I made as if to pick them up.
“Don’t be hasty. Don’t be hasty. They will do very nicely. Now, ah, how much do you think you should be paid for your, ah, work?”
“I’ll take two thousand dollars.”
“I’ll give you fifteen hundred.”
“No.” I thought it well to bargain with him. Where was Hey wood? I fidgeted nervously in my chair. Suppose he failed to appear?
“Too much,” Barton was saying. “When you consider the danger of selling them, I should make a very small profit. I will give you seventeen hundred, ah, on the chance that there will be other things and that I may be favored with, ah, your company again. Understand?”
“There will be others,” said I grimly, “unless something happens to me. For these, however, I will take two thousand dollars or nothing. I know they worth much more.”
“You are a hard bargainer. All right. I will give you what you ask.”
He reached into his hip pocket and withdrew a fat wallet.
“A check wouldn’t do, of course.”
“No. I’ll take mine in cash.”
He counted the money out carefully. I was breathing hard with excitement. Where was Heywood? My ear caught a faint creak as though the library door was being opened. I did not dare to turn around.
“Fourteen hundred, fourteen fifty, fifteen hundred—” Barton’s thin voice droned on.
Then there came a rustle behind me and Heywood, with a jovial grin upon his face, stood in the light of the library lamp.
“Well, Barton,” he said. “You’ve cooked your goose at last.”
The jeweler, hands poised in midair, gazed at him and his Adam’s apple danced nervously up and down in his fat throat.
“Who are you?” he finally managed to gasp.
“Me?” echoed Heywood jauntily. “Why, I’m a little detective from headquarters. I tagged your friend up here and found just what I expected. You know, we’ve had an eye on you for some time. You and your crooked partner, Blake.”
“Blake’s no partner of mine,” croaked Barton.
I leaped to my fet.
“Listen to me, Corrigan,” I snarled, “you haven’t got a damned thing on me. I’m just sitting here. Barton’s got the pearls and he’s got the money. I’m as clean as a whistle. You can’t hold me.”
“Stow it,” said Heywood shortly. “We don’t care a whoop about you, anyway. You’re small fry, my boy. What we want is the goods on this fleshy old thief here and this time we’ve got him and got him right. Get your hat, Barton, you’re going for a ride!”
The jeweler made a low mourning noise in his chest and his puffy little hands fluttered to his perspiring forehead.
“For God’s sake,” he begged, “can’t we do something about this? Isn’t there any way I can square it up? Think of my wife and children and my business!”
“You’ve got one chance,” snapped Heywood. “Just one. Come clean on that Paris robbery and I’ll make it easy for you. Otherwise, up you go for buying these stolen pearls. Ten years, probably.”
Barton’s pasty face was sunk low upon his chest.
“What do you want me to tell you?” he asked in a whisper.
“I want you to tell me how you engineered that Paris job, how you hired the boy to smuggle the gems into this country and where you planned to dispose of them.”
“What can they do to me for that?”
“Not much. They’ll never be able to get you back to France. You’ve got too much money and too many friends. You can say that you did not know the diamonds were stolen and you may get off with a heavy fine on the smuggling charge.”
Barton held his head in his hands.
“It will ruin me,” he groaned swaying in his chair. “It will wreck my reputation.”
“That’s too bad,” said Heywood dryly. “You have my sympathy.”
“Suppose I refuse?” Barton looked up at his tormentor and there was misery and indecision in his eyes. “Suppose I refuse to convict myself?”
Chapter XIV
The Other Half
“Then,” said Heywood in a voice I that dripped honey, “I will back a patrol wagon up to your door in the plain sight of all your august neighbors, haul you down to headquarters and formally charge you with smuggling, robbery, and the reception of stolen property.”
“My God!”
“I’m waiting.”
Barton wrung his flabby hands and I could not help feeling a twinge of sympathy for the fat old crook, although I knew that he did not deserve it. Heywood evidently read my thoughts, for he turned to me and said:
“Tough on you crooks when you get caught. It’s fine as long as you win, but when you lose, it’s hell, eh? Then you come sniveling for sympathy.”
And he winked at me and smiled.
Barton was talking now in a choked, halting voice.
“It was like this,” he said. “Blake, who had been in Paris, learned of these diamonds and hired a man to steal them for him. He came to me with the proposition of getting rid of them. I had done the same thing before, in a small way. I was a fool to listen to him, but I did. I went to Paris and got in touch with the thief, paying the price that Blake had agreed upon for the stones. After I got them I was afraid to try to bring them back.
“Blake had argued that I would never be suspected, but I felt that I was being watched every minute and I almost went crazy with the strain, expecting to be arrested every time I ventured out of the hotel.
“Blake sent a man to me and suggested that if I had lost my nerve I could line up somebody to carry the stuff to New York for me and I found this kid Drummond. He didn’t know what was in the package and he didn’t have sense enough to suspect. He was nabbed and sent to prison.
“I had written to Blake about the arrangement that I had made and the letter went out on the day before Drummond sailed.
“Blake was wild when he found what had happened. When I got back he came here and we had a violent quarrel. He blamed me for the miscarriage of his plans and threatened to ruin me by using the letter I had written to him. He demanded that I pay him the equivalent of his share in the theft and I refused. We fought. I am an old man, but I managed to tear half of the letter out of his hand before my butler arrived and threw him out of the house.
“From that day to this I have known no peace. My God, it’s been terrible. Terrible! I’m glad it’s all over — glad—”
His voice died away to a whisper and he sat shaking like a man with the ague.
“I’ll take your part of that letter,” said Heywood cheerfully.
“What do you want it for?”
“Documentary evidence that you and Blake framed this deal,” said the reporter. “Do you want to leave this lad Drummond to rot in a cell?”
“No, no,” muttered the gem dealer, “that boy’s conviction weighed heavily upon my mind. I... ah... often thought of giving myself up, of making—”
He broke off suddenly, took a key from his pocket with a palsied hand and opened a drawer of his desk. For a moment he pawed through a mass of papers, then he brought forth the torn half of the note.
“Here,” he said dully, “take it.”
Heywood took the paper, looked at it, and then fished the capsule from his vest pocket. He extracted Blake’s portion of the letter and laid the two together upon the desk.
Looking over his shoulder, I read:
Dear Blake:
I delivered the goods to young Drummond aboard the Princess Flavia. Meet him at the wharf in New York and bring the stuff to me as I have arranged to dispose of them. Be careful, as one of my agents tell me we are watched.
“That settles that,” said Heywood. “Barton, I know you aren’t going to run away so I’m going to leave you right here until we get Blake and his gang rounded up. If everything breaks well you may get a chance to turn government witness and save your hide. As for this fellow here, I’ll take him down to headquarters for safe keeping.”