Fred White: Below Zero

"Well, I think so," Rayburn said cautiously. "But I am not far enough in my experiments yet to speak with any confidence. Still, I have seen enough to encourage me."

"It is a very valuable stone, I presume."

"Very," Ray burn said—"a matter of twenty thousand pounds, I suppose. If I succeed, it will be worth at least three times as much, and if I fail, no harm is done."

"But," Viantes suggested, "you might damage it. It might fly into a thousand fragments if it was subjected to a very intense cold. What of that, my lord?"

"Then, in that case, I shall be the loser," Rayburn smiled. "I should have to find that sum of money, which, between ourselves, would absorb my private means, because, when I die, this place of mine and my income must go to my successor. And my assistant would be all the poorer, which would be very hard upon him, seeing that he knows of my intentions, and that he is going to be married very shortly."

As Rayburn finished, he rose to his feet and, unlocking a drawer in his writing-desk, produced a great diamond. It was a magnificent stone, and as it lay winking and sparkling on the table, Viantes' eyes narrowed behind his spectacles, and his mouth quivered like that of a cat stalking a bird.

"A wonderful gem!" he murmured.

"Yes, a royal gem. Now, it was lent to me by a firm of Court jewellers for the purpose of my experiment. You must understand that it is what is called a superimposed stone—that is, two layers placed one upon another, and joined by spirit gum or something of that kind, much as they join a series of glasses from which telescopic lenses are ground. Originally the diamond was much bigger; but it met with an accident— a fracture in the centre—so that it was necessary to split the stone in two and join it up again. Of course, this detracted from the value, but only an expert could tell and discern the tiny spot of moisture that was created in the process. Now, my idea, as you know, is literally to burn out that moisture by frost, and therefore, in one of my tanks which lie out yonder beyond the conservatory, I propose to subject the stone to a freezing process a hundred degrees below zero; and when that is done, I am sanguine that the flaw will have vanished. If you have another half-hour or so to spare—"

The sentence was never finished, for the Spaniard was on to Rayburn like a flash, as the latter bent over the table, a knife gleamed in the air, and the great man collapsed to the floor, stricken between the shoulders to the heart, and lay there dead without a single sound.

It was nearly six o'clock before Hayter, feeling a little uneasy, knocked at the laboratory door without receiving any reply. He flew round to the back of the house, with the idea of approaching the laboratory by a flight of steps leading up to the big tanks with their concrete tops. The motor-car in the lane had disappeared, and this only added to Hayter's uneasiness. It was nearly dark now, so that Hayter noticed nothing except that the lid over the manhole of one of the great freezing tanks had not been slipped back, and this he hastily readjusted.

"I suppose I am to blame for that," he murmured. "Well, it doesn't so very much matter."

Just by the conservatory door lay a spray of three or four blooms of the priceless Gynandria Monandria . Hayter stooped and mechanically placed it in his buttonhole.

"Now, how did that precious treasure get here?" he asked himself. "Lord Rayburn would as soon have cut off his own hand as given away one of those beloved children of his."

He forced the catch on the conservatory door and hastened into the laboratory. A moment later he was bending over the dead body of his chief with that calm, self-centred feeling that comes to most of us in the presence of sudden and unexpected death. There were certain things to be done, and Hayter went about them quite methodically. Then his eye caught sight of the open drawer with the key still in it, and with a strange suspicion in his mind he searched in the little cotton-wool nest for the big diamond which ought to have been there.

Five minutes later he had aroused the household and was holding Scotland Yard at the other end of the telephone, and barely half an hour afterwards he was telling his story to an inspector of police.

"Let me have that again, Mr. Hayter," Inspector Jones said. "I want to be quite clear. Señor Viantes came down here, at his own suggestion, to meet a man who has been his greatest enemy for the last twenty years."

"You have seen the letter," Hayter said curtly.

"Oh, yes. Now, what sort of a man is this Spanish scientist? As mad as most of them, I suppose?"

"Madmen don't steal historic diamonds," Hajter said. "I don't want to teach you your business, Inspector, but that man stole the diamond, and probably at the same time dropped the spray of orchid which I have in my buttonhole, and which I picked up, as I told you, outside the conservatory door when I was forcing it. To my mind, the thing is quite plain. Lord Kayburn has been murdered, and the murderer escaped in his car, which he brought down here alone for the purpose of getting away quickly. Now, it seems to me that it is up to you to go back to London and interview Señor Viantes without the slightest delay. That is my opinion."

"Perhaps you are right," the Inspector conceded. "And as you saw the Spaniard, you had better come along."

It was quite late in the evening before Hayter and Inspector Jones found themselves in Bloomsbury, face to face with the Spanish scientist in the latter's sitting-room. But directly Hayter entered the room his face fell.

"There is some mistake here, I am afraid," he murmured. "If this is Señor Viantes, then I have never seen him before. It was not he who called upon Lord Rayburn."

"That is very good of you, sir," said the slight man with the piercing grey eyes who stood confronting his intruder. "A policeman was here just now who refused to believe my identity. I am Miguel del Viantes, as I can bring a dozen people to prove, and I have been in London all day. Do you think I would stoop to go near Lord Rayburn? A clever man, no doubt, but a humbug, sir, and a good bit of a charlatan."

"I don't think we need go into that," Hayter said coolly. "And you, sir, are prejudiced, in any case. Still, Lord Rayburn has been murdered and robbed of a valuable diamond, and as you are apparently the gentleman you claim to be, we are wasting our time here. What do you say. Inspector?"

There was no more to be said, and nothing to be done but to make as graceful an exit as possible and lose no time in seeking a clue elsewhere.

But the days went on till a month had elapsed, and no trace had been found of the clever criminal who had so cunningly made use of the Spaniard to commit a successful crime and get away clearly with his prize. And it was by no means a pleasant month for Hayter, either. He was cognisant of the fact that he was being dogged and watched, and there were many signs that the police held him under suspicion.

For practically everything depended upon his uncorroborated testimony. Nobody had seen the murderer but himself, no one had ever seen the slightest trace of the car, and as to the letter which the Spaniard was supposed to have written, that might easily have been forged by anybody. And, again, the diamond had vanished. It would take all the dead man's fortune to make the loss of it good, so that all Hayter's dreams of a happy and comfortable marriage had vanished into thin air.

Still, he was allowed to go on with his research work at Tulham Place, and, indeed, he had had more than one plain hint to the effect that he had better stay there for the present. Inspector Jones had been mightily curious on the subject of what he called the clue of the broken orchid, coupled with the fact that the body of Rayburn had been found by his chief assistant, who had also discovered the fact that the diamond was missing.