at this, and told me he had received such a letter. 'But you did not
send the money?' I ventured, 'No,' he said, 'I did not. The fact is,
money is very tight in Chicago just now, and so I cabled her to run on
her debts for a while.' This exactly bore out the conclusion at which I
had already arrived. So now, having failed to get money from her father,
the lady turns to her diamonds, the only security she possesses. The
chances are that she did so before her father's cable message came, and
that was the reason she so confidently wished information to be given to
the police. She expected to have money to redeem her jewels, and being a
bright woman, she knew the traditional stupidity of the official police,
and so thought there was no danger of her little ruse being discovered.
But when the cable message came saying no money would be sent her, a
different complexion was put upon the whole affair, for she did not know
but if the police were given plenty of time they might stumble on the
diamonds."

"But, my dear Cadbury, why should she not have taken the diamonds openly
and raised money on them?"

"My dear fellow, there are a dozen reasons, any one of which will
suffice where a woman is in the case. In the first place, she might fear
to offend the family pride of the von Steinheimers; in the second place,
we cannot tell what her relations with her husband were. She may not
have wished him to know that she was short of money. But that she has
stolen her own diamonds there is not the slightest question in my mind.
All that is necessary for me to do now is to find out how many persons
there are in Vienna who would lend large sums of money on valuable
jewels. The second is to find with which one of those the Princess
pawned her diamonds."