Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/122



HARLES URLEIGH, the free-lance reporter in Cincinnati, grew more and more interested in the Double Diamond Case, as he called it on his clipping file. He could not get over the feeling that he ought to find the inside story of the matter. Perhaps the nerve of the man who carried Goles's selection of diamonds to Judge C. Wrest and sold him upward of five thousand dollars' worth of the stolen stones struck Urleigh as the most interesting phase of the matter.

The reappearance of Goles, furtive and fleeting, with the diamonds stolen from Wrest, simply added to the impossibility of the story as he saw it from the news and detective standpoint. If Goles had not brought the stones to his own firm, and left them there, two alternatives were possible:

Goles had been killed; his list of customers found with the diamonds and Wrest worked for ready money. Or Goles himself had joined a conspiracy, and made a double raid on the gems within his reach.

Working on these theories, the case presented only normal aspects to the detectives and to the reporter 116