Then I let my glance wander back to the ruby, apparently content to study its perfect cutting and its unmatchable coloring. And I knew that the man beside me was also sharing in that spectacle. I was, in fact, still staring at it, so unconscious of the movement of the play on the stage that the "dark scene," when every light in the house went out for a second or two, came to me with a distinct sense of shock.
A murmur of approval went through the house as the returning light revealed to them a completely metamorphosed stage-setting. What this setting was I did not know, nor did I look up to see. For as my idly inquisitive glance once more focused itself on the columnar white neck that towered above the chair-back a second and greater shock came to me. Had that neck stood there without a head I could have been scarcely more startled.
The pigeon-blood ruby was gone. There was no longer any necklace there. The column of snow was without its touch of ruddy light. It was left as disturbingly bare as a target without its bull's-eye. It reminded me of a marble grate without its central point of fire.
My first definite thought was that I was the witness of a crime as audacious as it was bewildering. Yet, on second thought, it was simple enough. The problem of proximity had already been solved. With the utter darkness had come the opportunity, the opportunity that obviously had been watched for. With one movement of the hand the necklace had been quietly and cunningly removed.
My next quick thought was that the thief sat there in my immediate neighborhood. There could be no other. There was no room for doubt. By some mysterious and dextrous movement the man beside me had reached forward and with that delicacy of touch doubtless born of much experience had unclasped the jewels, all the time shrouded by the utter darkness. The audacity of the thing was astounding, yet the completeness with which it had succeeded was even more astounding.
I sat there compelling myself to a calmness which was not easy to achieve. I struggled to make my scrutiny of this strange companion of mine as quiet and leisured as possible.
Yet he seemed to feel that he was still under my eye. He seemed to chafe at that continued survey; for even as I studied him I could see a fine sweat of embarrassment come out on his face. He did not turn and look at me directly, but it was plain that he was only too conscious of my presence. And even before I quite realized what he was about, he reached quietly over, and taking up his hat and coat, rose to his feet and slipped out of the box.
That movement on his part swept away my last shred of hesitation. The sheer precipitancy of his flight was proof enough of his offense. His obvious effort to escape made me more than ever determined to keep on his trail.
And keep on his trail I did, from the moment he sidled guiltily out of that lighted theater foyer into the still drizzling rain of Broadway. Stronger and ever stronger waves of indignation kept sweeping through me as I watched him skulk northward, with a furtive glance over his shoulder as he fled.
He was a good two hundred feet ahead of me when I saw him suddenly turn and at the risk of a visit to the hospital or the morgue, cross the street in the middle of the block, dodge desperately between the surface cars and automobiles, and beat it straight for the Times Building. I promptly threw decorum away and ran, ran like a rabbit, until I came to the Forty-second Street entrance to the drug store through whose revolving doors I had seen my man disappear. I felt reasonably certain he wouldn't stop to drink an ice-cream soda and he didn't, for as I hurried past the fountain I caught sight of him turning into the stairway that leads to the subway station. I dashed ahead but he was through the gate before I could catch up with him. I had no time for a ticket as the guards were already slamming shut the doors of a south-bound "local."