Aaron Rodd, Diviner. E. Phillips Oppenheim

is this man, and what does he want?" she cried. "Is this a trap into which you have drawn us? Is it a crime, here in England, then, to offer jewels for sale?"

      "We'll talk this all out at the police station," Brodie intervened curtly. "Inspector?"

      The man in plain clothes stepped forward and took command of the situation.

      "My instructions are," he announced politely, "to ask you both to come with me to the police-station."

      The old gentleman simply looked dazed. He rose to his feet obediently and turned towards the girl. She patted his arm reassuringly, but there was a look in her face which brought a sob into Aaron Rodd's throat. He was filled all the time with a silent fury. He cursed the moment which had taken him into the Embankment Gardens, which had brought Harvey Grimm once more into his life. The single look which the girl had flashed upon him was like a dagger in his heart.

      Brodie had replaced the diamonds, one by one, in the little bag. He handed them over to his companion and motioned them all towards the door. The old gentleman moved wearily along, leaning upon his granddaughter's arm. Aaron Rodd hurried forward and opened the door. He tried to say something, but the girl turned from him contemptuously. He stood on the threshold, listening to their slow footsteps as they descended into the street. Then he swung back into the room, slammed the door and sank into the chair in front of his desk. It was as though he had passed through some terrible nightmare. He sat gazing out through the shadows. Had it all really happened? Then he caught a faint, unfamiliar breath of perfume which suddenly set his heart beating with unaccustomed vigour. A little morsel of white lace lay underneath the chair upon which she had been seated. He stooped and picked it up, smoothed it out, and let it slip from his fingers almost in despair. It was all true, then! She had sat in that chair, had come to his office, trusting him, had walked into the Harvey-Grimm-cum-Brodie trap!

      *****

      It was an hour or more before Harvey Grimm returned. He closed the door after him and came briskly across the floor.

      "Well, young fellow," he exclaimed, "you can't say that I haven't fished you out of the backwaters."

      "I wish to God you'd left me there!" was the bitter reply. "Tell me what's happened to her?"

      "To her?—oh, the young lady!" Harvey Grimm murmured, with an illuminating smile. "She's all right. She's back at the Milan by this time."

      "They couldn't identify the diamond, then?" Aaron Rodd asked eagerly.

      "Not by a long chalk," was the smiling reply. "To tell you the truth, Brodie's about the sickest man in London just now. The stone he rolled out in front of the expert they had waiting down at Scotland Yard was——"

      "Was what?"

      "A lump of paste," Harvey Grimm declared, lighting a cigarette. "Queer business, eh?"

      "There's no charge against the old gentleman and his granddaughter, then?" Aaron Rodd demanded breathlessly.

      "None whatever. Why not try a cigarette, Aaron? You're all nerves."

      The lawyer pushed the box away from him.

      "You may think this sort of thing's worth while," he declared gloomily. "I can't say that I do. There'll be no reward to share, and it seems to me that we've made an enemy——"

      "There's no reward," Harvey Grimm agreed, "but there's this."

      He drew his handkerchief from his pocket. A diamond almost as large as a cobnut rolled over and lay upon the desk. Aaron Rodd stared at it in amazement.

      "What's that?" he demanded.

      "One of the Van Hutten diamonds," was the triumphant reply. "Look at it well. You won't see it again. By this time to-morrow it will have been cut."

      Aaron Rodd was stupefied. He looked from the stone up to his companion's face. Even his demand for some elucidation was mute.

      "I had the duplicate ready," Harvey Grimm explained. "That was my game. I changed them underneath my handkerchief. It was perfectly easy. They've got the imitation one at police head-quarters and they aren't feeling particularly pleased with themselves. That fellow Brodie is about the bummest detective who ever crossed the Atlantic."

      Aaron Rodd was sitting transfixed. His fingers were shaking as they beat upon the desk.

      "My God," he exclaimed as light streamed in upon him, "we're thieves!"

      "Don't talk like a fool," the other admonished. "It's a fair enough game between crooks. We've stolen a stolen jewel, and by doing it we've saved the girl and her grandfather and her brother, too, from gaol. That's fair do's, isn't it? When I've finished with that, there'll be a matter of three or four thousand pounds for us to divide. What about it, eh?"

      He swept the jewel back into his pocket. Aaron Rodd's fingers were still idly beating upon the desk. The walls of his dusty, bare apartment had fallen away, the thrall of his sordid poverty lay no longer like a dead weight upon his spirits. Three or four thousand pounds to divide!

      "What you need," Harvey Grimm declared briskly, handing him his hat, "is a drink. Come right along."

Chapter II Poetry by Compulsion

       Table of Contents

      Mr. Paul Brodie walked, unannounced, into Aaron Rodd's office, a matter of ten days after the episode of the changed diamond. He had lost a little of his bombast, and he carried himself with less than his usual confidence. His eyes, however, had lost none of their old inquisitive fire. He was perfectly aware, even as he greeted the two men who rose to welcome him, that Aaron Rodd was wearing a new suit of clothes, that the office had been spring-cleaned, that the box of cigarettes upon the desk were of an expensive brand, and that the violets in the buttonhole of Harvey Grimm's immaculate coat had come from a Bond Street florist.

      "Good morning, gentlemen," he said airily, subsiding into the chair which the latter had vacated for him. "Nice little trio of conspirators we are, eh?"

      Harvey Grimm shrugged his shoulders.

      "It's rough on you," he admitted—"gives you kind of a twist, of course, with the police—but I can't see any sense in the thing yet. They weren't meaning to trade off that bit of paste on a diamond expert surely!"

      The detective scratched his chin.

      "That bit of paste," he declared, "was all they had on them, anyway. Seems as though they hadn't quite sized you up—you and Mr. Rodd here—and were paying you a test visit. Gee, they're clever!"

      "You had them searched, I suppose," the other enquired, "to be sure they hadn't the real goods with them?"

      "You bet!" the detective assented gloomily. "Made it all the worse for us afterwards. I tell you I daren't show my face at Scotland Yard these days."

      Harvey Grimm nodded sympathetically.

      "Still, they must know that these people aren't what they profess to be," he observed.

      "That's all very well," Brodie agreed, "but every one goes about with kid gloves on in this country. That's why I threw up my job and went over to the States. Even a criminal, a known criminal, has got to be treated as though he were a little God Almighty until the charge is right there and the proof lying handy. I spent last night with Inspector Ditchwater. He's as sure as I am that the young man is no other than Jeremiah Sands, but he'd sooner let him slip through his fingers than take a risk."

      "How does it come about, then," Aaron Rodd asked quietly, "that a famous diamond thief is wearing the uniform of a Belgian officer, that he is decorated and wounded?"

      "Simple as possible," Brodie explained. "We knew perfectly well that Jeremiah Sands was a Belgian. That little fact had been in every description of him that's ever been issued. He chucked his little enterprises in New York, the moment war was declared,