Early the next morning the following message went flashing over the
Western wires to Chicago, addressed thus:
"To JUSTIN CUTLER, ESQ.:—Crescents found. Come at once to identify.
Bring bogus ones.
"RIDER."
The detective then sought Mr. Palmer, but upon being informed that he was out of town, and would not return until the early part of the coming week, he related to Ray what had happened on the previous evening, and advised him to communicate the fact as soon as possible, to his father, and notify him that an examination would take place at ten o'clock on the following Tuesday.
Ray had already telegraphed, in answer to his father's message, that he would come to Hazeldean on Monday for the ball, and at first he thought he would make no change in his plans. The news was good news, and would keep for a day or two, he told himself.
But the detective's enthusiasm over the arrest was so contagious, he found himself wishing that his father could also know what had occurred.
He had an engagement for that evening—which was Saturday—so he could not go to Hazeldean that day, and finally contented himself by commissioning Mr. Rider to drop Mr. Palmer a message, giving him a hint of the arrest, and then arranged to go himself to explain more fully, by the Sunday evening train.
It almost seemed as if fate had purposely arranged it thus, that he might find Mona alone as he did, to declare his love, and win in return the confession of her affection for him.
The moment his father entered the house and met him, on his return from the evening service at the village, he realized that some great change had come over him; he was very different from the depressed, anxious-eyed son whom he had left only a few days previous.
He could hardly attribute it entirely to the news of the arrest of the supposed thief of the diamonds, and yet he could think of nothing else, for he firmly believed that Walter Dinsmore's niece had left New York after her uncle's death, and he had no reason to believe that Ray had found trace of her.