Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/12

 three small stones in each. Then he struck Marietta, whence he wrote a note detailing his future course—as usual—but adding one significant sentence:

"I am obliged to use extreme care, for I find that I am followed."

Now this statement gave Ofsten & Groner considerable satisfaction. Goles was such a perfect salesman for the business that he worried the firm. They knew that he was unmarried, had no social life, spent his spare hours reading in the libraries, where he amassed volumes of notes about gems and the lore of gems. His suite of three rooms on the West Side, near the Museum of Natural History, contained a beautiful collection of books, documents, and ancient writings. Nothing had ever happened to Goles since he found the four pearls in the Fox River except that he invested in conservative stocks, with one exception. He bought a very cheap stock at 21, and later sold it at 478, thereby clearing a matter of forty-seven thousand dollars.

The fact of this little flier, known to the firm, worried its members. It was the sign of weakness, to their minds, and accordingly they had the National Agency shadow Goles on this trip down the Ohio Valley. He was carrying less than half as valuable an assortment as when he struck what the Maiden Lane gossips call "the wheat pit, cattle land, and