Free Good Night, Mr. Holmes by Carole Nelson Douglas Page B

a single jewel, but a string of them.”
    “Pearls!” I couldn’t help crying out. They both regarded me with pity and returned to their negotiations.
    “Nothing so predictable,” Irene murmured to me.
    Mr. Tiffany nodded and went on. “These gems are large, matched diamonds, linked one after the other until they circle a dainty waist—and then fall to the floor. You frown, Miss Adler. Do you by some chance recognize my quarry?”
    Irene shook her head. “Not at all, but the setting sounds quite... antique.”
    “If one considers the end of the last century antique—and at your tender age I imagine you do.”
    “And the piece is lost?”
    “Indeed.”
    “Then if it were to be found, there would be none to claim it from the finder?”
    “No.”
    Irene smiled suddenly. “No. Any of her relations are entangled in years, lost records and court battles beyond redeeming by now.”
    “ ‘Her’, Miss Adler?”
    “The original owner of your missing belt, Mr. Tiffany: the late Queen Marie Antoinette of the late, antique French monarchy.”
    “How—how did you know?” The old gentleman’s high color drained from his cheeks and nose.
    “I did not know, I guessed, for you could not resist giving me a hint. A piece as valuable as you describe could only have belonged to a royal house; it is now fair game, so with the French crown jewels rumored to come on the auction block some day not too distant, interest would naturally revive in such a missing piece.”
    “Egad, you are well informed for a humble avocational agent! I fear I underestimated you, young woman. Pinkerton’s said you were quick and clever, but I begin to think you would seek to outdo me at my own game and take my prize for yourself.”
    “My knowledge springs from common sense, not secret information. I know nothing about your business, Mr. Tiffany, but I do know fashion. A belt of the type you describe could only belong to a queen, and a profligate one at that. As for the French crown jewels, I will never wear a stone from them, but cannot resist any rumor of them. Most women are highly intrigued by precious stones, but you long since have learned that from your business, no?”
    “And should I trust such unnervingly precocious enterprise as you display?”
    “Indubitably. Pinkerton’s has recommended me. If I find your treasure while acting in your interests, wild stallions could not persuade  me to retain it.”  :
    Like Jefferson Hope not many days past, Charles Lewis Tiffany leaned forward and stared into Irene Adler’s magnificent dark-gold eyes. She accepted his regard with regal indifference, as cat-calm in the certainty of her integrity as Marie Antoinette must have been in her queenship.
    “Very well.” Mr. Tiffany sounded winded, like a man who had just climbed a higher flight of stairs than he had anticipated. “The piece is called the Zone of Diamonds. It has not been seen since it vanished from the Paris Tuileries in 1848 as the Paris mobs overthrew Louis Philippe. Word is that it found its way to London. Later, in the upset of 1870, the Empress Eugenie fled with many of her jewels, and her confidant, Comte de Montglas, and took them to the Bank of England.”
    “Surely we are not to wrest this wonder from such a peerless institution?”    
    “The Empress’s jewels are accounted for. I mention them merely to point out that imperiled French royalty have a historical habit of fleeing to England, and vice versa, which makes it even more likely that the Zone is in London. I’ve hired other inquiry agents to pursue it, but there is a subtler path that you may be ideally equipped to follow. A Wealthy collector may have been keeping the Zone for his anonymous pleasure. Chances are high that he cannot resist showing his prize to an impressionable female now and then—”
    “An impressionable female not his wife,” Irene put in.
    Mr. Tiffany nodded, relieved that she had spared him from outlining a sordid situation. “Very