It was a horrible situation. Even if we could possibly have escaped suspicion ourselves, it would have ruined us socially and financially. Would the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage Company have retained as the head of its London branch a man who had got himself mixed up with a sensational diamond robbery? Not on your life! That concern demands a high standard and unspotted record in all its employees. I’d have got the sack at the end of the month.
And Daisy! How would the bishop and two lords have felt about it? Had no more use for that little woman, you can bet your bottom dollar! Even Lady Sara Gyves, who, they say, will go anywhere to get a dinner, would have given her the Ice-house Laugh. I know them. And I saw my Daisy sitting at home all alone on her reception day, and taking dinner with me every night. No, sir! That wouldn’t happen if Cassius P. Kennedy had to take those diamonds to the Thames and throw them off London Bridge in a weighted bag.
So there we were! It was a dreadful predicament. Every morning we read the papers with our hearts thumping like hammers. Every ring at the bell made us jump, and we had a deadly fear that each time the portière was lifted and a caller appeared we’d see the buttons and helmet of a policeman with a warrant of arrest concealed upon his person. I began to have awful dreams and Daisy didn’t sleep at all, and got pale and peaked. We thought up more “plausible stories,” but they seemed to get less probable every time, and all our spare moments together, which used to be so happy and care free, were now dark and harassed as the meetings of conspirators.
Even concealing the miserable things was a wearing anxiety. First we decided to divide them, Daisy to wear her half in the chamois bag hung around her neck, while I concealed mine in a money-belt worn under my clothes. We had about decided on that and I’d bought the belt, when we got the idea that if we were killed in an accident they’d be found on us, and then our memoirs would go down to posterity blackened with shame. So we just put them back in the bag and locked them up in Daisy’s jewel-case, round which we hovered as they say a murderer does round the hiding-place of his victim.
I never knew before how burglars felt; but if it was anything like the way Daisy and I did, I wonder anybody ever takes to that perilous trade. We were the most unhappy creatures in London, feeling ourselves a pair of thieves, and our unpolluted, innocent home no better than a “fence.” There was less in the papers about the Castlecourt diamonds robbery, but that did not give us any peace; for, in the first place, we didn’t know for certain that we had the Castlecourt diamonds, and, in the second, when we now and then did see dark allusions to the sleuths being “on a new and more promising scent,” we modestly supposed that we might be the quarry to which it led. Daisy began to talk of “going to prison” as a termination of her career that might not be so far distant, and to the thought of which she was growing reconciled.
This about covers the ground of my immediate connection with the stolen diamonds. Their subsequent disposition is a matter in which my wife is more concerned than I am. She also will be able to tell her part of the story with more literary frills than I can muster up. I’m no writing man, and all I’ve tried to do is to state my part of the affair honestly and clearly.
Statement of John Burns Gilsey, private
detective, especially engaged on
the Castlecourt diamond case.
Statement of John Burns Gilsey, private
detective, especially engaged on
the Castlecourt diamond case.
AT A quarter before eight on the evening of May fourth a telephone message was sent to Scotland Yard that a diamond necklace, the property of the Marquis of Castlecourt, had been stolen from Burridge’s Hotel. Brison, one of the best of their men, was detailed upon the case, and three days later my services were engaged by the marquis. After investigations which have occupied several weeks, I have become convinced that the case is an unusual and complicated one. The reasons which have led me to this conclusion I will now set down as briefly and clearly as possible.
As has already been stated in the papers, the diamonds, on the afternoon of the robbery, were standing in a leather jewel-case on the bureau in Lady Castlecourt’s apartment. To this room access was obtained by three doors—that which led into Lord Castlecourt’s room, that which led into the sitting-room, and that which led into the hall.