In the Mills shop Lester Leith became all business.
“Mr. Mills, what would you say to a process which produced wonderful pearls at a small cost? The best experts would swear they were genuine.”
Mr. Carter Mills was a heavyset man with an undershot jaw and a leering eye.
“Nonsense,” he said. “You’re just another fool with another synthetic pearl scheme. Get out!”
Lester Leith took a pearl from his pocket and rolled it across the desk.
“Keep that as a souvenir of my visit,” he said.
The jeweler picked up the pearl between his thumb and forefinger and was about to throw it away when he caught sight of the smooth sheen. He opened a drawer, took out a magnifying glass, and focused it on the pearl. Then he pressed a button on the side of his desk.
Lester Leith lit a cigarette.
The door of the private office opened and a man entered.
“Markle,” snapped Mills, “take a look at this and tell me what it is.”
The man nodded to Lester Leith, took a glass from his pocket, accepted the pearl from Mills, and studied it attentively. After nearly a minute Markle pronounced his verdict.
“It’s a genuine pearl. Luster is good and it has a good shape.”
Mills took the pearl from the man’s cupped hand and jerked an authoritative thumb toward the door. Markle nodded once more to Leith and glided through the door.
Mills’s eyes turned to Leith.
“You try to run a bunco on me and I’ll have you jugged!”
Lester Leith took from his pocket a little globule of dead-looking white substance. It was, in fact, a combination of cornstarch and alum, dissolved in quick-drying waterproof cement.
“What’s that?” asked the jeweler.,
“Another pearl — or it will be when I’ve subjected it to my special process.”
Mills examined it under the magnifying glass.
“Huh,” he said. “There isn’t any money in selling synthetic pearls.”
“What’s more, I haven’t any money to put into equipment,” said Leith.
The jeweler grinned. “All right. Let’s have it.”
“You will announce,” said Lester Leith, “that you have found a wonderful pearl deposit off the Mexican coast. That deposit will be there, and your divers will actually bring up the pearls. But I will have first planted those pearls where the divers will find them. We will market the pearls at ridiculously low prices, and then, at the proper moment, sell the pearl bed.”
Mills blinked his eyes.
“You mean to salt a pearl mine?”
“And rake in a few million profit from doing it.”
Mills looked shrewdly at Leith.
“It’s illegal,” he said. “If we were caught we would be jailed for fraud.”
“If we were caught,” admitted Leith.
The jeweler clasped his hands across his stomach.
“How would you keep from getting caught?”
“I,” said Lester Leith, “would keep you completely in the background. You would simply give me sufficient money to salt the field. I would plant pearls in the oysters. Then I would communicate with you and you would discover the field. You would be perfectly safe.”
“What made you come to me?”
“I read of your loss of the rajah’s gems in the paper. I knew the publicity would result unfavorably for you and that your legitimate business would suffer for a while. It occurred to me you might be interested.”
Mills squinted his eyes.
“Yet, after what you’ve told me, you don’t dare to go to anyone else.”
“Why?”
“I’d know too much. I could expose the deal.”
Lester Leith smiled. “That’s supposing you turn it down. You’re not such a fool as to pass up millions of dollars in order to keep me from putting across a deal with someone else.”
Mills sighed. “I’ll look into the process and see how it works.”
Lester Leith nodded.
“I’ll meet you anywhere you want tomorrow morning and give you a complete demonstration.”
Mills got to his feet.
“Tomorrow morning at nine o’clock at my house. I don’t do important business here. There are too many eyes and ears. My house is my castle. Here’s the address.”
Lester Leith took the card.
“Tomorrow at nine.”
Lester Leith loaded his car with a miscellaneous assortment of things which seemed to have no connection with each other. There was a suitcase containing the blowtorch and the crucible. There was a package of cornstarch, of powdered alum, of waterproof, quick drying cement. There was another suitcase containing firecrackers.
There was a siren, a battery, and an electrical connection. There were pliers and wires. There was, in fact, such a weird assortment as to make it seem that Lester Leith was going in the junk business.
But the police knew the unusual methods by which Lester Leith had managed in the past to solve crimes and hijack the criminals, and they watched Leith with cautious eyes.
And always the shadows were mindful of their instructions — whenever Leith should meet the girl, the shadows were to drop Leith and tail the candy.
If Leith knew of their instructions he gave no sign. He drove the car down the boulevard, trailed by a police car.
The shadows were the best in the business. Yet the sedan which slipped between them and Lester Leith had been there for several blocks before the police realized that the two people in the sedan were also tailing Lester Leith.
The police dropped back.
The three cars threaded their way through the crowded streets and came at length to a more open stretch of the countryside. Leith’s car gathered speed. The sedan rushed close behind it, and the police were forced to push the needle high up on their speedometer to keep their quarry in sight.
Lester Leith slowed his car at a place where there was a vacant stretch of field, a bordering strip of woods, and a stone wall.
The sedan also slid to a stop.
The roadside was deserted. For the police to have stopped in that particular place would have meant they must disclose their identity, so they slipped past the parked cars. But they slowed their speed enough so that the two men who occupied the police car could see just who it was Leith was talking with.
And what they saw brought smiles to their faces. For Lester Leith was talking with the girl who had called at his apartment, and the man with her was undoubtedly her boy friend. But, what was more to the point, they glimpsed boxes of candy in the rear of the sedan.
The detectives piloted their car around a curve in the road, then slipped into the shelter of a stone wall. A pair of powerful binoculars gave them a good view of what was taking place.
Lester Leith seemed very well acquainted. The man was not quite as smiling as the girl, but the girl was effusively cordial. After an interval of conversation a flask was produced, also a picnic lunch. The trio ate lunch while the detectives made notes of exactly what was happening.
Following lunch, the detectives received a surprise. Their instructions had been to shadow Leith to the candy, and after that, to follow the candy until it was possible to communicate with Sergeant Ackley. But Ackley had advised them that it was a million-to-one shot that Leith would never separate himself from that candy.
Yet Leith climbed into his car and drove down the road, directly toward the detectives. The girl and her escort got into their sedan and drove back toward town.
There was no doubt as to the detectives’ instructions. They took after the sedan.
The sedan hit the through boulevard some ten miles from town and started along it, traveling at a steady rate of speed.
“Looks like they’re going right in, Louie,” said the officer at the wheel. “I better drop you at the comer. Telephone headquarters, then stop a car and catch up with me.”