“You are an evil spirit!” gasped Bernice. “You have eyes in this house when you are away in New York.”
“Mrs. Maynard followed her husband on his return to his room,” continued Nick. “There she resented his charges, explained her purpose in taking the diamonds, and demanded their return to her custody. But she had asked for money for her son that day, and Mr. Maynard would not listen to her story. He believed that she had stolen the gems for the purpose of enriching her son at the expense of the nephew.
“After a time the woman tried to take the diamonds by force, and a struggle took place, during which she was thrown to the floor, her head striking on the corner of the lounge, inflicting the wound which she afterward ascribed to a blow from the burglar. Anton, who was watching and listening in the hall, heard the fall, and entered the room just in time to see Mr. Maynard bending over his mother in a threatening attitude.
“Just before leaving his room he had used a geologist’s hammer in fixing a box in which he proposed to hide and ship the diamonds. Unconsciously he carried this hammer in his hand when he entered the front room. Seeing his mother insensible on the floor, and Mr. Maynard bending over her in an angry attitude, the young man had every right to believe that he was acting for the best, when he bounded forward and struck the man a violent blow on the head. Mr. Maynard fell dead.
“Alarmed at what he had done, the young man hastened to place the body on the bed and apply restoratives, but it was too late. He then revived his mother and carried her back to her room.
“While all these events had been going on, Bernice had been waiting at the end of the hall leading to the servants’ quarters. She was expecting that Anton would eventually bring her the box containing the diamonds. When Mr. Maynard fell dead, Anton took the diamonds to his room, after a distressing interview with his mother, who was inconsolable at the death of her husband, whose last words to her had been words of anger and reproach. The mother protested without avail against the larceny of the gems. Anton was determined to profit by the events of the night.
“Anton carried the diamonds to his room and secreted them in a box in the closet. The geologist’s hammer with which the murder had been committed was placed on a shelf in the same closet, after being cleared from the marks of the blow, by wiping it on a towel which hung in the closet. This hammer has a break on one side of the striking surface, and this shows in the wound on the dead man.”
“Is all this necessary?” asked the mother, greatly distressed at the details of the killing of her husband.
“It seems to be,” was the reply. “When Anton closed his door, Bernice crept down the hall and listened. She waited there until the young man’s light was extinguished. Then she realized that it was not his intention to trust her with the diamonds. You see, Anton had doubtless decided to deny everything, not knowing that the girl had been a witness of the murder.
“Then the burglars came. They had followed the diamonds from New York, and would have entered the house earlier, only that they understood that something unusual was in progress on the inside. During the absence of Anton in his stepfather’s room they had raised a ladder to a window of his room. One of them had looked through the window while Anton gloated over the diamonds.