“I think that yellow diamonds would look prettier on a platinum chain,” he said. “Could you let me see—?”
“Certainly,” replied Scofield.
He picked up the two trays and took them into the vault. After a moment he came back and placed a pendant in the palm of Farris’ right hand. “This is the exact counterpart of the one you chose, except that it has yellow stones.”
Farris looked at it a moment and then said, “Put it on the chain, Mr. Scofield, so that I can see how it—”
Scofield glanced up sharply. “I left the platinum chain and the blue-stone pendant with you, Mr. Farris.”
“You are mistaken, Mr. Scofield. I gave the lavalliere to you and you took it with you when, you went into the vault.”
For a moment Scofield remained undecided. Then he went quickly into the vault, pulled out two drawers and came back with them into the office.
“As you can see, Mr. Farris, the trays on each of these drawers have hooks for one dozen pieces. I make it a rule never to display a tray which is not filled. As soon as one piece is sold, another piece is taken from our stock and put in the tray. In each of these trays one piece is missing. There are only eleven chains and eleven pendants.”
“You may have dropped the lavalliere on the floor,” suggested Farris. “I know positively you had it in your left hand when you walked away from the counter to the vault.”
Scofield began running a hand through his sparse hair. There was no doubt about his being nervous. He finally pushed a button which summoned a clerk. (The clerk had to unlock the latch with a key from the store side of the office door.)
“Bring in the vacuum,” ordered Scofield.
The vacuum cleaner was run over every inch of the floor before and behind the counter. It was also run over the aisle in the vault. Some little dust was sucked in, but no lavalliere.
After the clerk had left the room, the flustered Scofield ventured, “You may have put the lavalliere into one of your pockets, Mr. Farris.” Then he added — “By mistake.”
“That suggestion is a trifle — crude — isn’t it?”
“But don’t you see, Mr. Farris, under — under the circumstances, you — you must have—”
“Now see here, Mr. Scofield, I came to buy a lavalliere, not to be insulted. If you can produce the lavalliere, we’ll complete the deal. Otherwise I must bid you good-day!”
At this, Scofield became a trifle panicky. “No, no! You can’t leave till the lavalliere has been found. And there’s no use trying — the door is locked.”
Farris shrugged his shoulders, lighted a cigar, and sat down. “This is a new one on me. I didn’t know jewelers made prisoners of their clients.”
Scofield paced nervously back and forth behind the counter. He knew it would be useless to plead further with the obdurate Farris. Finally Scofield pushed a hidden button under his desk. A red light flashed over the police signal box in the street. After a few minutes, Gorman, a uniformed policeman, and Joe Deagon, one of the private detectives hired by a jeweler’s association to patrol Maiden Lane, were admitted to Scofield’s office.
Scofield explained the situation. Deagon decided that under the circumstances the lavalliere must be on the person of either Scofield or Farris. Thereupon Scofield turned all of his pockets inside out. The detective then insisted that Farris submit to a search.
Farris emphatically refused to suffer this indignity. This put the next move up to the jeweler. He was faced with the alternative of permitting Farris to walk out of the shop, or having him arrested. And Scofield was in no mood to let seventy-three hundred dollars slip through his hands without making some decided gesture of self-defense.
“I don’t want to order your arrest, Mr. Farris,” began Scofield, apologetically, “but if you—”
“Logically, that is the only solution,” agreed Farris at once. “I’m as anxious to have this thing settled as you are. But I make this one condition: you will have to take me to the police station in a taxi, or if you wish, you may send for the wagon. And as we go from this office, I insist that I be surrounded on all sides. I want to make it impossible for Mr. Scofield even to hint that I might, at any time, have passed the lavalliere to someone else.”
The condition was complied with. Farris was taken to the station in a taxi. Mr. Scofield, Detective Deagon and Officer Gorman accompanied him.
After Farris had given his name to Captain Loury, the latter consulted a small memorandum book. Thereupon the captain called up Headquarters on the phone. As the captain put up the receiver again, he said to Farris.
“We have orders that in the event a Mr. Judson Farris is arrested, Headquarters be notified at once. I believe Detective James McKeane, a special-squad man, is personally interested in you.”
“Nice fellow, James,” smiled Farris. “I shall be glad to meet him again.”
Detective McKeane reached the station after some twenty minutes. Once again Scofield rehearsed the circumstances under which the lavalliere disappeared. An immediate search was decided upon; Farris himself invited Scofield to be present.
When a detective from headquarters executes a search, he makes a thorough job of it. Farris was taken into a private room and ordered to strip. He was wearing a minimum of clothing: a Palm-beach suit consisting of coat and trousers, a straw hat, a silk shirt, shoes, stockings and underwear.
Every square inch of this clothing was examined with the greatest care. A microscope was used; button by button, seam by seam the search proceeded — nothing was overlooked. A long, thin double-edged dagger was used to pry and probe for false heels or soles on the shoes... The clothing yielded two handkerchiefs, four cigars, a silver match case, a watch and fob, seventy cents in change and a bill case. In the latter were three single bills and a certified check for ten thousand dollars.
They ran a comb through Farris’ hair; they looked in his mouth; they poked into his ears... Mr. Scofield himself was satisfied that if Farris had had so much as a grain of salt on his person, McKeane would have found it.
Farris was left to dress in the private room; Scofield and the detectives Gorman and McKeane came out into the main room of the station.
“He may have swallowed—” began Scofield, gloomily.
“Don’t be absurd,” cut in McKeane. “If a man swallowed a twenty-inch platinum chain, it would kill him.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Scofield.
“Let him go,” replied McKeane, promptly.
“Let him go! But man, don’t you see that the circumstances being what they are, he must have stolen the lavalliere?”
“If you wish to be personally responsible for his detention, and if you will prefer the charges yourself, of course we will hold him. But since you can’t prove he has the lavalliere, I don’t see how you can get a conviction — or even an indictment by the grand jury. You must admit that he has carefully protected himself. No one was present in your office but yourself — and for a few moments one of your clerks. And you have said that the clerk was never near enough to Farris to have the lavalliere passed to him. On the way here, Farris was protected by a policeman and one of your own detectives. And he was searched in your presence.”
But a man doesn’t lose seventy-three hundred dollars without a struggle. Scofield held a forty-minute conversation with his lawyer over the phone. The lawyer’s advice was that it would be a loss of time and energy to press charges. “The certified check proves that Farris came to make a bona-fide purchase. And since you have not one iota of proof that he has the necklace, it would be futile, to—”
Scofield banged the receiver onto the hook and bustled out of the police station. McKeane informed Farris that he would not be held.