The Argosy — page 296: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Amethyst Seal. 277 was shrouded in mystery. The more they asked themselves who could possibly have done it, and what end the person who did it could have had in view, the more bewildered they became. After a long discussion, the only conclusion they could arrive at was, that the document must have been abstracted from the letter bag—together probably with others—on the supposition that it contained notes or negotiable securities of some kind, and that when it was found to contain nothing of value, it had been resealed and forwarded to its destination. Sir George was much put about by the affair. It seemed to dwell in his mind even more than the fact of his son having been per- sonated by some unknown scoundrel. It worried him and irritated him beyond measure. But at the very time Mr. Symes was at the Towers, another link in the same chain of circumstances was being forged elsewhere. On the same evening that the lawyer and Captain Wenlock dined together, Harold Dare was dining at a friend’s house in the suburbs of London. The weather was very bad, and Harold, who hated discomfort of any kind, was easily persuaded into accepting a bed for the night. Next morning, on his way back to the office, he found that he had left his keys at home overnight, and was consequently compelled to drive round there in the hansom he had engaged at the station. On enter- ing his rooms he was astounded to find that they had been broken into during his absence, and the whole place rifled. He sent at once for the police, and while they were examining the premises, he pro- ceeded to make out an inventory of the stolen property. If the burglars had expected to find much property of value in Harold’s rooms, they must have been woefully disappointed. Harold was not rich enough to have much spare jewellery over and above that which he usually wore, but all that there was they had made a clean sweep of. A couple of five-pound notes, which had been in a drawer of his writing-desk, were also missing. But what he, perhaps, regretted more than all the rest was an old-fashioned watch that had belonged to his father, a diamond and pearl brooch that had been his mother’s, and—the amethyst seal. He enumerated each article that had been stolen, describing them as far as his memory served him, but when he handed the list to the police, it was with a rueful foreboding that he would never see or hear anything more of his property. On the morning of the 23rd of December, Harold Dare left London to spend his Christmas at Wenlock Towers. He took half-a-dozen newspapers with him in the train, and he amused himself on the way down by picking out and reading their latest comments on what they had now come to term “ The Stilwater Mystery.” By this time there was little more left for them to say than that up to the latest date the police had failed in obtaining any clue to the perpetrator of this remarkable outrage. Harold smiled to himself as he read. CORNICE OOO (CO)