The Greatest Crime Novels of Frank L. Packard (14 Titles in One Edition). Frank L. Packard

then upon the table there lay a number of jewellers' cases in both plush and leather, and a dozen or more little chamois bags. Laroque was rapidly opening and shutting the cases, and as he did so the contents of each in its turn, pendants, brooches, ornaments of many designs, all of them set with diamonds, seemed to leap thirstily at the light and hail it with eager scintillating flashes before the covers could be shut down upon them again.

      “That all that's in there?” demanded Laroque.

      “Yes,” breathed the old man. “Yes”—he rubbed his hands rapaciously together—“all except the tray he uses to paw 'em over on.”

      “That's thoughtful of him!” grunted Gentleman Laroque. “Let's have it.”

      From the bottom of the safe the Minister pulled out and laid upon the table an oblong, plush-covered tray with raised edges.

      “Now!” grunted Laroque again. “Open the bags, and dump the whities into the tray.”

      Jimmie Dale drew in his breath. It seemed as though little rivers of fire had begun to stream from the mouths of the bags. The men were working fast now; Laroque with almost cynical composure; the old man, wrought up, clumsy in his greed, his hands trembling, mumbling, crooning to himself.

      Diamonds, unset stones, of all sizes, poured into the tray; they filled it, heaped it to its edges. An inch deep they lay. It was a fortune whose value Jimmie Dale did not dare attempt to compute—a pool of immortal beauty, restless with vitality, flashing, limpid, shifting, iridescent. Here the facet of a stone struck back at the light, fiery, passionate in its challenge; there another lay, soft in its radiance, glowing, pulsing, breathing, alive.

      Laroque drew a cloth bag from his pocket and unfolded it. He ran his finger through the stones, separating them into two almost equal portions; the portion nearer him he began to put into his little sack.

      “Slip the rest of them into the chamois bags again, and put 'em back in the safe,” he directed tersely. “Divide 'em amongst the bags as equally as you can. And those gew-gaws in the cases, too, of course—put them back. We can't afford to monkey with anything but the unset stones; any one of those ornaments might happen to be just the one that somebody in the family would remember—and miss.”

      But now the Minister hesitated. The hectic colour had fled from his cheeks, only to enhance, it seemed, the fever fire in his eyes; the muscles of his face twitched; his hands, trembling before, shook now as with the ague.

      “All!” he whispered fiercely, and touched his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Look at 'em! My God, look at 'em! We've got 'em all here! Take 'em! Take 'em! Let's take 'em all—all the unset stones anyhow! I'll make my get-away with you. Can't we take 'em all?”

      Gentleman Laroque continued his work without looking up.

      “I've never been in Sing Sing,” he said, with a thin smile. “That's why I came here myself to-night. I couldn't trust you or anybody else, except Hunchback Joe, to stand up against the temptation of making the bum play that would land us there. All! That's what Sing Sing is full of! You poor fool, aren't you satisfied with a sure thing when the sure thing is a fortune? That's what the half we're taking is—a fortune. And nobody to know that any job has been pulled; and Shiftel with a free hand to dispose of the stones at market value! Would you rather pinch them all, make it next to impossible to sell them for anything like what they're worth, and on top of that dodge the police for the rest of your life? You'd have a rosy chance making your get-away—Mr. Jathan Lane's vanishing butler, alias the Minister, alias Patrick Denton, late of Sing Sing!” His voice hardened suddenly. “As I said, I've never been in Sing Sing. Hurry up, now! Put the rest of those stones and all the ornaments back in the safe.”

      The old man swept his hand across his eyes.

      “Sure,” he said thickly; “you're right, and I——” A spasm of pain contorted his features, and he clutched at his side and staggered; but as Laroque, with a sharp exclamation, reached out a steadying hand, the Minister shook his head. “I'm all right,” he said—and began to return the diamonds Laroque had left on the tray to the little chamois bags.

      A strange smile crossed Jimmie Dale's lips. Laroque was right—quite right. And from Laroque's standpoint—safe. The scene of the two men at work there beyond the portière seemed suddenly to shift, and he, Jimmie Dale, was again one of that afternoon group gathered around the table in the smoking room of the St. James Club. Jathan Lane, one of the richest men in America, and his hobby! It had been pure pleasantry, the twitting to which they had subjected the multimillionaire. But the banker had answered seriously. “How many stones have I? What are they worth?” he had said in reply to a question. “I am sure I do not know myself, but I am equally sure there are no finer unset diamonds, in mass you understand, in America. I have been buying them, one, two, half a dozen at a time, for years. I love them; I take a pure delight in them; and I indulge myself without stint, since, after all, my hobby is by no means a bad one even in a business sense. At least, and what can hardly be said of most hobbies, the value is always there.” “But your family?” the questioner had persisted. “I should think Mrs. Lane and your daughter would be raiding you all the time!” And then Jathan Lane had laughed. “Familiarity and contempt, you know,” he had said. “A boy and his bag of marbles. They haven't looked at them for years.”

      Gentleman Laroque was speaking again.

      “That's the idea!” he said more pleasantly. “They may be a little disappointed, perhaps even a little surprised that there aren't more, but that's where it ends so far as the family is concerned. No suspicion that everything isn't just as old man Lane left it; no suspicion that anything has been taken. And, speaking professionally, therein lies the difference between an artist and a hog!” He tucked the small cloth bag under his coat. The table was clear. “Close her up nice and tidy,” he smiled, “and I'll beat it for Shiftel's.”

      The old man closed the wall safe, and slid the painting back in its grooved frame.

      “Fine!” approved Gentleman Laroque. “I'll leave you to put the table back. Come on now, and lock the window behind me.”

      Jimmie Dale did not move; only his face set a little more grimly as he watched Gentleman Laroque climb through thewindow and disappear. It would be a pity to let Shiftel get out of this scot-free! His mind, alert, incisive, was sifting, weighing, formulating the details of a plan whose germ had taken root there, it seemed, almost from the moment he had begun to watch the men at work. Neither Gentleman Laroque nor the Minister would eventually escape, for they could be found anytime.... Shiftel was another member of the gang, an oily, craven little rat, and Shiftel in a corner with his own skin in danger was far more likely to talk than either of the other two...the Tocsin's letter and the Phantom...what Shiftel knew he could be made to tell...the evidence of this robbery here must be taken care of as soon as the Minister there had gone upstairs again to——

      There came a low, dull thud; a broken cry:

      “Brandy—I——”

      With a sudden sweep of his arm Jimmie Dale brushed aside the portière and leaped forward—too late. The heavy bronze vase, fallen from nerveless fingers that had striven to lift it back on the table, was still rolling across the floor, as the old man, with arms outflung, pitched forward beside it, and lay still.

      In an instant Jimmie Dale had reached the cabinet and procured the stimulant, and in another was kneeling beside the prostrate figure—and then, after a moment, in a strangely quiet and deliberate way Jimmie Dale laid the brandy aside.

      It was very still in the house, still as the form stretched out there on the rug before him, still as the old, white, upturned face. The man was dead.

      The grim, sharp lines that drooped the corners of Jimmie Dale's lips faded away, and something seemed to soften the hard, set immobility of his face as he rose finally to his feet. It was just a crook, just the Minister, alias Patrick Denton, just the end of a vicious, miserable career of crime—but it was also the end of a human life. And life even to this warped soul was as sweet, wasn't it, as to another?—more so