Now
for the denouement of the riddle. In the year 1874 there actually came
into the market, at a sale of the Duke of Brunswick's jewels at Geneva,
a triangular blue diamond weighing between twelve and thirteen carats;
and subsequently elsewhere a very much smaller piece again of the same
colour and quality. Since all these stones were of the same rare blue
tint which has never been encountered in any other diamond known in
the world, and since their total weight—allowing for cleavage and
cutting—is a rough equivalent of the royal French jewel, no doubt can
exist in the mind of any logical person that the thief, whoever it
was, had the original stone cut into three pieces as conditioned by its
natural cleavage lines.
Much
has been written about the Hope diamond, mainly with intent to stress
the fact that it has brought bad luck to all its successive owners. But
I do not wish to enlarge upon that aspect. I remember seeing a telegram
forty-two years ago addressed to my principal in Paris advising him
that his father (my uncle) had purchased the Hope diamond at
Christie's sale-rooms and that he had already received an offer for it
from a New York firm of diamond merchants. It is true that my uncle
died at a comparatively
