"But then, why should Mrs. Kildair value it at fifteen?" exclaimed Beecher.
"That's rather an interesting point," said McKenna, "and we'll touch on that later. The stone is as well known in the trade as John L. Sullivan to you and me. It was first sold in New Amsterdam in the year 1852 to a firm of Parisian jewelers. From them it was bought for a well-known, rather frisky lady called La Panthère by a Count d'Ussac, who ruined himself. La Panthère was killed later by a South American lover and her effects sold at auction. The ruby was bought by the firm of Gaspard Frères, and set in a necklace which was sold to the Princess de Grandliev. At the fall of the Second Empire, the necklace was broken up and this particular stone went over to England, where it was set in a ring and sold to a young dandy, the Earl of Westmorley, who was killed steeplechasing. A woman named Clara Hauk, an adventuress, had the ring in her possession, and successfully defeated the efforts of the family to regain it. She got into bad water in the '80's and sold it to a South African, who carried it off to the Transvaal with him. It reappeared in the offices of Gaspard Frères in 1891 on the finger of a young Austrian woman who sold it for twenty-two thousand dollars and disappeared without giving her name. An Italian, the Marchese di Rubino, bought it for a wedding present to his daughter, who kept it until 1900, when she pledged it to pay the gambling debts of her husband. It was then brought to this country by the wife of a Western rancher, who sold it five years later to Sontag & Co. The last sale known was just two months ago."
"Two months?" said Beecher, craning forward.
"The price, as I said, was thirty-two thousand, and the purchaser was a certain gentleman very much before the public now—John G. Slade."
This announcement was so entirely unexpected that it left the two young men staring at each other, absolutely incapable of speech.
"But then," said Gunther, the first to recover, "the ring was given her by Slade!"
"At a cost of thirty-two thousand," said the detective in a quick, businesslike tone.
"You are sure?"
"As positive as any one can be. There are only three other rings—"
"That's why she wanted to keep it quiet!" exclaimed Beecher, rousing himself from his stupor. The whole machination of Mrs. Kildair became comprehensible to him on the instant. "Now I see!"