“But how did you get it?” the lady cop exclaimed, on seeing it. “When I learned that the gamblers did not take it on their flight, I gave it up. Thought it was burned in their cottage.”
Florence held up a hand. It had been Jeanne’s decree that she should tell the story. “You will remember,” Florence began, “that it was my good fortune to be permitted to pour a few quarts of water from the lungs of a gypsy child.”
“In other words, you saved her life,” suggested the lady cop.
“Something like that. The gypsies are a loyal and grateful people. I have always known that. From the time I saved her child’s life, that gypsy mother had it in mind to repay the service. She has done it. Three nights ago she told me the answer to the riddles that have vexed our minds and lost us sleep. Yes, she even told me where I would find the three oriental rubies, which were so unfairly taken from Miss Erie.”
“The—the rubies!” The Erie girl sprang to her feet.
Tillie pulled her down. “Wait!” she whispered.
At that moment Florence felt her heart sink to her shoes. What if, for once, the uncanny knowledge of the gypsy woman had failed? What if the three rubies were, after all, irrevocably lost?
“The die is cast,” she told herself sternly. “I must go on.”
“You will recall,” she said, turning to the lady cop, “that on the night when we first entered your cabin we, Petite Jeanne and I, had just had our rowboat swamped by some reckless, or willfully wicked people in a speed boat.”
The lady cop nodded.