“50,000 pounds! What can you mean?”
“Ah yes, I had forgotten for the moment. That was the price he paid Mrs Solano for the necklace. It was hers as she rightly claimed. As soon as she got it into her hands in Quelch’s sitting-room she was able to prove that to him.”
“Hers? But how then had he got it to give to me?”
“It is a complicated story, and full of dark by-ways. God knows what evil magic lies in diamonds that they can make people do such terrible things! It appears that Mrs Solano had given the chain into the care of her banker. She wanted him to sell it, but she set a very high price on it and he had never been able to find a purchaser. However, one day recently when Quelch was with him at the bank he produced it, and Quelch, with you in his mind, and recognising it as a most exquisite collection of stones, offered twenty-five thousand pounds for it. The Banker closed at once without disclosing to Quelch the name of the client for whom he was selling. And in fact he never disclosed the transaction to Mrs Solano herself. His bank was in deep waters and he used the money to tide over his own financial difficulties, no doubt intending and hoping to repay the money before she should find out about the sale of the chain. Unfortunately you wore it that night. She saw it and the moment she and Quelch were alone and compared notes they realised what had happened.”
At the words “financial difficulties” a dreadful suspicion that had been lurking in Loree Temple’s brain, found words.
“What was the Banker’s name?” she asked hoarsely, and even as she feared the answer was:
“Frederick Huffe.”
“O God!” with a moan the girl covered her eyes. “I felt sure it was. I had a horrible feeling that there was some connection between the diamonds and his death, for I remember that it was to speak to Mr Quelch that he was called away from dancing with me.”
“Yes, Quelch sent for him, and there in the sitting-room they questioned him point blank, and he calmly admitted what he had done and that he had used the money. Nothing more was said. Quelch had told me since that neither he nor Mrs Solano would have dreamed of prosecuting. They both liked the man too much and appreciated that his difficulties had not been his own but of the bank’s making. Probably Quelch would have helped him out. But poor Freddy Huffe’s pride was broken. He went straight from them into the garden and shot himself with a revolver he always carried.”
Loree shuddered.