Not a bit of it! In a short time he appeared again, and told her that she would be haunted by his unwelcome presence so long as the necklace remained in her possession. She then drove off with it, and deposited it with her lawyer, who locked it up in a tin case, doubtless with a secret smile at his noble client's superstitions. But Nemesis lay in wait for him, and the last thing Mr Romilly had heard upon the subject was that the lawyer himself was made so exceedingly uncomfortable by the attentions of the Egyptian gentleman that he was obliged to have necklace and tin case buried together in his back garden! To have forced a lawyer into such extreme measures was certainly a "score" for the ghost!
A few months later, I met the heroine of the story at a friend's house at tea, and speaking of her relation, who had married a Swedish wife, and whom I had met in Gottenburg, I alluded discreetly to the story of the blue necklace.
My companion at once endorsed it in toto, and did not seem at all annoyed by the fact that her cousin had mentioned it to me. I remember that Mrs Romilly "laid the cards" for me, with astonishing success, and told me she had learnt the mystic lore from an old Finnish nurse, who had been brought over from Finland by her own Swedish grandfather when quite a young girl, and had lived in the family until her death. She assured me that the Finns were specially gifted in all kinds of gipsy lore.
From Stockholm we paid a visit to Russia, and in St Petersburg I had my first personal experience since leaving home.
We had engaged, as courier during our stay in the city, a German who had lived there for forty years, named Küntze, I think.
We were staying at the Hotel de France, and this man told me one day that a celebrated French modiste had rooms in our hotel, having come there to show her beautiful Parisian costumes, and to take orders as usual from the Russian Royal Family and Ladies of the Court. He also mentioned the Frenchwoman's recent misfortune in hearing—since her arrival in Russia—that her trusted manager in Paris had disappeared suddenly, carrying away with him 100,000 francs.
Two nights later I had gone to bed as usual about ten-thirty p.m., and must have slept for nearly four hours, when I awoke feeling the heat very oppressive. It was almost the end of June at the time. Getting out of bed to open my window still farther, I gazed down upon the courtyard which it overlooked, noting the absolute stillness of the house and the hot, oppressive air outside.
Suddenly this stillness was rent by the most horrible and appalling shrieks! Peal after peal rang out. I have never heard anything so ghastly nor so blood-curdling either before or since. For a moment it seemed that one must be dreaming. What horrors, to justify such awful shrieks, could be taking place at this quiet hour and in this quiet, respectable hotel?
Nothing less than murder suggested itself to me, and I quickly crossed the room, and turned the key in the lock. My next thought was for my companion—the Miss Greenlow of American days. She was sleeping next door to me, with an intervening door between us.
I hammered loudly upon this, and finally opened it. I knew she always locked her outer door, but feared she might go into the passage, not realising the danger in the moment of waking, and might fall into the murderer's hands. So I called out: "Wake up—wake up, Miss Greenlow!—but don't open your door. Someone is being murdered out there."