Naturally there was no escape for Eldridge after that.  Larry Holiday grabbed him firmly and demanded to know if he had seen Ruth Annersley and if he had and knew where she was to tell him everything quick.  It was important.

Considering Larry Holiday’s haggard face and tense voice Eldridge admitted the importance and spun his yarn.  No, he did not know where Ruth Annersley was nor if the Greuze girl was Ruth Annersley at all.  He did know the person he meant was in the possession of the famous Farringdon pearls, a fact immensely interesting to Fitch and Larrabee, the jewelers in whose employ he was.

“Your Ruth Annersley or Farringdon or whoever she is brought the pearls in to our place yesterday to have them appraised.  You can bet we sat up and took notice.  We didn’t know they had left Australia but here they were right under our noses absolutely unmistakable, one of the finest sets of matched pearls in the world.  You Holidays are so hanged smart.  I wonder it didn’t occur to you to bring ’em to us anyway.  We’re the boys that can tell you who’s who in the lapidary world.  Pearls have pedigrees, my dear fellow, quite as faithfully recorded as those of prize pigs.”

Larry thumped his cranium disgustedly.  It did seem ridiculous now that the very simple expedient of going to the master jewelers for information had not struck any of them.  But it hadn’t and that was the end of it.  He made Eldridge sit down in the Gardens then and there however to tell him all he knew about the pearls but first and most important did the other have any idea where the owner of the pearls was?  He had none.  The girl was coming in again in a few days to hear the result of a cable they had sent to Australia where the pearls had been the last Larrabee and Fitch knew.  She had left no address.  Eldridge rather thought she hadn’t cared to be found.  Larry bit his lip at that and groaned inwardly.  He too was afraid it was only too true, and it was all his fault.

This was the story of the pearls as his friend briefly outlined it for Larry Holiday’s benefit.  The Farringdon pearls had originally belonged to a Lady Jane Farringdon of Farringdon Court, England.  They had been the gift of a rejected lover who had gone to Africa to drown his disappointment and had died there after having sent the pearls home to the woman he had loved fruitlessly and who was by this time the wife of another man, her distant cousin Sir James Farringdon.  At her death Lady Jane had given the pearls to her oldest son for his bride when he should have one.  He too had died however before he had attained to the bride.  The pearls went to his younger brother Roderick a sheep raiser in Australia who had amassed a fortune and discarded the title.  The sheep raiser married an Australian girl and gave her the pearls.  They had two children, a girl and a boy.  Roderick was since deceased.  Possibly his wife also was dead.  They had cabled to find out details.  But it looked as if the little blonde lady who possessed the pearls although she did not know where she got them was in all probability the daughter of Roderick Farringdon, the granddaughter of the famous beauty, Lady Jane.  She was probably also a great heiress.  The sheep raiser and his father-in-law had both been reported to be wallowing in money.  “Oh boy!” Eldridge had ended significantly.