Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 42).djvu/312

that your pearls were inside the bodice of her dress."

The words were scarcely out of my lips before Mrs. Newball sprang at Miss Sterndale, and there ensued a really painful scene. Had she not been restrained, I dare say she would have torn Miss Sterndale's clothes right off her. As it was, someone opened her bodice, and the pearls were produced.

"From the look of things, this gentleman's pocket seems to be stuffed with diamonds."

The scene which followed was like pandemonium on a small scale. It seemed as if everyone had gone stark, staring mad. Guests, manager, and staff were all shouting together. I know that Mrs. Travers had her arm round me, and I was happier than—only a few minutes before—I thought that I should ever feel again.

We did not prosecute the Sterndales—which turned out not to be their name, and they were proved not to be sister and brother. Law in Switzerland does not move too quickly; the formalities to be observed are numerous. I did not very much want to have to remain in Switzerland for an indefinite period, at my own expense, to give evidence in a case in which I was not in the faintest degree interested. The others, the guests in the hotel, did not want to do that any more than I did. Their property was restored to them—that was what they wanted. They would have liked to punish the thieves, but not at the cost of so much inconvenience to themselves.

So far as we were concerned, the criminals got off scot-free; but, none the less, they did not escape the vengeance of the law. That night they were arrested at Interlaken on another charge. It seemed that they were the perpetrators of that robbery in the hotel at Pontresina which, according to Mr. Sterndale, his apocryphal clerical friend had laid at my door. They had passed there as Mr. and Mrs. Burnett, and were found guilty and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. I have not seen or heard anything of that pseudonymous brother and sister since. I hope I never shall.

To find out what people are saying to each other in confidence, when they suppose themselves to be out of the reach of curious ears, may be very like eavesdropping. If it is, I am very glad that, on various occasions in my life, I have been enabled to be an eavesdropper in that sense. Had I not, at Interlaken, had the power which made of me an eavesdropper, I might have been branded as a criminal, and my happiness, my whole life, have been destroyed for ever.