Mr. Cunningham involuntarily put out his hand for the bauble as the detective passed him, but Jones shook his head with a smile, as he returned to the front of the room and placed the objects on the table before the coroner.
Coroner Graves examined with meticulous care the sheaf of bills, the empty box. Then he put them aside and turned his attention to the stoneless ring.
"Odd, very odd," he said. "Why should a man like Mr. Darwin preserve a stoneless ring?"
"I think I can explain that," said the lawyer, coming forward very leisurely. "May I look at it?" He held out his hand and the coroner placed the ring within it. "Ah, yes, it is the same." He handed it back with a courteous air, but I could not help feeling that somehow he was merely amused by the attempts of the coroner to solve the problem. But it must have been my own overwrought fancy, for his voice was sinister enough through its throatiness, as he said:
"My client, as perhaps you know, was very fond of the ladies. Before his marriage he met a very beautiful young lady—her name does not matter, it was not her own, for she was an actress, I believe—of whom he became very fond. In fact, he told me he was going to engage himself to her, and showed me that ring which he had bought her. It held within that now broken setting a magnificent blue-white diamond. If you will look within you will see the inscription which Mr. Darwin had engraved upon it."
He paused, as much to rest his voice as to give the coroner the opportunity of reading aloud for the benefit of the jury the sentiment which graced the ring: "To my one love—D."
"I remonstrated with him, told him she would take the ring and leave him high and dry, but he would not listen and bestowed it upon her," resumed the lawyer. "A week later he received a letter from her enclosing that." He waved his hand toward the golden circlet contemptuously. "She had kept the diamond and returned him his ring. She left the country and he never heard from her again. Why he kept that empty shell I don't know. Perhaps he put it in the safe and forgot it was there."
"Where did you find it, Jones?" asked the coroner.
"In one corner of the top shelf. I only discovered it because as I passed my hand over the shelf the broken prong scratched me," replied Jones.
The coroner nodded. "A thin bit of gold not worth considering," he said, adding as the lawyer was about to return to his seat: "Mr. Cunningham, do you know Mr. Darwin's nephew?"