“Damned freakish monstrosity!” Trounce yelled. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the moisture from his face.
“That's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen!” Burton exclaimed. “I'd read that the Technologists were experimenting with insect shells but I had no idea they'd progressed so far!”
“You regard that as progress?” Trounce objected. He waved his hat at the milieu that was slowly emerging from the thinning haze. “Look! It's utter bloody chaos! We can't have horses and steam-horses and penny-farthings and now steam-bloody-insects as well, all on the streets at the same time! People are going to get hurt!”
“Humph!” Burton agreed. “We certainly seem to be entangled in a profusion of mismatched machineries.”
“A profusion? Call it whatever you will, Captain Burton, but the fact of the matter is that if the dashed scientists don't slow down and plan ahead with something at least resembling foresight and responsibility, London is going to grind to a complete standstill, mark my words!”
“I don't disagree. Come on. Let's move along. What was it you were saying? About the suspect?”
“Suspect? Oh, Brundleweed. Yes. Well, the obvious safecracker to look at would be Marcus Dexter-there's no strongbox he can't open and he's as cunning as a fox-but he's operating in Cape Town at the moment, that's for certain. Cyril ‘the Fly’ Brady is locked up in Pentonville, and Tobias Fletcher is consumptive and out of action. There's no one else I know of who could have opened Brundleweed's safe without dynamite.”
A one-legged beggar swung himself on crutches directly into Trounce's path. He pleaded in a throaty voice for a ha'penny: “Jest fr'a cuppa tea, me ol’ china.”
The detective glowered at him, told him to move along, but pressed a penny into his palm as he went.
“I'm almost inclined to run with the diamond merchant's theory,” he muttered.
“Brundleweed has a theory?”
“Of sorts. He believes a ghost took the diamonds.”
Burton stopped and stared at his companion in amazement.
“A ghost?”
“Yes. He's fooled himself into believing that he saw a phantom woman that night.”
“You don't believe him, surely?”
“No, of course not. He probably dozed off and dreamt it. Except-”
“What?”
“The friend of Francois Garnier; the one he gave two of the black diamonds to-”
“Jean Pelletier.”
“Yes. I contacted the Surete in Paris. They confirmed that he died from a heart attack.”
“So?”
“So he was found in his lodgings, the room was locked from the inside, and the windows were closed. Yet, for some reason, his face was frozen into an expression of sheer terror. The detective I spoke to actually used the words 'like he'd seen a ghost.’”
“Intriguing.”
“Hmm. Anyway, let's hear what Brundleweed has to say. C'mon, shake a leg.”
They arrived at the shop a few moments later and entered.
Edwin Brundleweed looked up from his counter, which was secured behind metal bars. He was a stooped, middle-aged gentleman, with a long brown pointed beard drooping from his narrow chin. His head was prematurely bald, his lips thin, and thick-lensed spectacles were perched on the bridge of his hooked nose.
“Why, Detective Inspector! How very nice to see you! Is there news?”
“I'm afraid not, Mr. Brundleweed. This is Captain Sir Richard Burton. He's the gentleman who discovered the robbery here.”
“Then I'm very much in your debt, sir,” the dealer said to Burton. “If it weren't for you, the rest of the diamonds would have been lost too and I'd have been put out of business. Pray, come in, gentlemen.”
Brundleweed moved to a door set in the bars at the side of the counter, unlocked it, and stepped back to allow his visitors through. He relocked it behind them.
“I have a fresh pot of tea just brewed and a new tin of custard creams. Would you care to join me?”
Burton and Trounce answered in the affirmative. A few minutes later, they were seated with their host around a table.
“Mr. Brundleweed,” Burton said, “I'm puzzled. Why would the mystery person who replaced the Choir Stones with fakes take only those gems and not the others you had in your safe?”
The king's agent knew from Babbage that the missing gems possessed special qualities but he wondered who else might be aware of the fact.
“Good question!” came the reply. “I believe the culprit must be a specialist, a collector, a man who has interest in diamonds only for their history rather than for their financial worth. Do you know their background?”
“Only that they were discovered after they started ‘singing’ in 1837, were recently taken from a temple in Cambodia by Lieutenant Francois Garnier, and there were originally seven of them, but he gave two away. Those two subsequently went missing after the death of their owner.”
“That's correct. However, there's much more to the tale, and it's this that makes the remaining gems so eminently collectable. Black diamonds aren't the same as the white variety; they're not found in diamond fields, such as we have in South Africa and Canada. Current thinking posits that they fall from the sky as aerolites.”
“Yes, I've come across that theory.”
“According to an obscure occult manuscript-dating from the sixteenth century, if I remember rightly-which is quoted in Schuyler's De Mythen van Verloren Halfedelstenen, a large aerolite that fell in prehistoric times broke into three pieces. One piece landed in the West, another in Africa, and the third in the Far East. They are known as the Eyes of Naga.”
“Three eyes?”
“Yes. Three eyes. Peculiar, isn't it? I'm afraid I have no understanding of the Dutch language and wasn't able to read the Schuyler volume myself-my information came from a summary in Legendary Gemstones by Jerrold Wilson-but I believe the author goes on to recount two myths: a South American one which tells how the Amazon sprang into being when a large black diamond fell from the sky; and a Cambodian one about a lost continent in which a great river flowed from the spot where a black stone fell. He speculates that a similar story probably exists in the African interior concerning the source of the Nile.”
“It does!” Burton exclaimed. “While I was in the central Lake Regions, in a town named Kazeh, I was told that the fabled Mountains of the Moon supposedly mark the outer rim of a crater where an aerolite fell, giving rise to that river.”
“It can't be a coincidence, can it?” Brundleweed said. “I suppose the mythical shooting star really did fall. Anyway, the Choir Stones are supposedly the fragments of the Far Eastern Eye. If that's true, then the original diamond must have been considerably larger than the Koh-i-noor.”
“Hmm,” Burton grunted. “The Naga. I've encountered references to them. They equate to the Devanagari of Hindu mythology; seven-headed reptilian beings who established an underground civilisation long before Darwin's apes learned how to walk upright.”
“Ah, well, there you are,” Brundleweed commented, noncommittally.
“I shall have to look into that,” Burton murmured thoughtfully. “What of the African and South American diamonds?”
“Not a trace,” the dealer answered. “Although there are vague suggestions that, seventy years or so ago, an English aristocrat discovered an enormous black diamond in Chile. However, I very much doubt the veracity of the claim, for no such diamond has ever been seen, let alone cut and placed on the market.”
“The aristocrat's name?”
“I have no idea, Captain. As I said, it's the vaguest of rumours.”
“Hmm. And what of Francois Garnier? Why did he decide to sell his collection?”
Brundleweed snorted scornfully: “Believe it or not, he claimed that they emanate a deleterious influence. Tosh and piffle, of course!”
“Did you have any prospective buyers?”
“No, but my advertisement in the trade newspaper was only published a couple of days before the robbery. I received just a single enquiry, from a chap who came into the shop to confirm that I was putting the stones on the market, but he was one of those dandified Rake-ish sorts, and though he expressed an interest, he didn't leave a name or address, and I haven't heard from him since.”