"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but I was at a point which I couldn't stop. Have you learned something?"
His voice was unexpectedly harsh, metallic, though friendly enough. He was a dark-skinned, erect man of forty-five or so, medium in height, muscularly slender. He would have been handsome if his brown face hadn't been so deeply marked with lines of pain or of bitterness—sharp, hard lines across his forehead, and from his nostrils down across his mouth-corners. Dark hair, worn rather long, curled above and around his broad, grooved forehead. Red-brown eyes of abnormal brightness looked out through horn-rimmed spectacles. His nose was long, thin, and high-bridged. His lips were thin, sharp and nimble over a small but bony chin. Black and white clothes, carefully made, carefully pressed and laundered, carefully worn, finished the picture.
He was as unusual, and as striking, in appearance as his wife—who had followed him into the room—was wholesomely normal.
"Not yet," I answered his question. "I'm not a police detective—Continental Agency, for the insurance company, and I've just started."
"The insurance company?" he repeated, surprised.
"Yes—North American Surety. Did—"
"Surely," he said quickly, smiling, stopping my words with a flourish of one of his hands. It was a long, thin, dark hand with over-developed finger-tips, ugly as most highly trained hands are. "Surely, they would have been insured. I hadn't thought of that. The diamonds did not belong to me, you know. They were Halstead & Beauchamp’s."
"I didn’t know that. The insurance company gave us no details. You had them from Halstead & Beauchamp on approval?"
"No. I was using them for experimental purposes. Last year I devised a method by which color could be introduced into glass after its manufacture. Halstead became interested in the possibility of the same method being adapted to precious stones, especially in improving the color of off-shade diamonds, removing yellowish and brownish tints, emphasizing blues. He asked me to attempt it, and supplied me with the stones on which to work. These are the diamonds the burglar got.”
“How long had you had them, and how many were there?”
“Five weeks. I think, and there were eight of them, none especially valuable. The largest weighed only a trifle more than half a carat, the smallest only a quarter, and all but two were of poor color.”
"Then you hadn't succeeded?" I asked.
"Not yet," he admitted readily "This was a much more delicate matter than staining glass, and on more obdurate material. I had, frankly, made not the slightest progress."
"Where were the diamonds kept?"
"They were locked up last night, though quite often I had left them lying out in the open, considering them as subjects for my experiments rather than as valuables. But last night they were locked in a cabinet drawer in the laboratory. I put them there several days ago, after my last unsuccessful experiment."
"Who knew about your experiments?"
"Anyone, everyone—there was no necessity for secrecy."
“Now, about the burglary?” I said.
"We heard nothing last night. This morning we found our front door open, the cabinet drawer forced, and the diamonds gone. The police found marks on the kitchen door, and say he came in that way and left by the front door."
"The front door was ajar when I came downstairs this morning, at half-past seven" said Mrs. Leggett. She was sitting beside her husband, her hands folded in her lap. "I went upstairs and awakened Edgar, and
