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Page 93
When I obeyed his summons I found him pacing excitedly up and
down the central room, while the old soldier who guarded the
premises stood with military stiffness in a corner.
"My dear Jackson," he cried, "I am so delighted that you have
come, for this is a most inexplicable business."
"What has happened, then?"
He waved his hand towards the case which contained the
breastplate.
"Look at it," said he.
I did so, and could not restrain a cry of surprise. The
setting of the middle row of precious stones had been profaned in
the same manner as the upper ones. Of the twelve jewels eight had
been now tampered with in this singular fashion. The setting of
the lower four was neat and smooth. The others jagged and
irregular.
"Have the stones been altered?" I asked.
"No, I am certain that these upper four are the same which the
expert pronounced to be genuine, for I observed yesterday that
little discoloration on the edge of the emerald. Since they have
not extracted the upper stones, there is no reason to think the
lower have been transposed. You say that you heard nothing,
Simpson?"
"No, sir," the commissionaire answered. "But when I made my
round after daylight I had a special look at these stones, and I
saw at once that someone had been meddling with them. Then I
called you, sir, and told you. I was backwards and forwards all
night, and I never saw a soul or heard a sound."
"Come up and have some breakfast with me," said Mortimer, and
he took me into his own chambers.--"Now, what DO you think of
this, Jackson?" he asked.
"It is the most objectless, futile, idiotic business that ever
I heard of. It can only be the work of a monomaniac."
"Can you put forward any theory?"
A curious idea came into my head. "This object is a Jewish
relic of great antiquity and sanctity," said I. "How about the
anti-Semitic movement? Could one conceive that a fanatic of that
way of thinking might desecrate----"
"No, no, no!" cried Mortimer. "That will never do! Such a man
might push his lunacy to the length of destroying a Jewish relic,
but why on earth should he nibble round every stone so carefully
that he can only do four stones in a night? We must have a better
solution than that, and we must find it for ourselves, for I do not
think that our inspector is likely to help us. First of all, what
do you think of Simpson, the porter?"
"Have you any reason to suspect him?"
"Only that he is the one person on the premises."
"But why should he indulge in such wanton destruction? Nothing
has been taken away. He has no motive."
"Mania?"
"No, I will swear to his sanity."
"Have you any other theory?"
"Well, yourself, for example. You are not a somnambulist, by
any chance?"
"Nothing of the sort, I assure you."
"Then I give it up."
"But I don't--and I have a plan by which we will make it all
clear."
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