Fame and Fortune Weekly, No. 801, February 4, 1921

"I did? Nonsense! Do you take me for a thief? I only handled one of them at a time and after looking it over laid it down on the showcase, or on that mat."

"Nevertheless, one of the diamonds is missing," said the clerk, pushing a button under the counter which summoned the manager of the store. The customer waxed indignant and protested that he had no knowledge whatever of the diamond. The clerk insisted that he must have it.

"Well, then, you can search me, but I think it's an outrage," said the man.

The manager took him into his office and went through all his pockets, and looked him over for a secret pocket, but there was none and the diamond was not found on him.

"You see, I haven't got it," said the man. "Your clerk's eyesight is defective. I don't believe there is a diamond missing at all from the tray. He only thought there was."

Under the circumstances the customer was permitted to leave the store, though the manager was pretty well satisfied that the clerk had made no mistake. Dick had seen the man examining the diamonds, but had noticed no suspicious movement on his part to get away with a gem. In his opinion the man had been wrongfully accused. Once he had seen the man put his left hand under the outside ledge of the showcase at the bottom and hold it there for a moment, but he thought nothing of that. At any rate, he knew there was no place there where a diamond could be lodged even temporarily. The clerk looked over the floor on the outside of the counter, but without result, so he felt sure that the customer had managed to get away with it somehow. In about half an hour a lady entered the store and went to the same counter. She wanted to look at some new style rings. While the clerk was producing a couple of trays, Dick, who was close by, saw her place her hand under the bottom ledge of the showcase and run it along there about a foot, an action the office boy thought strange. When she removed her hand she fumbled for her pocket. A moment or two later she was looking at the rings the clerk placed before her. At that juncture the manager called Dick and sent him down the block with a message. As he was coming back he saw the man who had been suspected of taking the diamond standing near the curb about a hundred yards from the store. He seemed to be waiting for some one.

Down the street came the lady whom Dick had left examining the rings. She went directly up to the man and handed him something. Dick saw him hold the article up and pick at it. In another moment he tossed something away and put his finger and thumb into his vest pocket, then the couple walked away. The meeting of these two persons struck Dick as having a suspicious bearing on the missing diamond, though just what the connection was he could not say. He looked at the place where he had seen the man toss what the woman had handed him and saw a small, dark object. He went and picked it up. It proved to be a wad of chewing gum. Dick was disappointed with his discovery and was about to drop it when he noticed a deep impression in it that looked like the imprint of a diamond.

Then the truth came to his bright mind like a flash of inspiration. The missing diamond had been stuck in the gum. Still that didn't explain to his mind how the diamond had got there, or how the lady who had been in the store half an hour after the man had come in possession of the diamond. The matter puzzled him greatly, but of one thing he was confident, and that was that the missing diamond was now in the man's pocket. Under such circumstances he believed that it was his duty to follow the pair. The couple turned into Nassau street and walked leisurely northward. Dick kept on behind them in a rather doubtful frame of mind. They kept straight on, passing the Tribune Building and the other newspaper offices of the Row, and so on under the Brooklyn Bridge entrance to the corner of North William, a narrow and short street that cuts into Park Row at that point. They crossed the head of this street and walked into a well-known pawnshop that stood there.

"I'll bet the man is going to pawn that diamond," thought Dick. "Well, I'm going to see if he is."

He immediately followed them into the public room. He found them standing before the long counter. A clerk came up to them.

"How much will you advance me for a month on that diamond?" asked the man, taking the unset stone out of his pocket and laying it down on the counter.

The size of the diamond corresponded with the missing one, and on the spur of the moment Dick glided to the counter and grabbed it before the clerk's fingers touched it.

"I don't think this shop will advance you a dollar on a stolen diamond," he said, stepping back defiantly, ready to maintain his employer's claim to the stone.

The woman gave a stifled exclamation and looked frightened.

"Give me that diamond!" cried the man.

"No, sir. Will you send for a policeman to settle this matter?" said Dick to the clerk.

"Do you want me to send for an officer?" the clerk asked the man.

"No; I can settle my own business without a cop butting into it," replied the man savagely.

"Call an officer for me, then," said Dick. "I accuse this man of stealing the diamond he asked you to fix a price on."

"How dare you call me a thief!" roared the man.

"Because that's what you are," answered Dick defiantly.

Customers coming into the pawnshop stopped to see what was going on. As the case stood, all the advantage lay with Dick, for he had the article in dispute, and possession is nine points of the law. As the racket was highly undesirable in the pawnshop, the clerk decided to telephone for a policeman to come and straighten things out, since neither Dick nor the man showed any signs of giving in. The man himself realized that things were growing desperate. The lady said something to him in a low tone, but he shook his head impatiently. Evidently somebody had told a policeman of the case, for just at this time an officer appeared.

CHAPTER V. – Dick Carries His Point

"Well, what's the trouble here?" asked the officer.

"The trouble is that man stole a five-carat unset diamond from our store and came here to pawn it. I followed him and got it away from him. I expect the manager of the store here any moment so I want that man detained till he comes," said Dick.

"It's a lie. The diamond is my property," said the accused wrathfully.

"He brought a lady with him and she has just run away," said Dick. "That looks suspicious."

"She was frightened by the trouble that you raised, you young imp."

The policeman turned to the head clerk and asked for the facts as far as he knew them. The chief clerk told the officer all that had happened from the moment the parties to the dispute made their appearance.

"This boy has the diamond, then?" said the policeman.

"He has," answered the pawn clerk.

"Hand it to me, young man."

Dick took it out of his pocket and turned it over to the officer.

"You charge this man with the theft of the stone from your store?"

"I do."

"Did you see him take it?"

"I did not."

"Then how do you know he stole it?"

"Because circumstances point towards him."

"What do you mean by circumstances?"

Dick explained that the accused had called at the store and asked to be shown some diamonds. A tray of the stones had been submitted to his inspection under the eyes of the salesman. He looked over quite a number, and finally said the prices were too high for him to pay. Then he started to leave, but the salesman called him back because he noticed that one of the diamonds was missing. The man finally submitted to a search in the manager's office, and the diamond not being found on him, he was allowed to go.

"You see," said the accused, brightening up, "there is no evidence against me."

"You admit, then, you were in our store?" said Dick quickly.

"Yes, I never denied the fact."

"Is that so?" returned the boy. "A few minutes ago you said before this clerk that you had not been in any store this morning. Isn't that a fact?" added Dick, turning to the head clerk.

"Yes, he did say that," admitted the clerk.

"There you are," said Dick triumphantly.

"I couldn't have said such a thing," protested the man. "At any rate, you have shown that I didn't steal the diamond from your store."

"I have merely admitted that I did not see you take the stone. You'll have to explain how you came to have the missing stone in your possession when you came here to pawn it."

"That stone belongs to the lady who was with me. It never came out of your store."

"All right. When the manager arrives he will know the stone."

"I don't care what he will have to say about it. The stone belongs to the lady."

"You have been claiming it as your own right along."

"Well, what's hers is mine, in a way."

"Is she your wife?"

"It's none of your business whether she is or not."

"She did not claim the stone from the time I grabbed it till she ran away. If it was her property, I should think she would have put up a big kick."

"Where is the store you claim to be connected with?" asked the policeman.

"It's at No. – John street. Mr. Roger Bacon is the proprietor."

At that moment the manager of the store entered with the diamond salesman. Both of them immediately identified the accused as the man who had visited the store an hour or more since, and the manager corroborated all that Dick had already told about the circumstances of the case.

"But you have no evidence against the man," said the policeman.

"I understand that he brought a diamond here to pawn. I'd like to see it," said the manager.

The officer handed the five-carat stone to him. He looked it over and handed it to the salesman.

"Is that the stone that you missed?" he said.

"Yes, that appears to be the stone," said the clerk.

"How do you recognize it?" asked the officer, who believed that all unset diamonds of a size looked as much alike as all peas of a size. The salesman explained that it was a part of his business to make himself familiar with the looks and quality of all diamonds he had charge of.

"Well, this may or may not be the stone you assert is missing from your stock," said the policeman; "but as long as you can't show that this man took it, I don't see how I can run him in without a regular warrant."

"I think I can throw some light on the matter," said Dick at this point.

All hands looked at him.

"Here's a piece of gum which I saw that man throw into the street after picking something out of it," he said, handing the gum to the manager. "It evidently held the diamond, for it bears a clear impression of a five-carat stone."

"It does, indeed!" said the manager.

"The lady who was in the store looking at rings when you sent me on the errand came up to that man and handed him that piece of gum. It was the singularity of their meeting that aroused my suspicions and caused me to watch and then follow them to this place, particularly after I picked the gum up and saw the impression of a diamond in it. I judged at once that the man must have hidden the stone in the gum and left it somewhere about the counter where the lady found it afterward and brought it to him."

Dick's words seemed to make the matter quite clear to the manager, who was familiar with many of the tricks adopted by diamond thieves to ply their vocation without detection.

"The gum business is an old trick," said the manager. "It's a wonder it did not occur to you," he added, looking at the salesman. "When a thief comes into a store he sometimes carries a piece of adhesive gum like that," he explained to the policeman. "The first thing he does is to attach it to the bottom of the showcase, out of sight. Then he watches his chance, and if he is a sufficiently expert sleight-of-hand artist, he manages at some time during his inspection of the stones to convey a diamond to the gum and force it into it. When the diamond is afterward missed he cheerfully submits to a search, for the stolen stone is not on his person. Later he sends a confederate into the store to get the gum, under cover of an intention to make some kind of a purchase, other than diamonds, at that counter. In this case, it is quite clear to me that the lady was the man's confederate. I think I am fully justified in demanding that fellow's arrest at our risk. It is too bad that the woman got away, but I guess we'll be able to find her. You have her description, Dick," he said to the office boy.

"Yes, sir. I'd recognize her on sight."

"Now, officer, you may arrest that man and take him to the police station. We will go with you and make the charge," said the manager.

"All right," said the policeman. "Come on, my man, you'll have to go with me."

That settled the case as far as the pawnshop was concerned, and the party directly interested started with the officer and the prisoner for the Brooklyn Bridge station. The charge was made against the man, who gave his name as Jack Hurley, and he was locked up pending his removal to the Tombs prison. The manager, salesman and Dick then returned to the store. The former complimented the office boy on his smartness in bringing the thief to justice, which would result in the ultimate return of the valuable diamond to the store. Mr. Bacon, who had been informed of the theft of the stone, was duly put in possession of Dick's clever work toward its recovery and the punishment of the thief and, it was hoped, his accomplice. He sent for his office boy and added his compliments to those of the manager.

"You're a clever boy, Dick," he concluded, "and I'll see that you lose nothing through your devotion to my interests. That's all."

Dick got up and returned to his duty.

CHAPTER VI. – Knocked Out

Of course, the robbery of the diamond and Dick's brilliant rounding up of the thief got into the afternoon papers. All the merchants and clerks of the jewelry district downtown were talking about it before closing-up time. Dick Darling, the boy in the knickerbockers, was voted an uncommonly smart lad, and people who knew Mr. Bacon told him so. One of Bacon's clerks after reading the story in the paper called Dick over and showed it to him. Dick bought a couple of papers on his way home and read both accounts. When he got to the house he handed one of the papers to his mother and called her attention to the story. She read it and was, of course, much surprised. Dick supplied her with many additional particulars not in the paper.

"Mr. Bacon must be greatly pleased with you," said Mrs. Darling.

"Yes, mother, I dare say he thinks I'm all to the good."

His sisters nearly always read the evening paper on their way home. The diamond theft having been given an important position on the first page of the papers they bought that afternoon, it attracted their attention right away. When they saw that the theft had taken place at the store where their brother was employed, they read on with added interest. Then when they saw Dick's name in cold type they became still more interested. As he proved to be the chief figure in the story, next to the thief, they grew quite excited over the story. Had they been together, their exclamations and talk would have attracted attention in the car, but they seldom came together on the same car or train, and so they waited till they reached home to loosen up their tongues. And what a jabbering there was in the little flat when they arrived within a few minutes of each other. They surrounded their brother and plied him with questions, till he broke away, declaring that they made his head ring. Their excitement lasted all through supper. The sum total of their opinion was that Dick was a regular hero, and they were awfully proud of him. The morning papers repeated the story with a few additional details, and Dick read it over again. Then he turned his attention to the other news.

He generally saw everything that was in the papers, though he didn't read everything, because he hadn't time to do so. A paragraph, however, caught his attention this morning which interested him. It told of the escape of Bulger and Parker from the Carlin jail. The jail was an old one, and they had been lodged in a cell the window bars of which proved to have become defective. At any rate, during the short time they were locked up there, they managed to loosen two of the bars so they could be removed during the night. From the window they reached the jail yard, scaled the tall wall with its rusty spikes, and got away. Their escape was not discovered until morning, when officers were at once sent out to look for them.

Dick wondered if they would succeed in getting clear off. About eleven that morning Dick, the manager and the diamond salesman, went to the Tombs police court to appear against Jack Hurley, the diamond thief. He was represented by a cheap lawyer, who employed browbeating tactics in his client's behalf, but did not succeed in shaking the testimony of the witnesses. Dick being the chief witness, the lawyer spared no pains in his efforts to tangle the boy up. Finally he moved that his client be discharged on the ground that there was no real evidence connecting him with the theft of the diamond. The magistrate, however, refused to accept his view of the matter, and remanded Hurley to the consideration of the Grand Jury. During that month the store was closed at three on Saturday afternoon. On the Saturday following the events narrated the clerks were getting ready to leave, after having been paid off, when a consignment of cases containing silverware arrived from the pier of one of the Sound steamboats. The goods had been shipped by the factory in Rhode Island the previous day, and had reached the city that morning, but the truckman had not been able to fetch them to the store until that hour.

As the manager had gone home, Mr. Bacon decided to stay himself and see the cases taken in, and detained two clerks to attend to the work along with the porter. An hour before, Dick had been sent up to the second floor, which was used in part as a sample room, to arrange some of the samples and move others out of the upright cases standing against the walls. There was no clock on that floor, and Dick, forgetting it was Saturday and that the house closed early, gave no attention to the flight of time. The cashier, thinking he was out on an errand, left his pay envelope on Mr. Bacon's desk, and the proprietor seeing it there, also concluded that the manager had sent Dick out before he left. When the truck came up, two rough-looking men were lounging on the opposite side of the street. They were not there by accident, and since they came there they had been watching the Bacon store in a furtive way. The cases of goods were taken off the truck and sent down into the cellar.

While this work was under way one of the men strolled across the street, and, watching his chance, sneaked into the store. He made his way to the back and looked around. Seeing no one there, he walked upstairs and found himself in the sample room. The sight of numerous pieces of choice silverware of all kinds and sizes made him anxious, and he made up his mind to get away with several of the least bulky ones, which he could successfully conceal in his clothes. He approached a case with the view of helping himself when he suddenly came upon Dick, who was kneeling on the floor behind a table. The boy looked up and uttered an exclamation, for he recognized the intruder as Bulger, whose escape from the Carlin jail he had read about. Bulger recognized him at the same moment, and, with an imprecation, seized him.

"So I've got hold of you again," he said. "Me and my pal have been waitin' an hour to get a sight of you. We want to settle accounts with you."

"More likely you'll be settled yourselves," said Dick pluckily. "I've only to call out and some of the clerks will come up and take charge of you."

"You won't do any callin' out if I can help it," said the rascal, seizing the boy by the throat and choking him hard. Dick struggled in vain to free himself from the burly man's grasp, but he was taken at a disadvantage, and found himself quite powerless. He gasped for breath, and was turning black in the face, when Bulger, not intending to kill him, eased up a bit. The sight of the silverware within his reach had put different thoughts into the fellow's head, and seeing the door of a closet standing ajar, he dragged Dick to it, tied his wrists together with a piece of cord, in a rough way, shoved him into the closet, and shut the door tight.

Dick, though not wholly unconscious, was fast becoming so from the effect of the choking, added to the lack of air in the closet. Bulger quickly opened a case, abstracted several small pieces of silverware, concealed them about his person, and hurriedly left the sample room, sneaking downstairs and making for the front door. Mr. Bacon and the clerks were so busily engaged with the cases of goods that they did not notice the rascal slip out of the door and walk down the street, after signaling to Parker, on the other side, to follow.

As soon as the goods had all been placed in the cellar, Mr. Bacon and the two clerks re-entered the store. The merchant went into his office to get a small package he was going to take home. Then the sight of Dick's pay envelope on his desk made him remember the boy.

"I wonder where he was sent?" he asked himself.

It occurred to him to ask the clerks if they had any idea where he was. He stepped outside where the young men were washing their hands and putting on their coats.

"Does either of you know where Dick is?" he inquired.

"He's gone home," replied one of the clerks.

"That can't be, for his pay envelope is here waiting for him to claim it."

"Is that so?" said the clerk.

"Yes; the cashier handed it to me and said he believed Mr. Dale had sent him out on an errand."

"He might have done so, but he would have got back long before this, for he knows that the store closes at three on Saturday."

"When did you see him last?"

"Something over an hour ago. He was then up on the next floor making some changes in the sample cases."

"He might be up there yet."

"It isn't likely, for he would come down after his money when he saw it was getting close to closing-up time."

"There's no clock up there, and, besides, he isn't a boy who watches the clock, like some employees do for fear they will work a minute more than they're paid for it. Dick is always interested in his work. I've noticed that, and it is just possible he might have overlooked the fact that it is Saturday. I am going up to see if he is there," said Mr. Bacon.

The clerks followed him, curious to see if the boy was really still at work. They found no sign of the office boy on the floor.

"He is not here," said Mr. Bacon. "Mr. Dale must have sent him on an errand and he has been delayed."

The three were standing near the closet as the merchant spoke. It was at that very moment that the subject of their thoughts finally became senseless. Dick's head, falling forward when he lost consciousness, hit the door, and the sound attracted the attention of the proprietor and his two clerks.

"What's that?" exclaimed Mr. Bacon.

He pulled the door open and the office boy fell out.

CHAPTER VII. – Dick and His Eldest Sister

To say that Mr. Bacon and his clerks were both astonished and startled would be stating the case quite mildly.

"My gracious!" cried the merchant. "What does this mean?"

One of the clerks stepped forward and raised Dick up.

"Why, his hands are bound!" he ejaculated, in surprise.

That fact was apparent to the others.

"Great heavens! How came he to be in this state?" cried Mr. Bacon. "Cut him loose as quick as you can. Jones, run down to my office and fetch a glass of the cognac you'll find on a shelf in the closet. This is certainly a most singular occurrence. Somebody bound the boy and shut him up in the closet. Nobody connected with the store would do such a thing as that. And yet how could a stranger have got up here unnoticed? A thief would not attempt to carry anything away before the clerks in the store. I don't understand it at all."

Clerk Jones returned with a glass partly filled with cognac. When Dick's head was lifted the clerk noticed the marks of Bulger's fingers on the boy's throat. He pointed to them and said: