“I suppose some of the London thieves did get them,” said Mrs. Carbuncle.
“The police say the box was empty,” said Lord George.
“How can the police know?” asked Lucinda. “They weren’t there to see. Of course, the thieves would say that they didn’t take them.”
“What do you think, Lady Eustace?”
“I don’t know what to think. Perhaps Mr. Camperdown did it.”
“Or the Lord Chancellor,” said Lord George. “One is just as likely as the other. I wish I could get at what you really think. The whole thing would be so complete if all you three suspected me. I can’t get out of it all by going to Paris or Kamschatka, as I should have half a dozen detectives on my heels wherever I went. I must brazen it out here; and the worst of it is, that I feel that a look of guilt is creeping over me. I have a sort of conviction growing upon me that I shall be taken up and tried, and that a jury will find me guilty. I dream about it; and if—as is probable—it drives me mad, I’m sure that I shall accuse myself in my madness. There’s a fascination about it that I can’t explain or escape. I go on thinking how I would have done it if I did do it. I spend hours in calculating how much I would have realised, and where I would have found my market. I couldn’t keep myself from asking Benjamin the other day how much they would be worth to him.”
“What did he say?” asked Lizzie, who sat gazing upon the Corsair, and who was now herself fascinated. Lord George was walking about the room, then sitting for a moment in one chair and again in another, and after a while leaning on the mantelpiece. In his speaking he addressed himself almost exclusively to Lizzie, who could not keep her eyes from his.
“He grinned greasily,” said the Corsair, “and told me they had already been offered to him once before by you.”
“That’s false,” said Lizzie.
“Very likely. And then he said that no doubt they’d fall into his hands some day. ‘Wouldn’t it be a game, Lord George,’ he said, ‘if, after all, they should be no more than paste?’ That made me think he had got them, and that he’d get paste diamonds put into the same setting—and then give them up with some story of his own making. ‘You’d know whether they were paste or not; wouldn’t you, Lord George?’ he asked.” The Corsair, as he repeated Mr. Benjamin’s words, imitated the Jew’s manner so well, that he made Lizzie shudder. “While I was there, a detective named Gager came in.”
“The same man who came here, perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Carbuncle.
“I think not. He seemed to be quite intimate with Mr. Benjamin, and went on at once about the diamonds. Benjamin said that they’d made their way over to Paris, and that he’d heard of them. I found myself getting quite intimate with Mr. Gager, who seemed hardly to scruple at showing that he thought that Benjamin and I were confederates. Mr. Camperdown has offered four hundred pounds reward for the jewels—to be paid on their surrender to the hands of Mr. Garnett, the jeweller. Gager declared that, if any ordinary thief had them, they would be given up at once for that sum.”
“That’s true, I suppose,” said Mrs. Carbuncle.
“How would the ordinary thief get his money without being detected? Who would dare to walk into Garnett’s shop with the diamonds in his hands and ask for the four hundred pounds? Besides, they have been sold to someone—and, as I believe, to my dear friend, Mr. Benjamin. ‘I suppose you ain’t a-going anywhere just at present, Lord George?’ said that fellow Gager. ‘What the devil’s that to you?’ I asked him. He just laughed and shook his head. I don’t doubt but that there’s a policeman about waiting till I leave this house;—or looking at me now with a magnifying glass from the windows at the other side. They’ve photographed me while I’m going about, and published a list of every hair on my face in the Hue and Cry. I dined at the club yesterday, and found a strange waiter. I feel certain that he was a policeman done up in livery all for my sake. I turned sharp round in the street yesterday, and found a man at a corner. I am sure that man was watching me, and was looking at my pockets to see whether the jewel case was there. As for myself, I can think of nothing else. I wish I had got them. I should have something then to pay me for all this nuisance.”
“I do wish you had,” said Lizzie.
“What I should do with them I cannot even imagine. I am always thinking of that, too—making plans for getting rid of them, supposing I had stolen them. My belief is, that I should be so sick of them that I should chuck them over the bridge into the river—only that I should fear that some policeman’s eye would be on me as I did it. My present position is not comfortable—but if I had got them, I think that the weight of them would crush me altogether. Having a handle to my name, and being a lord, or, at least, called a lord, makes it all the worse. People are so pleased to think that a lord should have stolen a necklace.”
Lizzie listened to it all with a strange fascination. If this strong man were so much upset by the bare suspicion, what must be her condition? The jewels were in her desk upstairs, and the police had been with her also—were even now probably looking after her and
