THE COUNTESS' DIAMOND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVIII, Issue 81918, 23 February 1907, Page 4

THE COUNTESS' DIAMOND.

(In Three Chapters.)

CHAPTER I.

Let me own up at once that I had gone into that room where the conspirators had their trial, for nothing more or lesa than a common burglary. It is a horrible thing for a man in a position like "mine then was to have to confess, but I may as well make a clean breast of the truth.

I had been heavily dipped for over two years; it had taken all the cleverness I could think of to keep in the regiment; and a bad Doncaster week and then a regular crashing bad night at poker put the lid on my professional coffin for once and always. 1 had no choice but to send in my papers, and I came up to tow u to try and think out what must come next. It was the glint of that woman's diamonds in the hotel diningroom which gave me the hint; and although the bare idea of tho thing made me shiver with cold at first, the more I thought of it, the more it seemed that there was no other road out of the mud. Now never mind which hotel all this happened in ; it wns one of the big ones in Northumberland Avenue ; and there were 6ome two hundred people, all well dressed, chattering away in the dining-room. The woman with the diamonds was at the next table, with her back to me. Phe was wearing a gown that ill Bwear hadn't been out of Paris a week. She'd dark red hair, small cars, and as fine a neck as one could wish to see. And on her neck and in her hair she'd great white glittering gems, which made my mouth dry v ith longing when I looked at them. I knew that there must have been ten or twelve thousand sovereigns sunk in those stones. I wa9 a judge of jewellery then; heaven knows I had bought enough of it for one woman and another since I had left Sandhurst.

I looked off and on at the back of that neck and hair in a dazed sort of way lor quite ten minutes, and then an idea jumped into my head which made me sigh and turn away. But the impudent glitter of the necklace and the stars drew me back, and presently I found myself pushing the claret aside and ordering a small bottle of 'B4 Krug. As we sat, she was not a yard away, and every time she moved, the scent from her hair and her dress came to me in tiny waves. Once she turned half round to look down the room. She was deliciously beautiful. I guessed her age as rising twenty-three. She was dining with two men, and the trio of them spoke French; but though they rattled out Parisian argot with easy fluency, I could see that the language was not their native tongue. After a while I grasped tho fact that they were all three Russians. The man with the torpedo beard was named Parloff, and apparently served in the navy; and the clean shaved fellow with the high pitched voice, was Dimitri something or other. Dimitri seemed by his manner to be a gentleman. He called the lady in the diamonds " Sonia," and they appeared to be on terms of easy familiarity. But Parloff addressed her as " Countess," and seemed instinctively to take the role of social inferior, whether he wished to or not. It was to the vague Dimitri I owed the hint which turned me from a mere spectator who could covet, into the active-fingered burglar. "By the way," I heard him say, " that isn't paste, Sonia, which you're wearing to-night, I suppose 1 " " You are paying a very poor compliment to my diamonds." " Ma chere, you are next them, and you always outshine mere jewellery." " Pouf I " she said, " how broad ! You must have been practising your compliments on English barmaids during these last weeks since you've been in London."

" Ah ! " he answered, " I've been in queer company since I saw you last, Sonia. Our excellent friends here are more noted for their earnestness than their polish. And moreover they are few of them affluent. It would be rather hard to flaunt those stones before them."

" Oh, Dimitri," she said, " how dreadfully thoughtless of me! Poor fellows, I know how hard-up some of them must be."

" And the passage down to the—er —to our place of-entertainment tonight is quite dark," said Dimitri, " and it would be a pity to tempt even canaille to steal."

"Do not call any of our friends canaille," said the man with the torpedo beard. " The Cause makes us all equal." " Theoretically," said Dimitr! with details of dress and dinners, for instance. I much prefer that thoso should remain dealt out as they are already. But ParlofT's quite right about your more movable ornaments. Shall we go out and have our coffee in the hall ? Those barbarous English object to our smoking a cigarette in the room where we eat."

" You order coffee and your petits verres," said the Countess, " and I'll go up to No. Forty-one and take off these diamonds, and be with you in a coupler" of minutes. I suppose we needn't leave the hotel for another hour yet ?—" She glanced up at the clock— "It is twelve minutes to nine now, and we ar,e not due there till ten."

Dimitri rose to his feet and picked up her fan. " It's quite half an hour's drive. We must leave here by ninethirty. The business will be over by

And that was all I heard. The chatter of the great room drowned the rest of his words, and I stared after them stupidly till they had passed out of the room, and a bowing waiter had let the swing doore close noiselessly upon Parlofi's heels. I ordered another small bottle oi champagne, and held a hissing goblet in the grip of my hand. Bu,t I did not drink. My mind was in a boil. I was arguing with myself how a man would feel when he had chucked even the rudiments of honour to tho winds, and become a common pilferer and thief. It opened up a vista of now ideas; since things had been going awkwardly with me, I had conceived various kinds of fall, but never a descent like this, and for the time 1 felt all crumpled up. I did not drink the wine, and it slopped by degrees over the table cloth. Once my waiter came and asked me if he could bring me anything else. " Yes," I said, " a small-scale map of the infernal regions." Upon which he looked puzzled, and left me, and 1 sat on in my place till the last of the diners had left, and I had the great room to myself. Then they opened some windows, and the sound came in of the Westminster clock chiming ten. I let go the wine glass, and it rolled to the floor and tinkled into fragments. Then with a shiver I rose to my feet and went out into the hall. A honeymoon couple were whispering on one of the 6ofas ; a man in,a silk hat snored from the depths of a big chair; and there was not another soul in the place excepting officials. The hum of London came dimly in through the doors from Northumberland Avenue; but within, the great hotel was enjoying one of its lulls. I strolled all through tho public rooms. The Russians were certainly gone, and to myself I pictured them with some certainty as taking part at that very moment in some secret assemblage of Nihilists. I lit a cigar uud got into a chair and tried to think. But no thoughts would come consecutively. All the while a number clanged through my head with maddening reiteration. " Forty and one ! Forty and one ! One and forty ! " Fortune and the Countess seemed to bo openly playing into my hands. Ten thousand pounds' worth of diamonds. • . . . Empty pockets " The maids will not be responsible for any valiablss lost from the bedrooms." .... No chance of being caught.

(To be Continued.)