For the
second a South Brooklyn pawnbroker demanded (and received) an
exorbitant reward. A florist in Greenwich, Connecticut, contributed
the last. With that patient attention to detail which is the A. B.
C. of detective work, Average Jones traced down these apparently
incongruous wanderings of the stones and then followed them all,
back to Mrs. Hale's fire-escape.
The bartender's stone offered no difficulties. The setting which
the pawnbroker brought in had been found on the city refuse heap by
a scavenger. It had fallen through a grating into the hotel cellar,
and had been swept out with the rubbish to go to the municipal
"dump." The apparent mystery of the florist was lucid when Jones
found that the hotel exchanged its shop-worn plants with the
Greenwich Floral Company. His roaming eye, keen for every detail,
had noticed a row of tubbed azaleas within the ground enclosure of
the Denton. Recalling this to mind, it was easy for the Ad-Visor to
surmise that the gem had dropped from the fire-escape into a tub,
which was, shortly after, shipped to the florist.
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