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Diamond Tolls. Raymond S. Spears
Читать онлайн.Название Diamond Tolls
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isbn 4064066065850
Автор произведения Raymond S. Spears
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
Now Charles Urleigh, being a free lance, had very many questionable acquaintances among his friends in public, financial, political, up-the-bank and down-the-river acquaintances. He knew the boss pig sticker in town, for example, and a hundred moored and tripping shanty-boaters on the river. He was a frequent visitor in the little back office of a certain liquor emporium where the upper met the lower world on terms something like equal. Now he sought his most questionable friends, one after another, and listened with acute ears to their suggestions.
Speaking of diamond robberies, Urleigh's friends were reminded of many other strange things which had happened and which had never been fully explained. Suppose Goles had disappeared—was that so unusual? It was astonishing how many people knew of men, women, and girls who had suddenly vanished from sight without leaving a trace behind them—not even a reason for their going. Lost diamonds, it was suggested, were more interesting than lost people merely because there were so few diamonds lost compared to the number of lost people.
Urleigh picked up a list of more than thirty people who had dropped out of sight within a year in that locality. A little inquiry revealed the fact that the list was far from complete—there were people right in his own circle, for example, who had packed up their duds and vanished from their boarding houses and left no trace behind them. Whole families changed their address from Known to Unknown. Even the post office delivery department received a steady stream of mail which they were obliged to turn back to the senders, or to the Dead Letter Office undelivered.
Thus the diamond robbery led to forty or fifty columns of stories suggested by the missing Goles and the double raid on precious gems. It was, from Urleigh's standpoint, a very satisfactory news story to begin with, and he recalled none that had given him a better income. It led to his reassorting the one hundred thousand clippings which were a chief part of his capital and indexing the six hundred box-drawers in which he stored them for ready reference. This same collection was very embarrassing to sundry people, for Urleigh was enabled to recall episodes in their lives which few remembered.
Literally hundreds of stories led down to the bank of the Ohio and there trails vanished—girls, women, children, and men were last seen going down Main, or John, or Cutter, or Woodburn, or State, or some other street or avenue "toward the river." It was this little phrase recurring so often that led Urleigh to write the news special headed "Toward the River" which attracted so much attention in newspaper circles a few weeks after Goles vanished.
Manager Grost told Urleigh that he had found no trace of Goles anywhere; neither had the diamonds nor rubies been recognized in any of the legitimate marts—but that meant nothing. The Diamond Trade had its Under World, through which wandered gems as precious and perhaps a thousand times more interesting than anything one could learn about the legitimate traffic of the surface trade, which by comparison is prosy and uneventful. The $200,000 worth of diamonds had sunk into this Under World, leaving hardly a trace.
"If you see a hundred thousand worth of diamonds above aboard and in the open," Grost explained, "there's a lost million somewhere!"
That exaggerated a condition, but sometimes it does seem as though gems drop from sight faster than any other form of wealth—and it is a fact that the Treasures of Solomon, of Inde, of the Spanish Main, of Rome, Carthage, Constantine—of countless kings and even nations, have vanished, leaving no trace, plowed under by Time.
"Then the chances are you'll never find those gems?" Urleigh asked,
"Looks like!" Grost admitted. "I tell you, there's something pretty bad in that double robbery. You just don't know whom to suspect, or which way to turn!"
Other stories, other things gradually crowded the Goles diamond case into the background. It seemed as though no new phase could enter into the matter now; but an astonishing word reached Manager Grost in the routine mail one morning. From the New York office arrived a letter relating to Case J-1416—the Goles case.
In matter of Obert Goles, missing with diamonds and rubies belonging to firm of Ofsten & Groner (see files) Goles arrived at office of the firm to-day bringing a black fishing tackle box containing a large number of diamonds. Putting the box on the counter, he said:
"There're those diamonds!"
Immediately he turned and left the store, every one too astonished to stop him. He was very seedy, clothes badly worn, hat a dirty gray. Face very haggard and unshaven.
When the diamonds were examined, they were found to exceed in value those with which he disappeared, but only a few of them were the same as those in the selection which he carried away. No rubies in this lot.
Please reopen the case energetically; these stones seem to be the ones stolen from Judge C. Wrest, your local case, J-1416a. Ofsten & Groner are examining records to make certain that they are gems from Wrest collection.
"Now that just beats Hades!" Grost exclaimed to himself. "What's the reason?"
A messenger arrived from the telegraph office, and this confirmed the suggestion in the order regarding cases J-1416 and J-1416a.
"Records show that gems are identical with sales to Wrest," the code resolved the message.
Grost brought out the records in the two cases. With these records were hundreds of clippings from newspapers, including the Urleigh articles which were authoritative and accurate; the records were the reports of the detectives who had been assigned to the cases, and tips which had been received by anonymous letters and reward seekers.
He went over them all. He saw, of course, new angles of the subject now—many things might have happened which no one had dreamed happened. What could that seedy man, Goles, bringing in those Wrest diamonds and then taking his departure, tell? What was it that troubled his conscience or stirred his mind?
Grost was an able student of psychology, and he had made his success in detective work, doping out the minds of criminals and of subjects of his inquiry. Here was a subject worthy of his best practical study. He could see a dozen different things that might have happened, perhaps the most obvious one being the supposition that Goles had stolen away with his case of gems, and then become troubled by his conscience.
"But why didn't he bring back those gems he absconded with?" Grost asked himself. "Why and how did he fall upon the Wrest diamonds?"
Then again:
"Where are the Ofsten & Groner diamonds and rubies?" Grost asked again, without any reasonable reply.
As this report had been sent, in substance, to all the branches of the National Agency, Grost had no compunctions about calling in Urleigh and telling him the latest development in cases J-1416 and J-1416a.
"Only don't head it from this town," he grinned. "You might date-line it at Pittsburgh. That'd suit me very well. They've been laying talks up there onto me from time to time!"
"Pittsburgh it is, then!" Urleigh grinned.
Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
A LITTLE white cabin-boat floated down the Ohio and swung around in the eddies where the green waters rubbed with the yellow of the Mississippi. On the bow, standing at the sweeps, was a slender, blue-eyed girl with wavy brown hair; she was tanned, and the light and wind caused her to squint ever so little. Apparently she was at her ease, as though she knew the river, but when she pulled the sweeps, she looked around uncertainly, as though wondering which way the boat