The cabinet the diamonds had been taken from was a green-painted steel affair with six drawers all locking together. The second drawer from the top–the one the diamonds had been in–was open. Its edge was dented where a jimmy or chisel had been forced between it and the frame. The other drawers were still locked. Leggett said the forcing of the diamond drawer had jammed the locking mechanism so that he would have to get a mechanic to open the others.
We went downstairs, through a room where the mulatto was walking around behind a vacuum cleaner, and into the kitchen. The back door and its frame were marked much as the cabinet was, apparently by the same tool.
When I had finished looking at the door, I took the diamond out of my pocket and showed it to the Leggetts, asking: “Is this one of them?”
Leggett picked it out of my palm with forefinger and thumb, held it up to the light, turned it from side to side, and said: “Yes. It has that cloudy spot down at the culet. Where did you get it?”
“Out front, in the grass.”
“Ah, our burglar dropped some of his spoils in his haste.”
I said I doubted it.
Leggett pulled his brows together behind his glasses, looked at me with smaller eyes, and asked sharply: “What do you think?”
“I think it was planted there. Your burglar knew too much. He knew which drawer to go to. He didn’t waste time on anything else. Detectives always say: ‘Inside job,’ because it saves work if they can find a victim right on the scene; but I can’t see anything else here.”
Minnie came to the door, still holding the vacuum cleaner, and began to cry that she was an honest girl, and nobody had any right to accuse her of anything, and they could search her and her home if they wanted to, and just because she was a colored girl was no reason, and so on and so on; and not all of it could be made out, because the vacuum cleaner was still humming in her hand and she sobbed while she talked. Tears ran down her cheeks.
Mrs. Leggett went to her, patted her shoulder, and said: “There, there. Don’t cry, Minnie. I know you hadn’t anything to do with it, and so does everybody else. There, there.” Presently she got the girl’s tears turned off and sent her upstairs.
Leggett sat on a corner of the kitchen table and asked: “You suspect someone in this house?”
“Somebody who’s been in it, yeah.”
“Whom?”
“Nobody yet.”
“That”–he smiled, showing white teeth almost as small as his daughter’s–“means everybody–all of us?”
“Let’s take a look at the lawn,” I suggested. “If we find any more diamonds I’ll say maybe I’m mistaken about the inside angle.”
Half-way through the house, as we went towards the front door, we met Minnie Hershey in a tan coat and violet hat, coming to say good-bye to her mistress. She wouldn’t, she said tearfully, work anywhere where anybody thought she had stolen anything. She was just as honest as anybody else, and more than some, and just as much entitled to respect, and if she couldn’t get it one place she could another, because she knew places where people wouldn’t accuse her of stealing things after she had worked for them for two long years without ever taking so much as a slice of bread.
Mrs. Leggett pleaded with her, reasoned with her, scolded her, and commanded her, but none of it was any good. The brown girl’s mind was made up, and away she went.
Mrs. Leggett looked at me, making her pleasant face as severe as she could, and said reprovingly: “Now see what you’ve done.”
I said I was sorry, and her husband and I went out to examine the lawn. We didn’t find any more diamonds.
II. Long-nose
I put in a couple of hours canvassing the neighborhood, trying to place the man Mrs. and Miss Leggett had seen. I didn’t have any luck with that one, bnt I picked up news of another. A Mrs. Priestly–a pale semi-invalid who lived three doors below the Leggetts–gave me the first line on him.