"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