Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/190

166 mediately. Delroy unwrapped a bundle and laid it on the table. It was a little cage of fine but exceedingly strong gilt wire, closely meshed.

“My dear,” he began, turning to his wife, “you know I took your necklace to Tiffany’s just before we came out here, and left it for them to examine. They seemed rather puzzled by its condition—rather sceptical about its having changed so suddenly—and they asked me to leave it until to-day. When I went back after it, their expert gave me a long lecture about the action of fatty acids and the danger of leaving pearls shut up in air-tight safe-deposit boxes. I assured him that these hadn’t been shut up—they haven’t, have they, Edith?”

“No, of course not,” answered his wife promptly.

“I thought not, but I doubt if he fully believed me. Finally he said that in a case so unusual as this, it would be well to try the sea-water treatment before proceeding to anything more heroic—peeling, for instance.”

“Not very encouraging,” remarked Drysdale.

“Oh, I didn’t stop there. I drove from Tiffany’s up to that queer little Italian jewel-store—Contiani’s—on Thirty-third Street. Contiani himself was there and he grew quite excited when he saw the stones and heard the story. He said that a sea-bath was unquestionably the best thing for them—in fact, he advised it most strongly. The stones are getting deader and deader, so to speak.”

He took up the case from the table and snapped it open. The necklace lay before them, a dull, clammy white.