The Treasure-Train | Page 9

haven't heard--no one outside has heard--of the strange illness
and the robbery of my employer, Mr. Mansfield--'Diamond Jack'
Mansfield, you know."
Our visitor was a slight, very pretty, but extremely nervous girl, who
had given us a card bearing the name Miss Helen Grey.
"Illness--robbery?" repeated Kennedy, at once interested and turning a
quick glance at me.

I shrugged my shoulders in the negative. Neither the Star nor any of the
other papers had had a word about it.
"Why, what's the trouble?" he continued to Miss Grey.
"You see," she explained, hurrying on, "I'm Mr. Mansfield's private
secretary, and--oh, Professor Kennedy, I don't know, but I'm afraid it is
a case for a detective rather than a doctor." She paused a moment and
leaned forward nearer to us. "I think he has been poisoned!"
The words themselves were startling enough without the evident
perturbation of the girl. Whatever one might think, there was no doubt
that she firmly believed what she professed to fear. More than that, I
fancied I detected a deeper feeling in her tone than merely loyalty to
her employer.
"Diamond Jack" Mansfield was known in Wall Street as a successful
promoter, on the White Way as an assiduous first-nighter, in the
sporting fraternity as a keen plunger. But of all his hobbies, none had
gained him more notoriety than his veritable passion for collecting
diamonds.
He came by his sobriquet honestly. I remembered once having seen
him, and he was, in fact, a walking De Beers mine. For his personal
adornment, more than a million dollars' worth of gems did relay duty.
He had scores of sets, every one of them fit for a king of diamonds. It
was a curious hobby for a great, strong man, yet he was not alone in his
love of and sheer affection for things beautiful. Not love of display or
desire to attract notice to himself had prompted him to collect
diamonds, but the mere pleasure of owning them, of associating with
them. It was a hobby.
It was not strange, therefore, to suspect that Mansfield might, after all,
have been the victim of some kind of attack. He went about with
perfect freedom, in spite of the knowledge that crooks must have
possessed about his hoard.
"What makes you think he has been poisoned?" asked Kennedy,

betraying no show of doubt that Miss Grey might be right.
"Oh, it's so strange, so sudden!" she murmured.
"But how do you think it could have happened?" he persisted.
"It must have been at the little supper-party he gave at his apartment
last night," she answered, thoughtfully, then added, more slowly, "and
yet, it was not until this morning, eight or ten hours after the party, that
he became ill." She shuddered. "Paroxysms of nausea, followed by
stupor and such terrible prostration. His valet discovered him and sent
for Doctor Murray-- and then for me."
"How about the robbery?" prompted Kennedy, as it became evident
that it was Mansfield's physical condition more than anything else that
was on Miss Grey's mind.
"Oh yes"--she recalled herself--"I suppose you know something of his
gems? Most people do." Kennedy nodded. "He usually keeps them in a
safe-deposit vault downtown, from which he will get whatever set he
feels like wearing. Last night it was the one he calls his sporting-set
that he wore, by far the finest. It cost over a hundred thousand dollars,
and is one of the most curious of all the studies in personal adornment
that he owns. All the stones are of the purest blue-white and the set is
entirely based on platinum.
"But what makes it most remarkable is that it contains the famous
M-1273, as he calls it. The M stands for Mansfield, and the figures
represent the number of stones he had purchased up to the time that he
acquired this huge one."
"How could they have been taken, do you think?" ventured Kennedy.
Miss Grey shook her head doubtfully.
"I think the wall safe must have been opened somehow," she returned.
Kennedy mechanically wrote the number, M-1273, on a piece of paper.

"It has a weird history," she went on, observing what he had written,
"and this mammoth blue-white diamond in the ring is as blue as the
famous Hope diamond that has brought misfortune through half the
world. This stone, they say, was pried from the mouth of a dying negro
in South Africa. He had tried to smuggle it from the mine, and when he
was caught cursed the gem and every one who ever should own it. One
owner in Amsterdam failed; another in Antwerp committed suicide; a
Russian nobleman was banished to Siberia, and another went bankrupt
and lost his home and family. Now here it is in Mr. Mansfield's life. I--I
hate it!"