found it, exactly where it ought to have been. Now, you can draw your own
conclusions from that--mine are that Ebers stole it, so that he could
reproduce it in order to give his reproduction to some person who wanted
to identify James Allerdyke at sight.

"However, to go forward to the discovery which we made about Schmall,
Van Koon, and Merrifield. As soon as we made that discovery, Mr. Rayner
was for going to the police at once, but I thought not--there was still
certain evidence which I wanted, so that the case could be presented
without a flaw. However, all of a sudden I saw that we should have to
act. Ebers was found dead in a small hotel near the Docks, and at a
conference in which Mr. Fullaway insisted I should join, in his rooms,
and at which Van Koon, who had been playing a bluff game, was present,
there was enough said to convince me that Van Koon and his associates
would take alarm and be off with what they believed themselves to
possess--the jewels in that parcel. So then Mr. Rayner and I determined
on big measures. And they were risky ones--for me.

"I had already been down, more than once, into Whitechapel, and had
bought things at Schmall's shop, and I was convinced that he was the man
who accompanied Lisette Beaurepaire to that little hotel in Eastbourne
Terrace. Now that the critical moment came, after the Ebers-Federman
affair, I went there again. I got Schmall outside his premises. I took a
bold step. I told him that I was a woman detective, who, for purposes of
my own, had been working this case, and that I was in full possession of
the facts. If I had not taken the precaution to tell him this in the
thick of a crowded street, he would have killed me on the spot! Then I
went on to tell him more. I said that his accomplice had led him to
believe that he had the Nastirsevitch jewels in a parcel in his
possession. I said that Van Koon was wrong--I had them myself--I told him