To make a long story short, I succeeded in satisfying Mr. Dunsany of my fitness to undertake the matter in hand. We concluded a defensive and offensive alliance. He let me understand that expense was to be no object. I saw him every day. We met at his club, which was as safe a place as we could find.
I gave him my full confidence, of course. With Roland's consent I told him everything that had occurred up to that time. Mr. Dunsany for his part had a whole file of evidence that he had quietly collected. He turned it over to me. It was interesting, and in the end valuable, but it had nothing to do with the case of the blue pearls.
We laid our plans with infinite care. There was no hurry now, and every move was planned in advance. Absolute secrecy was imperative. Mr. Dunsany and I agreed not to take a soul on earth into our confidence.
It was necessary to hire a small army of operatives. I did not figure in this. I had Peter Keenan, an old friend of mine, who was not known generally among my friends, act for me. Peter was a faithful, conscientious soul, not at all brilliant. He hired a suite of offices on Forty-second street and set up the "International Detective Agency." Peter was the nominal head, and Sadie the real directress of this establishment. Here the operatives were hired and sent on their errands. Each did his little task knowing nothing of the general plan.
Meanwhile Mr. B. Enderby was to be found all day in his office on Fortieth street with his feet on the desk, chinning with his young friends or composing a new play. You see the second cryptogram led me to suspect that they were aware of my identity, and in case I were watched, as I surely would be, I desired to give the impression that I had dropped all activities in connection with jewels or jewel thieves. I communicated with Sadie by letter. Uncle Sam is at once the most public and the safest messenger. For emergencies we arranged a system of telephone calls.
It would be a tedious task to set down all the routine work of the agency. There were mistakes, disappointments and blind trails without number. To begin with, Sadie was ordered to trace Freer, the pearl agent, also Sanford and Jones, the bogus jewellers, and any of their employees. All this entailed great labour, and it was absolutely barren of result. These people seemed to have vanished into thin air. In the case of Kenton Milbourne she was more successful. She wrote:
"In my character of Miss Covington the actress, I called on several of the women of Miss Hamerton's company who gave me their addresses when we disbanded. From their gossip I learned without having to ask questions, that Kenton Milbourne has not disappeared. They have all met him on Broadway. He is apparently living the ordinary life of an actor out of a job, going around to the different agencies to list his name, etc. His address is No. — West 49th street.
"I have allotted three of our best men to keep Milbourne under surveillance. The first, D.B., who has been an actor, is working independently of the other two. He has engaged a room in the same house and will make friends with M. The other two operatives, A.N. and S.C., are to trail him turn and turn about."
Thus the ground was laid out. Making my report in turn to Mr. Dunsany, I said: "It's all very well as far as it goes, but we must do some original work. Tracking the theft of Miss Hamerton's pearls is following a cold trail. Our work is destroyed by the fact that the jewels have been recovered. We must branch out."
"What do you propose?" said he.