Yes, it was a diamond, shining on the grass six feet from the blue brick wall.Very small, no more than a quarter of a carat, and a loose diamond.I pocketed the diamonds and began to search the lawn in as much detail as I could—without falling flat. I had just scoured two square yards of sod when the Leggetts' front door opened. A woman stood at the top of the broad stone steps, looking down at me inquiringly with a good-natured smile. She was about my age, forty, with dark blond hair and a round, pleasant face with dimples in her pink cheeks.She was wearing a white home dress with a lavender pattern on it.

I stopped what I was doing and walked towards her. "Is Mr. Leggett there?" "Yes," her voice was as calm as her expression, "you want to see him?" I answered yes. She smiled and looked at me and the lawn. "You're a detective too, aren't you?" I admit it. She led me up to a second-floor room of greens, oranges, and chocolates, sat me down in a tapestry chair, and went to the lab to call her husband.I looked around while I waited, and realized that the graying orange rug under my feet might be a genuine oriental antique, the walnut furniture in the room might be handcrafted, and the Japanese paintings on the wall didn't look old-fashioned either. taste.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, but I couldn't get out. Did you find anything?" Edgar Leggett entered. His voice was unexpectedly harsh and rough, but his manner was friendly.He was dark, straight-backed, about forty-five, of medium height, and lean.If you don't look at the deep nicks and obvious nasolabial folds on his forehead, his dark face can be called handsome.The dark hair is kept long, curled to cover the broad and vicissitudes of the forehead; behind the horn-rimmed glasses, a pair of reddish-brown eyes are extraordinarily bright.His nose is thin and straight, and his thin lips are set off by a sharp jaw line.His clothes are black and white, high-end and well-maintained.

"Not yet," I answered his question, "I'm not a detective—I'm from the Continental Detective Agency, and I was hired by the insurance company—and I'm just starting to investigate." "Insurance company?" He seemed surprised, his dark eyebrows raised above the top edge of his dark glasses. "Yeah, could it be—" "Of course." He said with a smile, waving his hand lightly to stop my words.It was long and narrow, with fingertips slightly deformed from overwork—a little unattractive like most well-trained hands. "Of course, the diamond should be insured. I didn't think of it just now. You know, the diamond is not mine. It's Halstead's."

"Halsted & Beauchamp? The insurance company didn't give me any details. You authenticated the diamond?" "No, I used them experimentally. Halsted knew I was working with glass—tinting, spotting, or staining after finishing—so he became interested in the process, which might also apply to On diamonds, especially to improve the color of the diamonds, to remove yellow or brown spots, to intensify the blue color. He wanted me to try something, and he gave me those few diamonds just five weeks ago. Eight in total, None of them were particularly valuable. The largest ones were just over half a carat, and there were a few quarter carats, and all but two were of poor condition. That’s all the thieves took.”

"So your experiment didn't work out?" I asked. "Honestly," he said, "I'm not getting anywhere. This kind of processing needs more precision, and the material is not hard enough." "Where do you keep your diamonds?" "I usually put them outside casually-of course, they are always in the laboratory. But after the last experiment failed, I have locked them in the cabinet these days." "Who knows about these experiments?" "Anyone, everyone — there's no need for secrecy." "The diamond was stolen from the cabinet?"

"Yes. This morning we found the front door open, the drawers of the cabinet had been pried open, and the diamonds gone. The police found marks on the kitchen door. They say the thieves came in there and left by the front door. What did we do last night? Neither was heard, and no other property was stolen." "I saw the front door ajar when I came down this morning," said Mrs. Leggett, standing at the door. "I went up and woke Edgar up, and we searched the house together, and found the diamond was gone. The police I think the man I saw should be a thief." I asked her which man it was.

"Saw it last night. Around midnight, when I opened my bedroom window before going to bed, I saw a man standing on the street corner. Now that I think about it, I can't really tell if he looked sneaky or not. He stood Looks like someone's waiting there. He's definitely looking in that direction, but it doesn't feel like he's watching our house. I think he's in his late forties, short and stocky--something like your build, but he stays the same. He had a shaggy brown mustache and was pale. He had on a bonnet and an overcoat, dark—brown, I think. The police said it was the same man Gabriel saw."

"Who?" "My daughter Gabrielle," she said, "was coming home late one night—Saturday, I think—and saw a man she thought came down our stone steps. But she I'm not sure, and I didn't think about it any more, I only mentioned it after it was stolen." "I want to talk to her. Is she home?" Mrs. Leggett turned to her. "Aren't the diamonds set?" I asked Leggett. "Of course not. They're all in little Halsted & Beauchamp's special cowhide envelopes—one of each, with the serial number and weight written on them in pencil. The envelope is gone, too."

Mrs. Leggett returned with her daughter.It was a girl in her twenties, wearing a white sleeveless silk dress.She is of medium height and looks slimmer than she is.Her hair was curly like her father's, and about as long, though a little lighter brown.Her chin is very pointed, her complexion is very fair and smooth, her brown-green eyes are the only ones that are particularly large, her forehead is very narrow, her mouth and teeth are very small.I got up to be introduced, then asked her about the man she had seen. "I'm not sure he came out of the house," she said, "or even from the lawn." She scowled, as if she didn't like being questioned. "I thought it was possible, but at the time I just saw him coming up the street."

"how does he look like?" "I don't know. It was dark and I was in the car and he was walking up the street. I didn't look at him very closely. It's probably your size—God knows, it might have been you." "It won't be me. It's Saturday night, isn't it?" "Well...it should be Sunday morning." "What time is it?" "Uh, three o'clock, maybe after three o'clock." She said impatiently. "Were you alone?" "no." I asked her who she was with, and I managed to come up with a name: Eric Collinson.I asked her again where she could find him.She frowned, hesitated, and said he worked for Spears, Kemp, and Duffy.Then she said she had a headache that was about to explode and wished I would let her go - because she knew I couldn't possibly have any other problems.Then, without waiting for my answer, she turned and left the room.As she turned around, I noticed that her ears had almost no lobes and were oddly shaped with pointy top edges. "Where's your servant?" I asked Mrs. Leggett. "Only one—Minnie Hershey, who's black. She doesn't sleep here, and I'm pretty sure she had nothing to do with the case. She's been with us for nearly two years, and I can vouch for her character." I said I wanted to talk to Minnie, and Mrs Leggett called her in.The maid was small and stocky, mulatto, with brown features and straight black hair that made her look like an Indian.She was very polite and insisted that she had nothing to do with the diamond theft and that she had only learned of the theft when she came to work that morning.She gave me the address of her home—in the black neighborhood of San Francisco. The Leggetts took me upstairs to the laboratory.The room is large, but it only takes up about one-fifth of the area on the third floor.There were charts between the two windows on the white wall, and the floor was logs.An X-ray machine or similar, four or five small devices, a furnace, a large sink, a large galvanized table, several smaller china tables, several storage tables, several glass-filled A shelf for utensils, and a siphonic metal trough—things like this fill most of the space. The cabinet once used to keep the diamonds was a green-painted steel cabinet with six drawers sharing a lock.The second top drawer—the one where the diamonds had been—was open.There were dents on the edge of the drawer, as if someone had inserted a crowbar or file through the cracks.The other drawers were still locked.Leggett said the thief broke the locking system by filing open the diamond drawer, so he had to find a locksmith to open the other drawers. We went downstairs and walked through a room where the biracial girl was walking around pushing a vacuum cleaner.Then we went into the kitchen.There were also pry marks between the back door and the frame, as in the case of the cabinet, apparently with the same tool. After looking through the door, I showed the Leggetts a diamond from my pocket, and asked, "Is this one of them?" Leggett lifted the diamond out of my palm between thumb and forefinger, turned it up to the light, inspected it over and over, and said, "Yes, there's a cloudy spot on the facets. Where did you find it?" "On the lawn in front of the house." "Oh, the thief is in such a hurry, he's got all his loot off." I said I deeply doubt it. Leggett frowned deeply behind the lens, narrowed his eyes and looked at me, then asked sharply: "Then what do you think?" "I think the diamonds were put there on purpose. You thief knows too much. He knew which drawer to pry without wasting a moment. Of course detectives love to say 'this is an inside thief' because if they can be found on the scene People can save you a lot of trouble; but as far as I can see, there is really no other explanation." Minnie walked to the door, still dragging the vacuum cleaner in her hand, and then began to cry that she was innocent, no one had the right to say what was wrong with her, anyone who wanted to search her house could do it, why should she just search her house because she is not white? Nonsense, stuff like that.It's hard to understand what she's saying, though, because the vacuum cleaner is still humming in her hand, and she's twitching as she speaks, with tears streaming down her cheeks. Mrs. Leggett went over and patted her on the shoulder and said, "Well, well, don't cry, Minnie. I know you've got nothing to do with it, everybody knows. Don't cry." She didn't last long Let the girl stop her tears and go upstairs. "You suspect someone in the house did it?" Leggett asked from the corner of the kitchen table. "Someone who's been here, um." "who?" "I don't know yet." "That—" he smiled, showing white teeth almost as small as his daughter's, "means that everyone—all of us—is suspect?" "Let's look at the lawn first," I suggested. "If we find other diamonds, my theory of being an insider may be invalidated." We walked across the house to the front door, and we bumped into Minnie Hershey on the way.She wore a brown coat and a violet hat, and came to say good-bye to her mistress.She said through tears that she couldn't work where anyone suspected she was stealing.She was as innocent as anyone else, and some probably less so, so she was entitled to respect.If she couldn't get it here, she could go elsewhere, because she knew that some people would not accuse her of stealing after she had worked for two years without taking a piece of bread. Mrs. Leggett begged her, advised her, reprimanded her, and finally ordered her to stay, but to no avail.The dark-skinned girl made up her mind and left without looking back. Mrs. Leggett looked at me, did her best to make a stern expression out of that pleasant face, and said reproachfully, "It's all because of you." I said I was sorry and her husband walked out with me to check the lawn.We found no other diamonds.