“You know how those stories circulate. But the fact remains that Lloyd Harriman committed suicide several months after he acquired it.”
“What about Harriman’s suicide?”
“Well, there’s a question in my mind about that. I’ve got clippings on it.
“It looked like a suicide, right enough, but here’s a new theory suggested by a tabloid.
“Since Horace Chatham murdered Seth Wilkinson, maybe he knows something about Lloyd Harriman’s death. It’s a wild idea, but—” Burke paused in thought, then added “- but Chatham was in Florida when Harriman died; and I can’t find any trace of that purple sapphire after the time Harriman bought it.”
“So you suppose—”
“I don’t know what to suppose,” admitted Burke frankly. “I’m no detective, although when I was a police reporter I knew as much as any dick on the force. I don’t swallow this jinx stuff, as a rule; yet sometimes it seems to work.
“But let’s suppose that Chatham got hold of that sapphire. Then something would have happened to him.
Instead, the evidence shows that he killed Wilkinson.”
“Burke,” interposed Clarendon, “your ideas are interesting, even though they are scarcely tangible. There is a definite angle to this situation, however.