Page:Weird Tales volume 31 number 03.djvu/32

 Slowly, then, Priscilla Luce smiled. Surprizingly, her marriage had turned out an emotional as well as a financial success; she was truly grateful to and in love with Gregory, now. There had been an unsuspected tinge of romanticism in him, after all; on their wedding day he had given her his grandmother's emerald brooch, set with its great, flawless, square-cut stone—and the ruby and emerald tiara. And today he had brought her a Cartier bracelet, also of cool green emerald

Languidly she arose and walked to the south wall. Here, between the two windows, hung a single, exquisite little etching. Priscilla Luce reached up, swung the etching back on cleverly concealed hinges, twirled the combination of the blued-steel wall-safe

In the moment that she reached inside the tiny safe Priscilla Luce knew that someone other than herself had handled the little leather-bound jewel-cases within.

For a moment she stood stock-still. Then, carefully, she began to remove the jewel-cases, opening and examining each one.

When she had finished she walked to the dressing-table and sat down. She knew that she would not tell Gregory tonight; she would wear the Cartier bracelet, and he would not know; his evening would not be spoiled. But she would have to tell him, tomorrow, and they would have to decide what to do

The emerald brooch and the priceless old tiara were gone!

And very clearly Priscilla Luce realized that the thief was someone they knew someone they trusted

She stared at herself in the mirror. She was beginning to feel frightened, beginning to feel a sick, anticipatory dread

Police Commissioner Charles B. Ethredge received Priscilla Luce's enigmatic and disturbingly urgent telephone call he lost no time in getting to the Vermont marble and Bethlehem steel palace the Luce millions had built, ten years before, for Gregory Luce's young bride. "It concerns Mary, terribly," his fiancee's cousin had said, her voice taut and strange, "but do not, under any circumstances, tell her that I have called you."

Priscilla Luce met him in the library. She greeted him with grave gratitude; as soon as they were seated she began almost bruskly to speak.

"I called you, Charles, because you are both influential and discreet, and because you are vitally concerned in what I have to say. Charles, do you know anything of a psychiatrist who came to town about fourteen months ago—a man who calls himself Dmitri?"

Ethredge nodded.

"Why, yes, I have heard of him; Mary attended one of his Thursday evenings a week or two ago with Helen Stacey-Forbes. Helen is enthusiastic about what he seems to have done for Ronald."

Priscilla Luce smiled thinly. "It seems strange that Ronald was never ill until after he met this Dmitri. Do you know anything more about the man?"

"Yes," Ethredge grunted, "I do. Dmitri is a sensationalist. The more conservative psychiatrists have tried to convict him of extortion, of making Messianic and unfulfillable promises, of other unethical and even criminal practises. As he is still practising, their attempts, needless to say, have all failed."

Priscilla Luce nodded.

"What did Mary say about him?"

Ethredge grinned.

"Very little. Said that she was W. T.—2