“A secret drawer that is no secret at all, since all the household, not to say the parish, knows it. As for why I asked, I know enough about precious stones to see”—he raised the cross and peered at it in a ray of sunlight that slanted in through the dust-dimmed window—“to fear that these so-called emeralds are only paste.”
“What!” The rector stared at him. “The Collyer emeralds—paste! Why, they have been admired by experts!”
“No. Not the Collyer emeralds,” Mr. Bechcombe contradicted. “The Collyer emeralds were magnificent gems. This worthless paste has been substituted.”
“Impossible! Who would do such a thing?” Mr. Collyer asked.
“Ah! That,” said Luke Bechcombe grimly, “we have got to find out.”
Chapter II
The Settlement of the Confraternity of St. Philip was situated in one of the most unsavoury districts in South London. It faced the river, but between it and the water lay a dreary waste of debatable land, strewn with the wreckage and rubbish thrown out by the small boat-building firms that existed on either side.
Originally the Settlement had been two or three tenement houses that had remained as a relic of the days when some better class folk had lived there to be near the river, then one of London's great highways. At the back the Settlement had annexed a big barnlike building formerly used as a storehouse. It made a capital room for the meetings that Aubrey Todmarsh and his assistants were continually organizing. In the matter of cleanliness, even externally, the Settlement set an example to the neighbourhood. No dingy paint or glass there. The windows literally shone, the front was washed over as soon as there was the faintest suspicion of grime by some of Todmarsh's numerous protégés. The door plate, inscribed “South London Settlement of the Confraternity of St. Philip,” was as bright as polish and willing hands could make it.
The Rev. James Collyer looked at it approvingly as he stood on the doorstep.
“Just the sort of work I should have loved when I was young,” he soliloquized as he rang the door bell.