II
THE TRUTH DETECTOR
"You haven't heard—no one outside has heard—of the strange illness and the robbery of my employer, Mr. Mansfield—'Diamond Jack' Mansfield, you know."
Our visitor was a slight, very pretty, but extremely nervous girl, who had given us a card bearing the name Miss Helen Grey.
"Illness—robbery?" repeated Kennedy, at once interested and turning a quick glance at me.
I shrugged my shoulders in the negative. Neither the Star nor any of the other papers had had a word about it.
"Why, what's the trouble?" he continued to Miss Grey.
"You see," she explained, hurrying on, "I'm Mr. Mansfield's private secretary, and—oh, Professor Kennedy, I don't know, but I'm afraid it is a case for a detective rather than a doctor." She paused a moment and leaned forward nearer to us. "I think he has been poisoned!"
The words themselves were startling enough without the evident perturbation of the girl. Whatever one might think, there was no doubt that she firmly believed what she professed to fear. More than that, I fancied I detected a deeper feeling in her tone than merely loyalty to her employer.
"Diamond Jack" Mansfield was known in Wall Street as a successful promoter, on the White Way as an assiduous first-nighter, in the sporting fraternity as a keen plunger. But of all his hobbies, none had gained him more notoriety than his veritable passion for collecting diamonds.