Diamonds! I stared, fascinated, at the glassy heap on the bunk. I picked up one which, but for the weight, might have been a fragment of broken bottle.
“Are you sure, Suzanne?”
“Oh, yes, my dear. I’ve seen rough diamonds too often to have any doubts. They’re beauties too, Anne—and some of them are unique, I should say. There’s a history behind these.”
“The history we heard to-night,” I cried.
“You mean——?”
“Colonel Race’s story. It can’t be a coincidence. He told it for a purpose.”
“To see its effect, you mean?”
I nodded.
“Its effect on Sir Eustace?”
“Yes.”
But, even as I said it, a doubt assailed me. Was it Sir Eustace who had been subjected to a test, or had the story been told for my benefit? I remembered the impression I had received on that former night of having been deliberately “pumped.” For some reason or other, Colonel Race was suspicious. But where did he come in? What possible connection could he have with the affair?
“Who is Colonel Race?” I asked.
“That’s rather a question,” said Suzanne. “He’s pretty well known as a big-game hunter, and, as you heard him say to-night, he was a distant cousin of Sir Laurence Eardsley. I’ve never actually met him until this trip. He journeys to and from Africa a good deal. There’s a general idea that he does Secret Service work. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. He’s certainly rather a mysterious creature.”
“I suppose he came into a lot of money as Sir Laurence Eardsley’s heir?”
“My dear Anne, he must be rolling. You know, he’d be a splendid match for you.”
“I can’t have a good go at him with you aboard the ship,” I said, laughing. “Oh, these married women!”
“We do have a pull,” murmured Suzanne complacently. “And everybody knows that I am absolutely devoted to Clarence—my husband, you know. It’s so safe and pleasant to make love to a devoted wife.”
“It must be very nice for Clarence to be married to some one like you.”
“Well, I’m wearing to live with! Still, he can always escape to the Foreign Office, where he fixes his eyeglass in his eye, and goes to sleep in a big arm-chair. We might cable him to tell us all he knows about Race. I love sending cables. And they annoy Clarence so. He always says a letter would have done as well. I don’t suppose he’d tell us anything, though. He is so frightfully discreet. That’s what makes him so hard to live with for long on end. But let us go on with our matchmaking. I’m sure Colonel Race is very attracted to you, Anne. Give him a couple of glances from those wicked eyes of yours, and the deed is done. Every one gets engaged on board ship. There’s nothing else to do.”
“I don’t want to get married.”
“Don’t you?” said Suzanne. “Why not? I love being married—even to Clarence!”
I disdained her flippancy.
“What I want to know is,” I said with determination, “what has Colonel Race got to do with this? He’s in it somewhere.”
“You don’t think it was mere chance, his telling that story?”
“No, I don’t,” I said decidedly. “He was watching us all narrowly. You remember, some of the diamonds were recovered, not all. Perhaps these are the missing ones—or perhaps——”
“Perhaps what?”
I did not answer directly.
“I should like to know,” I said, “what became of the other young man. Not Eardsley but—what was his name?—Lucas!”
“We’re getting some light on the thing, anyway. It’s the diamonds all these people are after. It must have been to obtain possession of the diamonds that ‘The Man in the Brown Suit’ killed Nadina.”
“He didn’t kill her,” I said sharply.
“Of course he killed her. Who else could have done so?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure he didn’t kill her.”
“He went into that house three minutes after her and came out as white as a sheet.”
“Because he found her dead.”
“But nobody else went in.”
“Then the murderer was in the house already, or else he got in some other way. There’s no need for him to pass the lodge, he could have climbed over the wall.”
Suzanne glanced at me sharply.
“‘The Man in the Brown Suit,’” she mused. “Who was he, I wonder? Anyway, he was identical with the ‘doctor’ in the Tube. He would have had time to remove his make-up and follow the woman to Marlow. She and Carton were to have met there, they both had an order to view the same house, and if they took such elaborate precautions to make their meeting appear accidental they must have suspected they were being followed. All the same, Carton did not know that his shadower was the ‘Man in the Brown Suit.’ When he recognized him, the shock was so great that he lost his head completely and stepp............