The Old Man in the Corner had paused. From the capacious pocket of his tweed ulster he now extracted a thick piece of string; his claw-like fingers set to work. The problem which police and public had never been able to solve had, I had no doubt, presented few difficulties to his agile brain. "Tell me," I suggested. He went on working away for a little while at an intricate knot, then he said, "If you want to know more, you will have to listen to what will seem to you an irrelevant story." I professed my willingness to listen to anything he might choose to tell me. "Very well, then," he said. "Let me take your mind back to that same winter two years ago. Do you remember the extraordinary theft of a valuable collection of gems, the property of Sir James Narford?" "I do." "Do you know who Sir James Narford was?" "I would prefer you to tell me," I replied. "Sir James Narford," the funny creature went on glibly, "was a young gentleman who had been employed during the war in one of the Government departments; he was the only son of his father who was an impoverished Irish baronet. Soon after the Armistice, Sir James went to South America to visit some relations. He must have made a very favourable impression on one of these--an eccentric old cousin who died a very few months later and left to his English relative a marvellous collection of pearls and other gems. Some of these were of priceless value, and as is the way with anything that is out of the common, all sorts of stories grew around the romantic legacy. The great worth and marvellous beauty of the jewels were told and retold, with many embellishments no doubt, in the English papers. It was asserted that the Brazilian Government had valued them for probate at a million pounds sterling; that there were diamonds--some still uncut--that would make the Koh-i-noor or the Orloff look like small bits of glass, and so on. I daresay you can remember some of the legends that gathered around Sir James Narford's gems. By the time the lucky owner of the fabulous treasure, who had gone out again to Brazil in order to fetch away his jewels, had returned to England, he was the object of universal interest and he and his gems were photographed and paragraphed all over the place.