Two mornings later the newspapers announced the important facts that

Miss Kitty Killigrew had gone to Bar Harbor for the week, and that the

famous uncut emeralds of the Maharajah of Something-or-other-apur had

been stolen; nothing co-relative in the departure of Kitty and the

green stones, coincidence only.

The Indian prince was known the world over as gem-mad. He had

thousands in unset gems which he neither sold, wore, nor gave away.

His various hosts and hostesses lived in mortal terror during a sojourn

of his; for he carried his jewels with him always; and often, whenever

the fancy seized him, he would go abruptly to his room, spread a square

Advertisement..

of cobalt-blue velvet on the floor, squat in his native fashion beside

it, and empty his bags of diamonds and rubies and pearls and sapphires

and emeralds and turquoises. To him they were beautiful toys.

Whenever he was angry, they soothed him; whenever he was happy, they

rounded out this happiness; they were his variant moods.

He played a magnificent game. Round the diamonds he would make a

circle of the palest turquoises. Upon this pyramid of brilliants he

would place some great ruby, sapphire, or emerald. Then his servants

were commanded to raise and lower the window-curtains alternately.

These shifting contra-lights put a strange life into the gems; they not

only scintillated, they breathed. Or, perhaps the pyramid would be of

emeralds; and he would peer into their cool green depths as he might

have peered into the sea.

He kept these treasures in an ornamented iron-chest, old, battered, of

simple mechanism. It had been his father's and his father's father's;

it had been in the family since the days of the Peacock Throne, and

most of the jewels besides. Night and day the chest was guarded. It

lay upon an ancient Ispahan rug, in the center of the bedroom, which no

hotel servant was permitted to enter. His five servants saw to it that

all his wants were properly attended to, that no indignity to his high

caste might be offered: as having his food prepared by pariah hands in

the hotel kitchens, foul hands to make his bed. He was thoroughly

religious; the gods of his fathers were his in all their ramifications;

he wore the Brahmin thread about his neck.

He was unique among Indian princes. An Oxford graduate, he

persistently and consistently clung to the elaborate costumes of his

native state. And when he condescended to visit any one, it was

invariably stipulated that he should be permitted to bring along his

habits, his costumes and his retinue. In his suite or apartments he

was the barbarian; in the drawing-room, in the ballroom, in the

dining-room (where he ate nothing), he was the suave, the courteous,

the educated Oriental. He drank no wines, made his own cigarettes, and

never offered his hand to any one, not even to the handsome women who

admired his beautiful skin and his magnificent ropes of pearls.




Most Popular