuit of Missioner diamond to a close. But len, conscience-stricken though he was loath to send the information e Headquarters man until he could e time to make further and more stive search of his shop, as well f the courtyard in the rear of the ding on which its windows gave. It dark in the court, and the imper light of his candle made his h so slow that by the time he sure the note was gone beyond ibility of its recovery, it was too for him to find Detective Brits at lice Headquarters. When his mes ger returned with the report that Central Office man had left his m, and that no one in the Mulberry t building knew where to find him, len became so alarmed that he stened to Headquarters to try to e up the hunt for Britz from that t. He was as unsuccessful as his , and be spent many anxious I the waiting room hoping for Stht'the negative had been jated, and he therefore had been able to send to Britz's office the hundred facsimiles of the "Curtis dear" missive his customer had ordered. But it was poor consolation when he recalled the earnestness with which the detective had enjoined upon him not to let the original leave his hands. Burlen was an exceedingly uncomfortable young man during all the time he awaited the sleuth's return. His discomfort did not decrease as the hours dragged by. But it would have been well for Britz to have that knowledge in re gird to the strange vanishment of the Griswold note, it would have been bet ter for Curtis Griswold if Dorothy Mcch had not become conscience stricken in respect of him that same evening. For little Miss March, being o% Puritan stock, as soon as she per suaded herself that she might have nade trouble for Mrs. Missioner's ad mirer by talking too freely to the bland man from Mulberry street in the cozy corner of the Forrest theater, resolved to repair the mischief as rap idly as possible. She, therefore, sent a ;ittle note to the clubman, asking thha he make it a point to see her in tlie'bourse of the evening; and in the note she gave him a list of the several ftietions she intended to take in. The ball Mrs. Missioner attended, and at which Griswold scored what he re girded as a distinct gain in parading the, wealthy widow before many of theirf acquaintances as a receptive re cipient of his attentions, was only one othoe affairs on Dorothy's list. Gris wild received the note too late to come up with Miss March before the tbai, so he decided to meet her at a 14r dance. That decision upset one o;hbis plans-the most important he hid formed in many months, although he did.not know its importance at the tlinie. It bad been his intention to go tron the Fifth Avenue ballroom to the HotIl Renaissance, and if he had not redvd the note from Miss March, he weald have done so even though he mpgbt have escorted Mrs. Missioner to het'home and passed a short time with her Ia the interval. orothy's request flattered the club. man's vanity so greatly, however, that heidid not hesitate to defer his visit to0the Renaissance in order to keep the Itteresting appointment the debu tante~; with more conscience than dis cie~ , made for him. The conse 4:urwas that by the time Gris w0o14 lntervitew with little Dorothy ll.hwas at an end, the hours had pau.dbeyond a point to which even .hiMsjt nulty could stretch conven tlitallty far enough to make it practl clfat for him to see Mrs. Delaroche !i jt was dancing abstractedly Vi Griswold found her. She was so ii~jiipt .to adJust the harm she felt - t . IA Ill I - I she had done him that she saw him c from her partner's shoulder before he I picked her out from a score of other i comely young women on the floor. C Miss March instantly wearied of the waltz, to the dismay of the youth a whose arm encircled her;-and who rather fancied himself as a dancer. I She lost no time in having herself es- s corted to a small conservatory, where t she dismissed her partner with scant ] ceremony, and where, a few moments I afterward, she was joined by Gris wold. Even then the debutante's unwitting tangling of the threads of Griswold's 4 fate might not have had such influence I upon his future if she had approached I her subject with directness. Had she told Griswold at once what she had 1 said to the detective concerning his I skill as a draughtsman, the clubman's suspicions would have been aroused, and he might have taken steps that 1 would have had a marked effect upon the development of the great Mission-. er mystery. But Dorothy was too flut tered, too prettily remorseful, to go straight to the heart of the subject; and in her innocent endeavor to post Griswold in respect of her chat with Britz without making him think she I was a gossiping little busybody, she protracted her interview with the club man through so many dances that when it ended Griswold persuaded him. self the morning would be ample time to do that which he felt must be done to avert the probable consequences of Dorothy's girlish frankness., His van ity again played its part, too, for when he had thanked little Miss March for what he pleased to consider her inter est in him, and when Dorothy, having signally failed to impress upon him the impersonal nature of her conscience stroke, found herself in a further flut ter of bewilderment, Curtis Griswold proceeded to parade her up and down the dancing floor as effectively as he had shown off the rich and beautiful widow in the larger ballroom a little farther up the avenue. Griswold prided himself on his versatility. He argued that it was as easy for him, as he would have expressed it to his 1 club intimates, "to put a filly through r her paces" as it had been to advertise the fact before the whole ballroom a that Doris Missioner, the fastidious > beauty and worshiped possessor of t many millions, apparently was on the a point of accepting him as her second a matrimonial venture. r All of which resulted in Mriswold'a ) Doirothy _to'her home in an automaobile 1 otherwise occupied only by a satisfae 3 torily self-centered chaperon; and in 1 his waste of further time at one of his a clubs after parting with Miss March and her duenna-a waste of hours any 3 one of which might have been made as I useful to him as a year of ordinary ' time. He was further disposed to pro. s crastinate in this crucial moment by the success of the Headquarters man I in throwing all suspected persons off 1 their guard by keeping Elinor Hol comb in the Tombs. Through all his work on the Missioner case, Brits had been beset with requests from Mrs. 3 Missioner, Sands and other friends of the widow's secretary, to permit them r to give bail for her. Sands and Mrs. - Missioner were particularly insistent Sin their desire to see Elinor at liberty. SFitch, though normally his wish to see Shis flancpe free must have been Sstronger than that of anyone else, was - partly reconciled to her protracted im Sprisonment by the detective's frequent (assurance of her ultimate vindication. Moreover, the doctor, in consequence - of his work on the case with Brits, had tdirect knowledge of the importance Sthat the suspicions of others should Snot be alarmed. He had been with the Sdetective when the card of Bruxton I Sands was discovered in the posses sion of the old curiosity shop man; he Sknew of the note addressed to "Curtis dear" and signed "Millicent," and also of the desperate attempts made by the Hindoos to find the diamonds. So Fitch did not bother the sleuth as much as did other friends of Elinor's, and it was well; for Britz several times was at his wits' ends to dissuade Mrs. Mis sioner and Sands from going to the District Attorney and offering a heavy security for Miss Holcomb's appear ance in the trial court. However, Britz had held them off, and it fol lowed that Griswold nursed the delu sion that Elinor and Fitch and Sands were suspected so strongly by the Central Office men that no search for evidence against anybody else was in progress. Donnelly and Carson also had fostered that misconception on the clubman's part by their unabated ac tivity in hunting proofs of the girl sec retary's guilt. Those worthies spent every day of their work on the case in tracing Elinor's past, and in efforts to couple Fitch with her suspicious theft of the jewels. Furtherihore, be ing the sort of men who would rather win credit for detective work than do anything quietly in the way of real detection of crime or criminals, they could not refrain from expressing their belief in Elinor's dishonesty at every turn. They talked liberally to the sea soned reporters in the newspaper rookeries opposite Police Headquar ters, to the newspaper men in the poa lice stations, and the magistrates' courts, and to the several star repor ters of the more enterprising papers who had been assigned especially on the case. Every word they uttered hinged on their evidence in the return of a verdict against Miss Holcomb, and, with the exception of two or three unusually sapient newspaper men who discounted the opinions of - Donnelly and Carson because they knew Brits was doing the real work, and because Britz had as yet made no revelations. the reporters quoted them at great length. Therefore, practically all the New York papers published stories in which Elinor loJocomblrvat tried, convicted, and senanced iiiadvance of her at' raignment for the theft of the Missioa er necklace. Over-enterprising Sunday 1 papers went so far as to, publish page e stories, purporting to be psychological studies of the mental bent that made the trusted secretary of a multimil lionaire society woman, with a com fortable career in expectation, throw all chances to the winds by yielding to a momentary feminine impulse to possess herself of glittering, baubles hh Iere is. re ngot e miitude, and m ig'i have been worth publishing had they been based on either psychoolgy or ° truth. They had their effect on Gris. s wold, though, and a consequence of h that fact was that the clubman's mind was at ease so far as the possibility s that he would be connected with the v disappearance of the gems was con b cerned. V So Griswold did not go to the Renaissance that ni.ht, nor did he die r turb Mrs. Delaroche with a telephone message, although an instrument stood s on a convenient desk in her boudoir, i and an extension wire connected it with a duplicate device that rested on a little Russian table beside her bed. It would have been the work of a moment for Oriswold to get into t conversational touch with Mrs. Dela roche, and he would have had the ex cuse of replying to her urgent and somewhat petulant note-if he had received it; unfortunately for him, he never had seen that missive. Kana-' da's guess in regard to the activity of his followers, Chunda and Gazim, was accurate, for these adroit Orientals had stolen the missing note from Gris wold's apartment before it came un I der the obseivation of "Curtis dear," to whom it was addressed. Altogetbh er, once more, as he would have ex' pressed it, things were noJ "breaking for the suave secretary of the Iroquois Trust Company. (TO BE CONTINUED.) ýý ý. Strategy of Cecil Rhodes How He Got Ahead of His Brother In Matter of Boiled Shirt. The late Sir William Butler, in his autobiography, which has just been published posthumously, tells the fol lowing story of Cecil Rhodes, which Cecil's brother, Frank Rhodes, told him: "My brother," said Frank Rhodes, "Is a strange man. We were young chaps together, and there wasn't too much money or- too many things among us. "One day Cecil came and asked me to let him have one of my shirts, as he wanted to go to an evening party in London. Well, I wanted the shirt myself that evening and I told him he couldn't have it. He said nothing, but I knew he didn't like losing a chance, so I watched him. "I saw him off to the train. He had neither. the shirt oe him nor had he bag and baggage with him; but I thought that I'd go to the drawer and just make sure of my shirt. It was gone! Cecil came back that night. "Well, Cecil,' I said, 'you won oves that shirt of mine; but just tell me how you did it, for it wasn't on you when .you left here and you had no parcel with you. What did you do with it?' "He chuckled a little and said, dry. y1, 'I put it on under the old oust Now, that's CeciL' Surfeited. "Can't k persuade you to subscrlbe for a copy of our latest book on north polar exploration?" "No, sir; you couldn't persuade me to take It as a sift. I spent four years carrying mails In North Dakota, two years driving a cab In Minneapolis, and I've just escaped from Duluth Got a book on hunting in central A rlear'