“By the King of ‘Bohemia’s’ valued and trusted friend, who has helped in the little piece of villainy throughout; it is he who drops a rope-ladder through Her Majesty’s bedroom window on to the terrace below, and then hands the imitation _parure_ to his Royal master, who sees to its complete destruction and disappearance. Then there is a hue and cry for the _real_ stones, and after a year or so they are found on the person of a lady, who is legally forced to give them up. And thus His Majesty the King of ‘Bohemia’ got one solid million for the Black Diamonds, instead of half that sum, for if Mrs. Vanderdellen had not purchased the jewels, some one else would have done so.” And he was gone, leaving me to gaze at the pictures of three lovely women, and wondering if indeed it was the Royal lady herself who could best solve the mystery of who stole the Black Diamonds. V. The Murder of Miss Pebmarsh Chapter I “You must admit,” said the man in the corner to me one day, as I folded up and put aside my _Daily Telegraph_, which I had been reading with great care, “that it would be difficult to find a more interesting plot, or more thrilling situations, than occurred during the case of Miss Pamela Pebmarsh. As for downright cold-blooded villainy, commend me to some of the actors in that real drama. “The facts were simple enough; Miss Lucy Ann Pebmarsh was an old maid who lived with her young niece Pamela and an elderly servant in one of the small, newly-built houses not far from the railway station at Boreham Wood. The fact that she kept a servant at all, and that the little house always looked very spick and span, was taken by the neighbours to mean that Miss Pebmarsh was a lady of means; but she kept very much to herself, seldom went to church, and never attended any of the mothers’ meetings, parochial teas, and other social gatherings for which that popular neighbourhood has long been famous. “Very little, therefore, was known of the Pebmarsh household, save that the old lady had seen better days, that she had taken her niece to live with her recently, and that the latter had had a somewhat checkered career before she had found her present haven of refuge; some more venturesome gossips went so far as to hint—but only just above a whisper—that Miss Pamela Pebmarsh had been on the stage. “Certain it is that that young lady seemed to chafe very much under the restraint imposed upon her by her aunt, who seldom allowed her out of her sight, and evidently kept her very short of money, for, in spite of Miss Pamela’s obvious love of fine clothes, she had latterly been constrained to wear the plainest of frocks and most unbecoming of hats. “All very commonplace and uninteresting, you see, until that memorable Wednesday in October, after which the little house in Boreham Wood became a nine days’ wonder throughout newspaper-reading England.