“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 who ever should own it.  One owner in Amsterdam failed; another in Antwerp committed suicide; a Russian nobleman was banished to Siberia, and another went bankrupt and lost his home and family.  Now here it is in Mr. Mansfield’s life.  I—­I hate it!” I could not tell whether it was the superstition or the recent events themselves which weighed most in her mind, but, at any rate, she resumed, somewhat bitterly, a moment later:  “M-1273!  M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, and 1, 2, 7, 3 add up to thirteen.  The first and last numbers make thirteen, and John Mansfield has thirteen letters in his name.  I wish he had never worn the thing—­never bought it!”

The more I listened to her the more impressed I was with the fact that there was something more here than the feeling of a private secretary.

“Who were in the supper-party?” asked Kennedy.

“He gave it for Madeline Hargrave—­the pretty little actress, you know, who took New York by storm last season in ‘The Sport’ and is booked, next week, to appear in the new show, ‘The Astor Cup.’”

Miss Grey said it, I thought, with a sort of wistful envy.  Mansfield’s gay little bohemian gatherings were well known.  Though he was not young, he was still somewhat of a Lothario.

“Who else was there?” asked Kennedy.

“Then there was Mina Leitch, a member of Miss Hargrave’s new company,” she went on.  “Another was Fleming Lewis, the Wall Street broker.  Doctor Murray and myself completed the party.”

“Doctor Murray is his personal physician?” ventured Craig.