Dmitri stared at him incredulously. Yet the gems lay there before him. The boy spoke the truth. These were imperial in their beauty and value. He lifted the pendant, gazing intently at the Zarathustra ruby, the second largest in the world.
“The queen?” he repeated incredulously. “She is in Switzerland. She sent you here?”
“Not I.” Steccho laughed in derision, tightening his belt. “I am Ferad Steccho, a dog to be kicked and denied, you understand. The queen will thank Count Jurka, but I—I, Steccho, am the one who got the jewels for her, and it is you, my Dmitri, who will decide whether we ever give these to the queen who waits for them. That is why I come to you, not to hide me, but to tell me what to do.”
Dmitri’s thoughts centered on the name he had spoken, Jurka. The former court chamberlain, the ex-attaché who had been given the favor and confidence of the queen herself in the cataclysm of fate that had swept her throne from under her, the suave, faithful, blond Jurka. He watched the dark, eager face of the boy, touched with vivid high lights along point of chin, cheek, and nose by the firelight in the open grate.
“Do you think for one moment a man like Jurka would undertake this mission out of any loyalty or desire to assist a queen in exile unless—I did not think you would help to feather the nest of such a bird as Jurka.”
He checked himself abruptly. Steccho struck his clenched fists upon the table between them, the jewels unheeded as he poured out his words.
“I did not take them for him or for the queen. It was the price he demanded of me for the safety of my mother and sister.”
Dmitri glanced to the mantel where the letter lay. He had forgotten it in the surprise of Steccho’s coming, but now he waited to hear him out before he gave it to him.
“Jurka sent for me in Sofia. He was working with the relief committee there, a mask to hide behind merely. He remains an agent of the royalists. He told me these were part of the crown jewels. They had been stolen years ago by some Italian woman loved by the crown prince. He said they had traced them here to New York. What do I care for them?” He pushed the rubies from him resentfully. “I tell you they are unlucky. The rubies are for blood, the pearls for tears, always I hear my mother tell that. Here they were worn by an innocent girl—”
He stopped. Would he tell Dmitri all the truth, of the girl Carlota, whom his friend had loved, of her peril, and why he had taken the jewels from the keeping of the man who jeered at love?