“It is now a quarter to one,” replied Carrados, touching the fingers of his watch. “We may as well lunch on the strength of this new turn. Parkinson will have finished packing; I can telephone him to come to us at Merrick’s in case I require him. Buy all the papers, Louis, and we will collate the points.”
The undoubted facts that survived a comparison were few and meagre, for in each case a conscientious journalist had touched up a few vague or doubtful details according to his own ideas of probability. All agreed that on Tuesday evening—it was now Thursday—Mrs Straithwaite had formed one of a party that had occupied a box at the new Metropolitan Opera House to witness the performance of La Pucella, and that she had been robbed of a set of pearls valued in round figures at five thousand pounds. There agreement ended. One version represented the theft as taking place at the theatre. Another asserted that at the last moment the lady had decided not to wear the necklace that evening and that its abstraction had been cleverly effected from the flat during her absence. Into a third account came an ambiguous reference to Markhams, the well-known jewellers, and a conjecture that their loss would certainly be covered by insurance.
Mr Carlyle, who had been picking out the salient points of the narratives, threw down the last paper with an impatient shrug.
“Why in heaven’s name have we Markhams coming into it now?” he demanded. “What have they to lose by it, Max? What do you make of the thing?”
“There is the second genuine string—the one Bellitzer saw. That belongs to someone.”
“By gad, that’s true—only five days ago, too. But what does our lady stand to make by that being stolen?”
Carrados was staring into obscurity between an occasional moment of attention to his cigarette or coffee.
“By this time the lady probably stands to wish she was well out of it,” he replied thoughtfully. “Once you have set this sort of stone rolling and it has got beyond you——” He shook his head.
“It has become more intricate than you expected?” suggested Carlyle, in order to afford his friend an opportunity of withdrawing.
Carrados pierced the intention and smiled affectionately.