Evening star., 1927-04-17

went to see him expecting to find
tai. handsome, godlike Apollo sort ot
chap. | couldn't believe my eyes when
the police brought me in to a little
weady, shabby rat OF man who
locked as though he had been moth
eaten and left out in the rain over
night | looked at him in astonish-
ment.
":You've married Sc women.' | said
10 him. Yes. Miss Dix he said Do
you mind telling me how you did it?'
| asked him He smiled at me. It's
the easiest thing I'm the world to do,
Miss Dix he said An you've got to
do is talk to them about themselves
When I've seen some maria ges
since then I have begun to believe
that maybe he was right!
Oh. there's another murder ! COW
cred that comes hack TO my mind.
That was a remarkable one, And it
certainly proves that fiction and life
are 50 intertwined that you can't tell
them apart sometimes. Remember
that famous short story of Guy de
Maupassant in which an obscure little
government clerk with hardly any
money at all found his wife wearing
beautiful jewels? In the De Maupas-
SAINT story you recall she told her
husband that they We're imitation.
Then she died And the husband, in
financial difficulties, took them to
jeweler thinking he could get few
francs for all those imitation pearls
and paste gems-and found they were
worth fortune. Her lover had given
them to her.
Pure fiction. of course But listen
TO what happened in real life in New
York. There was a man whose wife
came in wearing a beautiful string Of
pearls one evening He didn't have
much money. He looked at the pearls
in astonishment. His wife saw his
eyebrows rise
My DEAR she said hastily, isn't it
wonderful what limitations these peo-
pie can make? Look what l got for
$25.' He looked. He agreed with her
that ii was wonderful to be able to
get pearls like that for $25. They
were marvellous limitations. he said.
And then a week later he came
home one afternoon unexpectedly
and there was man from Tiffany's
restringing those, pearls. The man
from Tiffany's said: 1 certainly must
congratulate you, sir, on being able 20
get a string as beautifully matched
as this. They certainly were cheap
at sac, ,000'
The man waited until the jeweler
chap had departed. Then he forced
from his wife the name of the man
who had given her the pearls-and
he went out and shot the man and
came home and shot the wife |
had to cover that double murder trial.
y x
"'T'HE part that gems have played in
criminal history! l remember
another case of a man who was the
head of a safety-deposit vault force of
employees in some huge bank in New
York Mrs. Edward Hartman, wife
of the great railroad financier, used to
. put her jewels in safe deposit there
every Summer One Spring she de-
posted the jewels there. including
flexible diamond pendant with huge
ruby on it worth SCI. 900. This man
escorted her to her box and was sup
posed to have locked it. Mrs. Harri-
man was in a hurry. She didn't notice
that he didn't lock it.
''The man had been living out
Larchmont way. He was a pillar of
the church and a leader in the Boy
Scout movement and in every way the
model substantial citizen. But he had
got terribly in debt and he took this
way of getting out of it. His plan
had been to report q mysterious rob-
berry and let the police and insurance
company do the worrying. But that
ruby was so distinctive and SO costly
that he couldn't find single soul TO
buy It. Most Illicit buyers were afraid
to touch it. knowing it would be
traced. And when Mrs. Hartman