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CHAPTER I

OBERT GOLES left Maiden Lane, in New York City, with an assortment of several hundred diamonds and several rubies to visit the Ofsten & Groner customers who were nearly all jewellery stores down the Ohio River. The total value of the gems was $106,450, wholesale. The jewels were in a small leather-bound case, weighing with its contents less than a pound.

Ofsten & Groner knew all there was to know about Obert Goles, from his grandparents to his own record in Ottawa, Ill., and thence eastward when he brought four beautiful pearls which he traded for two thousand dollars and a job as office boy in the Ofsten & Groner establishment. The pearls were finds from Fox River, and helped make that river famous in jewellery circles as pearl-bearing. He offered with that money to pay for the bond which the firm required of every employee, but the lad's willingness and his eagerness caused the company to see means of remitting the cost at Christmas time.

​Goles soon proved his instinct by bringing in a definite pearl trade from western rivers, and within fifteen years he had established himself as salesman for Ofsten & Groner. He was, perhaps, the most inconspicuous man imaginable. It was said of him that people could look at him and not know that he was present! His voice was a monotone, his face a blank, his gait a glide, and his habit complete silence.

Yet his very self-abnegation served but to impress upon customers the gems and jewels he desired to sell. He never distracted a customer from the beauty of a bit of work in platinum or gold; he gave a buyer the feeling of being entirely alone with a tray of diamonds, to make his selection; there was in him not the least trace or hint of the strong-arm method of salesmanship—so he sold specially beautiful gems with extraordinary success to collectors and to the trade.

It was a year of belated prosperity down the Ohio Valley. All summer the jewellers had been waiting for some sign which would help them decide how much Christmas goods to take on. Also, they had waited before buying jewels which are in demand when crops are bountiful, when, especially, the patrons of the local bucket shops and stock-exchange brokers have teen making money, and when tradesmen see big trade in hand.

Now they knew that money was plentiful down ​the valley, and as the political situation was satisfactory, by the signs that the gem trade read, it was time for Obert Goles to go selling gems from Pittsburgh to Cairo.

His going was not announced in any of the trade papers, and the fact was not heralded on Maiden Lane. The New York gem trade has long since learned that a salesman carrying from $50,000 to $250,000 worth of gems needs to slip away from his home store in the night, like a thief, and to scout from centre to centre like a spy in the land of the enemy, telling no man his business, suspecting even little children and hating especially beautiful women and good fellowmen.

So Obert Goles vanished from Maiden Lane, and apparently no one missed the shadow that never stood in the way of the least sparkle in a diamond or clouded the lustre of a pearl. He glided uptown and caught a train over to Pittsburgh, where he appeared unannounced in a little store around a corner, under a stairway, in which a little Rabbi of a man welcomed him and shortly paid him for certain stones the sum of $4,360.

Goles mailed his sales slip to the home office that night in a plain and not overly clean envelope. He deposited the cash in a bank to the credit of Ofsten & Groner, and dropped down the Ohio by train. He stopped in three towns, and made two sales—two or ​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 ​copper-mine route," from Chicago to Kansas and Butte.

Goles had observed the shadow; he had noted it; he had called the firm's attention to it, which was equivalent to a warning to them to put the National Agency on the trail to protect him! It was an excellent corroboration of the visible trust reposed in Goles. They were glad to know that he was not only competent, honest, and thorough; he was also watchful. One of the most successful shadows in the detective branch of the jewellery business had been detected almost instantly.

Accordingly, Ofsten & Groner notified the National manager of their satisfaction and the detective, Volcon, was called off at Cincinnati at noon. Volcon trailed his man till noon, sharp, and saw him enter a restaurant at that moment. Then the case closed, Volcon reported to the local branch of the National Agency, and was assigned to a hold up over on the Wabash River, in which a pearl buyer had lost a thousand dollars in cash, and pearls of the value of $6,000.

From that moment, noon sharp, Obert Goles vanished. He failed to make his customary report that evening, and when Ofsten & Groner telegraphed to the hotel in Warsaw, where he was to have put up the following night, they learned from the proprietor that Goles had not appeared there. Agency Manager ​Grost at Cincinnati, informed of the matter, immediately called up all the customers down the river on Goles' itinerary, and the one whom the salesman had last visited was at 10:45 o'clock, in Cincinnati, from whose shop the detective had followed him to the restaurant.

They did not even recall him in the restaurant. Obert Goles was so inconspicuous that even the waiter who brought him his commonplace lunch would not remember him, no matter how faithfully he was described in feet, inches, pounds, and complexion.

Unfortunately, Goles had no other customer to visit in Cincinnati when he entered the restaurant. He presumably was bound down to Warsaw, and it was noted that he had failed to tell whether he was going by railroad, taking the stage across from Glencoe, or by the river on the Packet, which would have been the obvious way.

Warsaw contained only one customer, Judge C. Wrest, of the Ofsten & Groner Company. He was a peculiar old man, with a large income from an unknown source. His strict orders to Ofsten & Groner were that no one should know that he purchased diamonds. He lived in a brick house on a knoll the fence of which was falling down, the yard grown to weeds, and some of the windows broken and patched with boards. Nevertheless, he purchased about five thousand dollars' worth of diamonds twice a year, for cash.

​He refused to answer telegrams and he had no telephone. When the manager of the National Agency went down to see him personally, he would only say:

"I know nothing about Goles; another agent of Ofsten & Groner was here on Thursday morning, at 10 o'clock,and I purchased my usual supply from him."

"Then you admit having in your possession some of the diamonds which came from the firm of Ofsten & Groner?" Manager Grost asked, softly.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you have any of those stones, you are a receiver of stolen goods," the detective said, sharply.

"Stolen goods?" the man repeated. "I think not—I have here the receipt———"

He handed the manager a sales slip, and there was the list of stones, weight, grade, value—$5,190. It was signed, "B. L. Folded, Agt."

"What kind of a looking man was this Folded?"

"Black moustache, dark eyes, dark complexion—perhaps thirty years of age," the old man replied, for a shade of worry had begun to trouble him.

That was all the detective manager could learn from Wrest. He went to the stage driver, but he nor any one else in town recalled a man as described by the customer. No boat had arrived at the hour described to bring the pseudo diamond salesman. No automobile had come in over the roads; no one recalled any ​boat on the river—skiff, launch, houseboat, or other craft—which might have brought in or taken away the man who sold diamonds.

Instantly suspicion was directed against the customer. He was known by the detective to hoard diamonds, and it was not beyond the realms of chance that he had in some way killed the salesman and stolen the diamonds. Manager Grost summoned Operative Volcon and they ransacked Warsaw from the water-front river rats to the hill billies back on the river ridges.

Then they learned from a shanty-boater two miles above town in the mouth of the creek that he had seen a dude in a white collar and derby hat coming down the Ohio on Thursday morning. The man was as described by the customer. He had run his skiff into the bank in a little eddy, where the fisherman, when he passed down with some fish, about 11 o'clock, saw it moored to a stake. The skiff was gone when he returned about noon.

With a good description of the skiff, word was sent up and down the river, and the skiff was found in a boat livery at Misquaw.

"I'll be back Tuesday after it," the man had said, taking his suitcase and going to the train. He had bought a ticket to Cincinnati, but in Cincinnati no trace of him could be found.

​"He's an old timer," the detectives decided. "He knew about that customer, and he took in the cash—more than five thou'! Now how did he know about the customer? Easy enough! He rapped Goles over the head, carried away his stock and itinerary, and he knew it was safe to go to Warsaw———"

The case was pigeonholed until they could trace out some of the men who were abroad who might pull such a job as that. But the matter remained pigeonholed only a week.

From Warsaw arrived Judge C. Wrest, the purchaser of diamonds, limping and whimpering:

"They stole my diamonds!" he wailed to Manager Grost. "A fellow came in and pulled a gun on me; he tied me to a chair, and he moved me up to the fire-place, and—and he put my feet against the coals. I couldn't stand it! I like to died—and I was muzzled so's I couldn't holler. I had to give 'em to 'im—most a hundred thousand I paid for 'em. But—but he didn't get 'em all!"

"You told the officers?" Wrest was asked, for he had seen no mention of the theft in the newspapers.

"Not a word!" the old man shook his head. "I don't know what to make of it!"

"What kind of looking men held you up?"

"Only one, suh—just an ornery looking fellow, kinda middling, you might say, and just a purring kind of ​voice. Not much of a man! Some no 'count white trash, I bet, but mean and trifling. I paid a hundred thousand for them. Here's the slips, how much they weighed and what I paid, but they's a sight more valuable now'n when I bought 'em."

"What'd you keep that much around you for, anyhow?" Grost asked, exasperated to think that any one would have so much wealth in so exposed a place.

"I—I 'lowed that nobody knowed about it, suh." Wrest shook his head. "I—I never 'lowed it'd leak out. Theh's been profit in diamonds! I aimed to sell, directly, and I'd be good interest ahead—I saw it a-coming! Now look 't me!"

He grimaced, but added, cunningly:

"But I got some left!"

"You want us to look after those stones?"

"Yes, sir, I'll spend some money to get them back—I brought this up, to kind of guarantee it—there's two thousand here. You boys look around, and see what you can find. It's kind of funny, that Gole feller turning up missing, and then they got me, right along! You look into it!"

And with that, the quaint old customer of diamond merchant and detective agency hobbled out of the office, leaving the detective to the contemplation of the case, as stated accurately by the old man.