“Come to the hotel, then, and lunch with me, and I’ll open up the whole thing.”
Across a luncheon-table, at the quiet, old-fashioned Hotel Denton, Kirby unburdened himself.
“You know all that’s necessary about me. The—the other party in the matter is Mrs. Hale. She’s a young widow. We’ve been engaged for six months; were to be married in a fortnight. Now she insists on a postponement. That’s where I want your help.”
Average Jones moved uneasily in his chair. “Really, Mr. Kirby, lovers’ quarrels aren’t in my line.”
“There’s been no quarrel. We’re as much engaged now as ever, in spite of the return of the ring. It’s only her infern—her deep-rooted superstition that’s caused this trouble. One can’t blame her; her father and mother were both killed in an accident after some sort of ‘ghostly warning.’ The first thing I gave her, after our engagement, was a necklace of these stones”—he tapped his scarf pin—“that I’d selected, one by one, myself. They’re beautiful, as you see, but they’re not particularly valuable; only semiprecious. The devil of it is that they’re the subject of an Indian legend. The Indians and Mexicans call them “blue fires,” and say they have the power to bind and loose in love. Edna has been out in that country; she’s naturally high strung and responsive to that sort of thing, as I told you, and she fairly soaked in all that nonsense. To make it worse, when I sent them to her I wrote that—that—” a dull red surged up under the tan skin—“that as long as the fire in the stones burned blue for her my heart would be all hers. Now the necklace is gone. You can imagine the effect on a woman of that temperament. And you can see the result.” He pointed with a face of misery to the solitaire on his watch-chain. “She insisted on giving this back. Says that a woman as careless as she proved herself can’t be trusted with jewelry. And she’s hysterically sure that misfortune will follow us for ever if we’re married without recovering the fool necklace. So she’s begged a postponement.”
“Details,” said Average Jones crisply.
“She’s here at this hotel. Has a small suite on the third floor. Came down from her home in central New York to meet my mother, whom she had never seen. Mother’s here, too, on the same floor. Night before last Mrs. Hale thought she heard a noise in her outer room. She made a look-see, but found nothing. In the morning when she got up, about ten (she’s a late riser) the necklace was gone.”
“Where had it been left?”
“On a stand in her sitting-room.”
“Anything else taken?”