“I explained that I had been robbed, in a French railway-carriage, of a diamond-necklace belonging to the Queen of England, which her Majesty was sending as a present to the Czarina of Russia.  I pointed out to him that if he succeeded in capturing the thief he would be made for life, and would receive the gratitude of three great powers.

“He wasn’t the sort that thinks second thoughts are best.  He saw Russian and French decorations sprouting all over his chest, and he hit a bell, and pressed buttons, and yelled out orders like the captain of a penny-steamer in a fog.  He sent her description to all the city-gates, and ordered all cabmen and railway-porters to search all trains leaving Marseilles.  He ordered all passengers on outgoing vessels to be examined, and telegraphed the proprietors of every hotel and pension to send him a complete list of their guests within the hour.  While I was standing there he must have given at least a hundred orders, and sent out enough commissaires, sergeants de ville, gendarmes, bicycle-police, and plain-clothes Johnnies to have captured the entire German army.  When they had gone he assured me that the woman was as good as arrested already.  Indeed, officially, she was arrested; for she had no more chance of escape from Marseilles than from the Chateau D’If.

“He told me to return to my hotel and possess my soul in peace.  Within an hour he assured me he would acquaint me with her arrest.

“I thanked him, and complimented him on his energy, and left him.  But I didn’t share in his confidence.  I felt that she was a very clever woman, and a match for any and all of us.  It was all very well for him to be jubilant.  He had not lost the diamonds, and had everything to gain if he found them; while I, even if he did recover the necklace, would only be where I was before I lost them, and if he did not recover it I was a ruined man.  It was an awful facer for me.  I had always prided myself on my record.  In eleven years I had never mislaid an envelope, nor missed taking the first train.  And now I had failed in the most important mission that had ever been intrusted to me.  And it wasn’t a thing that could be hushed up, either.  It was too conspicuous, too spectacular.  It was sure to invite the widest notoriety.  I saw myself ridiculed all over the Continent, and perhaps dismissed, even suspected of having taken the thing myself.

“I was walking in front of a lighted cafe, and I felt so sick and miserable that I stopped for a pick-me-up.  Then I considered that if I took one drink I would probably, in my present state of mind, not want to stop under twenty, and I decided I had better leave it alone.  But my nerves were jumping like a frightened rabbit, and I felt I must have something to quiet them, or I would go crazy.  I reached for my cigarette-case, but a cigarette seemed hardly adequate, so I put it back again and took out this cigar-case, in which I keep only the strongest and blackest cigars.  I opened it and stuck in my fingers, but, instead of a cigar, they touched on a thin leather envelope.  My heart stood perfectly still.  I did not dare to look, but I dug my finger-nails into the leather, and I felt layers of thin paper, then a layer of cotton, and then they scratched on the facets of the Czarina’s diamonds!