THE MAXIMILIAN DIAMOND
A stout, jovial-looking person, with reddish hair, sandy complexion, and watery blue eyes, stood waiting in my office, his wrist attached by means of a nickel-plated handcuff to that of a keeper. My two visitors conducted themselves with remarkable unanimity, and with but a single motion sank into the chairs I offered.
"Well, what's the trouble?" I inquired genially.
The keeper jerked his thumb in the direction of the other, who grinned apologetically and hitched in my direction. Bending toward me, he whispered: "I am the victim of one of the most remarkable conspiracies in history. My story involves personages of the highest rank, and is stranger than one of Dumas' romances. I am a bill-poster."
Not knowing whether he intended to include himself among the illustrious persons alluded to, I nodded encouragingly and produced some cigars.
"My name is Riggs," continued the prisoner, as he bit off the end of his cigar and expelled it through the window. "Got a match?"
The keeper drew a handful from his pocket. I lit a cigar for myself and assumed an attitude of attention.
"My wife is little Flossie Riggs. Don't know her? Why, she dances at Proctor's, and all over. I was doing well at my trade, and would have been doing better, if it hadn't been for that confounded diamond. It was this way. There was a fellow named Tenney, who posted bills with me about five years back, and he finally got a job down in the City of Mexico with a railroad, and I used to correspond with him.
"Among other things, he told me about a great big diamond that the Emperor Maximilian used to wear in the middle of his crown. According to Tenney, it was one of the biggest on record. He said that Maximilian was so stuck on it that he had it taken out and made into a pendant for the Empress Carlotta, and that she used to wear it around at all the court functions, and so on. About the same time he took two other diamonds out of the crown and made them into finger-rings for himself.
"After a while the Mexicans got tired of having an empire and put Maximilian out of business. They stood him and two of his generals up in the parade ground at Queretaro and shot 'em. Now when he was stood up to get shot he had those two rings on his fingers, and the funny part of it was that when the people rushed up to see whether he was dead or not, both the rings were gone. Just about that time, while Carlotta was in prison, the diamond with the big pendant disappeared too. It weighed thirty-three carats. I got all this from Tenney. I don't know where he found out about it. But it all happened way back in '67.