Amelia explained to him what Mrs. O’Hagan had said.  Charles took it all in at once, with his usual sagacity.  “That explains,” he said, “why the rascal used this particular trick to draw us on by.  If we had suspected him he could have shown the diamonds were real, and so escaped detection.  It was a blind to draw us off from the fact of the robbery.  He went to Paris to be out of the way when the discovery was made, and to get a clear day’s start of us.  What a consummate rogue!  And to do me twice running!”

“How did he get at my jewel-case, though?” Amelia exclaimed.

“That’s the question,” Charles answered.  “You do leave it about so!”

“And why didn’t he steal the whole rivière at once, and sell the gems?” I inquired.

“Too cunning,” Charles replied.  “This was much better business.  It isn’t easy to dispose of a big thing like that.  In the first place, the stones are large and valuable; in the second place, they’re well known—­every dealer has heard of the Vandrift rivière, and seen pictures of the shape of them.  They’re marked gems, so to speak.  No, he played a better game—­took a couple of them off, and offered them to the only one person on earth who was likely to buy them without suspicion.  He came here, meaning to work this very trick; he had the links made right to the shape beforehand, and then he stole the stones and slipped them into their places.  It’s a wonderfully clever trick.  Upon my soul, I almost admire the fellow.”

For Charles is a business man himself, and can appreciate business capacity in others.

How Colonel Clay came to know about that necklet, and to appropriate two of the stones, we only discovered much later.  I will not here anticipate that disclosure.  One thing at a time is a good rule in life.  For the moment he succeeded in baffling us altogether.

However, we followed him on to Paris, telegraphing beforehand to the Bank of France to stop the notes.  It was all in vain.  They had been cashed within half an hour of my paying them.  The curate and his wife, we found, quitted the Hôtel des Deux Mondes for parts unknown that same afternoon.  And, as usual with Colonel Clay, they vanished into space, leaving no clue behind them.  In other words, they changed their disguise, no doubt, and reappeared somewhere else that night in altered characters.  At any rate, no such person as the Reverend Richard Peploe Brabazon was ever afterwards heard of—­and, for the matter of that, no such village exists as Empingham, Northumberland.

We communicated the matter to the Parisian police.  They were most unsympathetic.  “It is no doubt Colonel Clay,” said the official whom we saw; “but you seem to have little just ground of complaint against him.  As far as I can see, messieurs, there is not much to choose between you.  You, Monsieur le Chevalier, desired to buy diamonds at the price of paste.  You, madame, feared you had bought paste at the price of diamonds.  You, monsieur the secretary, tried to get the stones from an unsuspecting person for half their value.  He took you all in, that brave Colonel Caoutchouc—­it was diamond cut diamond.”