"What about?"
"Oh! He said he had lost a 'political paper.'..."
It then occurred to me that during the past few days my husband had been somewhat strange and embarrassed in his manner. We had a conversation about the "political paper," and he finally admitted that he "had mislaid a letter of President Faure...."
"I can guess what has happened," I said. "That man came again and demanded from you a proof that the documents were still in our possession. You had to show them to him, and one dropped... which the man promptly seized, no doubt, and as the letters are numbered you discovered when examining them that one had disappeared. Those papers are not safe in your studio. Give them back to me."
He readily consented, and I hid it in the "secret" drawer of my writing-table, after having carefully looked through the documents and found that none was missing, except the "mislaid" letter, which was, however, written in a cypher known only to the President and myself.
During the years that followed, the mysterious foreigner continued to call, and, as the reader will learn, did so until a few weeks before the murder of my husband and my mother in 1908. I am inclined to believe that the necklace was a crown jewel which, by a series of strange events, came into the possession of President Faure. That the "German" should have spent so much time in exacting the pearls seems strange, but it has occurred to me that the man was playing a double game, blackmailing not only us—I doubt if M. Steinheil was ever paid for the pearls—but also the personage who was so anxious to recover them. By giving them up a few at a time, he naturally kept that personage longer in his power.
As for the way in which the necklace came into the President's possession, I take it that some foreign... Prince, with whom perhaps, for political reasons, he ought not to have been on intimate terms, had very probably lost heavily to him at a secret gambling party. Félix Faure was paid with the necklace instead of in cash, owing to the temporary financial embarrassment of his illustrious friend. The latter then, to his horror, found out the origin of the necklace and that it had been stolen—for it seemed to me that there had probably been a robbery. If the truth had leaked out, both the President and his friend would have been involved in a scandal of such far-reaching political consequences that perhaps a war might have resulted. In their consternation, they agreed to deny all knowledge of the necklace, hence the agitation of the President, who had already given me the pearls and who two days later begged me to hide them and on no account to wear them.
The "foreigner" was probably a professional blackmailer, and when he found that nothing more was to be done with the pearls and that his livelihood from that source was gone, sought to turn to his advantage the knowledge which he had gained from my husband (always too ready to give his confidence to any one who posed as his friend) of Félix Faure's documents.
I earnestly hope that some day the mystery will be solved. My theory may then be found wanting in certain particulars, but I believe that, on the whole, it will seem, to the reader, the most plausible.