She remembered how some of the more important passengers had suggested that everybody on board should be searched, even to the ship's officers, sailors, and employés of all sorts; that the search had been made and nothing found, but that a lady supposed to possess clairvoyant powers had offered Mr. Jekyll or Jedkill to consult her crystal for his benefit.
She had done so, and had seen wireless messages passing between someone on the Monarchic and someone on another ship, with whom the former person appeared to be in collusion. She had seen a small, fair man, dressed as a woman, hypnotizing the jewellers' agent into the belief that he was locking his door when instead he was leaving it unlocked.
Then she had seen this man who, she asserted firmly, was dressed like a woman, walk into his victim's cabin, hypnotize him into still deeper unconsciousness, and take from his belt three long strings of pearls and several magnificent diamonds, set and unset. These things she saw made up into a bundle, wrapped in waterproof cloth, attached to a faintly illuminated life-preserver, and thrown overboard.
Almost immediately after, she said, the life preserver was picked up by a man in a small motor-launch let down from a steam yacht. The launch quickly returned to the yacht, was taken up, and the yacht made off in the darkness.
No life belt was missing from the Monarchic and even if suspicion could be entertained against any "small, fair man" (which was not the case, apparently), there was no justification for a search. Therefore, although a good many people believed in the seeress's vision, it proved nothing, and the sensational affair remained as deep a mystery as ever when the Monarchic docked.
"The Countess de Santiago was the woman who looked in the crystal!" Annesley said to herself. She wondered why, if Knight had been vexed with the Countess for speaking of their friendship and of the Monarchic, as he had once seemed to be, he should refer to it before these strangers.
She looked down the table, past the other faces to his face, and the thought that came to her mind was, how simple and almost meaningless the rest were compared to his. Among the fourteen guests—seven women and seven men—though some had charm or distinction, his face alone was complex, mysterious, and baffling.
Yet she loved it. Now, more than ever, she loved and admired it!
The dinner ended with a discussion between Knight and Constance as to how the Countess de Santiago could be induced to pay a visit to Valley House, despite the fact that she had never met Lord and Lady Annesley-Seton. Like most women who had lived in Spanish countries, the Countess was rather a "stickler for etiquette," her friend Nelson Smith announced. Besides, her experience as an "amateur clairvoyante" made her quick to resent anything which had the air of patronage. One must go delicately to work to think out a scheme, if Lady Annesley-Seton were really in "dead earnest" about wanting her to come.
At this point Knight reflected for a minute, while everyone hung upon his silence; and at last he had an inspiration: