Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/113

 collection of emeralds which has disappeared has always been what you Americans call 'hoodooed.' They have always brought ill luck, and, like many things of the sort to which superstition attaches, they have been 'banked,' so to speak, by their successive owners in museums."

"Are they salable; that is, could any one dispose of the emeralds or the other curios with, reasonable safety and at a good price?"

"Oh, yes, yes," hastened Dr. Lith, "not as collections, but separately. The emeralds alone cost fifty thousand dollars. I believe Mr. Spencer bought them for Mrs. Spencer some years before she died. She did not care to wear them, however, and had them placed here."

I thought I noticed a shade of annoyance cross the face of the magnate. "Never mind that," he interrupted. "Let me introduce Miss White. I think you will find her story one of the most uncanny you have ever heard."

He had placed a chair for her and, still addressing us but looking at her, went on: "It seems that the morning the vandalism was first discovered she and Dr. Lith at once began a thorough search of the building to ascertain the extent of the depredations. The search lasted all day, and well into the night. I believe it was midnight before you finished?"

"It was almost twelve," began the girl, in a musical voice that was too Parisian to harmonize with her plain Anglo-Saxon name, "when Dr. Lith was down here in his office checking off the objects in the catalogue which were either injured or missing. I had