Yes, it was Stuart! There could be no possible doubt about that; nor, indeed, did the culprit attempt to deny his identity. Perhaps he realized that to do so would be futile. There he was in his wig, whiskers, glasses, ulster, and slouch hat; and the next moment, presto, valeted by Mr. Inspector, there he was in his fur coat—the elegant gentleman who had invaded Burton and Norcross' jewelry store!

Hollings recognized him in a twinkling and without a shade of hesitation singled him out from twelve other men; so, also, did Mr. Rhinehart and Christopher.

Poor Stuart! He was too genuine a sport to whine when he saw the game was up. On the contrary he assumed a good-natured, almost humorous stoicism, as if his capture were nothing more than a feature of the day's work. Only one fact regarding it did he appear to resent and that was that a person wary as himself should have been tracked down and trapped by a mere boy. Incontestably this wounded his pride. Nevertheless he tried valiantly to conceal his chagrin, maintaining throughout the ordeal of identification his jaunty pose and saluting Christopher, whom he instantly remembered having seen on the car, with a mocking bow and a smile of admiration.

"It was a neat trick you played me, youngster," announced he, as the lad approached. "They will be annexing you to the staff here if you don't look out."

"I had to do it, you know," Christopher answered, half apologizing for the double-faced rÔle he had played. "I'm not usually a squealer—honest, I'm not. But the diamonds belonged to my father, and I saw you take them."

"Of course, sonny, of course. I'm not kicking—it was a fair game," the big fellow returned without a shadow of anger. "So you saw me take them, did you? Why didn't you sing out at the time?"

"It all happened so quickly that I could hardly trust my eyes," was the response. "Besides, you looked so much like a gentleman that I couldn't believe you were just a—a—"

"Thief," cut in Stuart sharply, supplying the word at which the boy had halted. Nevertheless despite the glibness with which he uttered it, he cringed and a flood of telltale color rose to his hair. It was the first time he had exhibited the slightest feeling.

Uncomfortably Christopher nodded.

"Well, that's what I am, you see," continued the man who had now regained his former debonnaire manner, "so the next time look out and don't be taken in. There are gentlemen who are thieves, sonny, and then again there are thieves who are gentlemen—at least I hope so."

So unruffled was his temper, so brave the front he put on the inevitable, that as Christopher saw him led away between two guards a momentary pang of regret passed over him. If Stuart had only happened to have turned his talents to some profession besides diamond stealing, what a delightful acquaintance he might have proved.

But the next instant Corrigan, the head inspector, broke in on this reverie, and his words banished further repining:

"The scoundrel won't open his lips," declared he to Mr. Burton. "What he's done with those diamonds we can't find out. He's mum as an oyster. I hoped we might tempt him into making a clean breast of the matter—but not he! He's too hardened a chap for repentance, I reckon."

"His pal, Tony, may have them."

"No doubt," acquiesced the chief. "The two probably have a cache where they stow their loot."

"I wish we could find it."

"So do I, with all my heart. We may, too, if we succeed in running down the other chap," Corrigan returned. "I shan't give up hope with Mr. Christopher on the job."

"I fancy my son isn't going into the business of tracking down criminals permanently," Burton, Senior, retorted a bit stiffly.

"Like enough not," came tartly from Corrigan.

"Still, he can keep his peepers open, eh, youngster?"

He smiled down upon Christopher from beneath his shaggy brows, and Christopher smiled back. There was something very likeable about Corrigan.

"I'll look alive," grinned the boy. "Only of course you know this kill was just a fluke."

The modest words evidently pleased the inspector.

"That's all right," said he. "You may make another. Who knows?"

He patted the lad's shoulder encouragingly and in friendly fashion added:

"Nobody bags a diamond robber every day."

They went out—Mr. Burton, his son, and the two clerks.

"We may as well go to luncheon now," announced Christopher's father, when the men had left them. "Where shall we go? We'll have a real celebration in honor of Stuart's capture."

"Poor Stuart!" murmured the lad.

"Mercy on us! Surely you are not regretting that you landed him in jail."

"No-o. Still, I'm sorry for him."

"Of course. We're always sorry to see a person of his ability go wrong. But he has only himself to thank for his fate. He might have known at the outset where he would bring up. They all are trapped sooner or later."

"I suppose so."

"Come, come, son! Don't go wasting any romantic sympathy on Stuart—or whatever his name is. He wouldn't appreciate it. Why, he would rob us again to-morrow if he got the chance," the head of the firm asserted harshly.

"Probably he would."

"You know he would."

"Y-es. But he was such a good sport."

"He knew there was nothing to be gained by whining and making himself disagreeable."

Nevertheless, in spite of his father's arguments, Christopher could not entirely put the unlucky Stuart out of his mind. Nor did the fried scallops, grilled sweet potatoes, and salad which his father ordered for him wholly blot out a lurking depression or the haunting memory of the criminal's face. It took two chocolate ice creams and an ample square of fudge cake to dispel his gloom and bring his spirits back to their accustomed cheerfulness.

By the time he and his father returned to the store, however, they were practically normal, and he ascended to the fourth floor to hunt up McPhearson, who amid the general excitement he had left somewhat abruptly.

"Well, so you landed your light-fingered friend, did you, laddie?" remarked the Scotchman.

"Mr. Corrigan did."

"It was thanks to you, I guess."

"Partly!"

"Humph! You don't seem very triumphant about it." The old man peered at the boy over the top of his glasses.

"I'm not. It made me sick—the whole thing."

"I know, sonny—I know. But we can't have such persons about," McPhearson said gently. "Of course you are sorry to put a fellow behind the bars, but—"

"He was so darned decent about it—and so plucky," exclaimed Christopher. "Why, he was almost a gentleman."

The sentence ended in a tremulous laugh.

"No doubt he may have started out to be a gentleman—poor chap—and then got on the wrong track. Well, you did what was right. You know that."

"I hope so," was the dull answer.

"We'll not talk about it any more. Come, let's shift the subject to something else."

"To clocks?"

"Aren't you tired of clocks?"

"No. Are you?"

"I never get tired of them," smiled McPhearson. "If I did, it would be fatal. They are my daily bread."

"And mine, too, for that matter," rejoined Christopher.

"Perhaps," admitted the Scotchman. "Still you do not subsist wholly on clocks. Your bread is studded with pearls, emeralds, and rubies."

The fancy pleased the boy, and he laughed.

"Rather indigestible eating," he protested.

"And yet you look fit as a king."

There was a moment's pause; then the man said:

"Well, if we are to talk clocks, where shall we begin?"

"Anywhere you like," returned the lad, with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Suppose, then, since you are so docile and accommodating, we leap to somewhere near the year 1650, when the inspiration to attach the pallets of the escapement to the pendulum rod, thereby making the escapement horizontal, came almost simultaneously to an Englishman named Harris and a Dutchman named Huyghens. These, together with the later ideas of anchor escapement evolved by Graham, put clocks, within the span of a few years, on an almost modern basis. Other improvements such as using steel springs in place of weights and the perfecting of movements have of course been made since; but this period covers the time of most vital improvement in the art of clockmaking. At this time, too, some of the finest of old English watches and clocks were made. Thomas Tompion, sometimes called the father of English clock making, took his place at the head of these, and to this day beautiful old clocks that are still in service testify to his skillful workmanship."

"What sort of clocks did he make?" inquired Christopher with interest.

"Just about every design of the period—bracket clocks similar to those of Richard Parsons'; long-case, or what we call grandfather, clocks; even brass clocks with projecting dials; and in addition, the greater part of the finest watches turned out at this time were of his making. There were few who could equal him. Possibly Daniel Quare and Joseph Knibb made clocks as good, but they certainly made no better. Were you to visit Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, you would find there wonderful chiming grandfather clocks made by this same Thomas Tompion. They are genuine treasures and would bring almost any price. So remember, in journeying through the world, if you ever run across a clock or a watch made by Thomas Tompion, you are looking at a very fine bit of handicraft."

"I'm afraid I never shall," Christopher shook his head.

"One never can tell where his path through life will take him," McPhearson said. "For example, I never expected my wanderings would lead me from Glasgow to America. Nor, probably, did Stuart dream when he woke up to-day that his morning ride in a Fifth Avenue bus would land him in jail. So you must not despair of seeing London and some of Thomas Tompion's clocks. Moreover, should you go there, I hope you will hunt up in Westminster Abbey the grave of this famous man."

"Was he buried at Westminster? Why, I thought only kings, queens, poets, and great people had places there," Christopher ventured, a trifle incredulous.

"Usually they do, but Thomas Tompion well merited the honor due him, I assure you. To begin with, he was no ordinary tradesman. He was a person of culture who all his life associated with the foremost philosophers and mathematicians of his day. So widely was his ability recognized that he was made leading watchmaker to the court of Charles II. Now, although timekeepers had vastly improved, they were still pretty faulty, experimental contrivances, whose outside trappings counted with the public far more than did their interior mechanism. Tompion changed all this. Seizing upon all that was good offered by the inventors preceding him, he carefully re-proportioned the various parts and produced English clocks and watches that were at once the pride and despair of his brother craftsmen. Watches were something of an avocation with him, for his primary trade was in clocks, to which for many years he devoted his entire labor. Probably, however, the problems a watch presented won his interest and led him to try his skill in this new field, with the result that he was soon making watches that as far surpassed his associates' as did his clocks. He made a watch for the king, the fame of which traveled to France and prompted the Dauphin to order two like it. These watches all had two balances and balance springs fashioned after the scheme Hooke had worked out. They also, like most of Tompion's timekeepers, had an hour and a minute hand. One more innovation which he presented (and it was a very practical one) was the numbering of his watch movements for purposes of identification—a plan very generally followed since by present-day workmen. And yet all this which I have told you does not give you half an idea of what Tompion really was."

McPhearson paused thoughtfully.

"Thomas Tompion stood for something more than any of these things. He was a genuine lover of his art, and when we see or read of the many kinds of clocks and watches he produced, we cannot but feel the joy he had in making them. He made, for example, a marvellous clock that would run a year without winding, which William III had in his bedroom at Kensington Palace, it having been left to him by the Earl of Leicester. This clock, although small, struck the hours and quarter-hours, and was of ebony with silver mountings. And to prove to you that it was no novelty timepiece to be used merely for ornament, I will tell you that now, after a hundred and fifty years, it is still running and faithfully doing its duty."

"Who owns it?" queried Christopher.

"It has for a century and a half been in the possession of the family of Lord Mostyn and so famous has been its history that this nobleman has kept the names of those who have wound it during the last hundred years."

"All sorts of bigwigs, I suppose," put in Christopher.

"A list of celebrated persons, you may be sure."

"Was Ebenezer on it?" Christopher chuckled mischievously.

"Most likely he would have been had he not been so busy winding Mr. Hawley's treasures," replied the Scotchman, smiling at the jest. "Then in 1695 Tompion made a very fine traveling striking and alarm watch with case beautifully chased. The Pump Room at Bath boasts a tall clock of his make—a present from him to the city in acknowledgment of the benefits he derived from its mineral waters. There are also examples of his craft in famous clock collections both here and in England, the Wetherfield collection owning eighteen made by him."

"And did his tall clocks have weights?"

"Yes, their driving power was a big lead weight. The clock at Bath has a thirty-two-pound weight of lead which drops monthly six feet."

"Is it only wound each month?"

"That's all. Some of these tall clocks made by Tompion ran a year without winding. Nor must you get the impression that clocks and watches were the only things this remarkable mechanic produced, for at Hampton Court is a barometer of his construction, proving him to be a master of more intricate science than the mere art of time-keeping. In fact many of his clocks show the days and the months, as well as the difference between sun time and mean time."

"I don't quite understand what mean time is. Isn't all time alike?"

"Mercy, no! Sun time and our time are two quite different things. Some day I will tell you why. Of this Thomas Tompion, although he lived long ago, was well aware. You see, therefore, he was no ordinary uneducated clockmaker. What wonder that he and George Graham, one of the illustrious pupils he trained, should have been buried together at Westminster Abbey!"

"You haven't told me anything about Graham."

"He was a nephew of Tompion and a very clever craftsman whose clocks did honor to his teacher. Honest George Graham, he was called—not a bad way to come down through history. Personally I would rather have that handle before my name than to have Lord or Duke precede it and I fancy George Graham was of a type who felt that way too! So devoted were he and Tompion and so closely linked was their work that when Graham died, the grave of Tompion was opened in order that the two men might be buried together. Then a stone was made reading:

"Now a bit of interesting history is attached to this stone. Several years after it had been put in place a younger generation came along who knew very little of either Tompion or his pupil Graham, and seeing the large tablet, some of them decided to take it up and put instead smaller stones with only the inscriptions:

Mr. T. Tompion 1713
Mr. G. Graham 1751

upon them. Perhaps the authorities felt the big stone took up too much room; or perhaps they felt it heaped undue honor on two men who in their estimation were really nothing but tradesmen; or, worse yet, perhaps they had forgotten all Tompion and Graham did for the rest of us. However that may be, in 1842 a Bond Street watchmaker had loyalty and courage enough to protest, and through the late Dean Stanley the old stone, fortunately uninjured, was hunted up and reinstated in its original position, thereby proving that England does not after all forget her debt to these splendidly intelligent workmen."

"I'm glad the first stone was put back," Christopher asserted. "Who on earth would ever know from the skimpy marking on the other one who Mr. T. Tompion or Mr. G. Graham were?"

"Probably very few persons—only those, most likely, who had made a study of clocks. To my mind it is far better to remind the ignorant who perhaps never heard of Tompion or Graham, to hold their memory in grateful respect. Possibly, too, the inscription on the tablet may prompt the casual passer-by to look up what these two men did, and if so a keener appreciation of them will be established."

"I shall go and see that stone if I ever go to London," Christopher declared.

"Do, laddie. And see some of their clocks, too. Graham was a clever, broadly educated man, who worked out many astronomical instruments in addition to his clockmaking. When you view either his handiwork or that of Tompion, you will see the product of master craftsmen. And in the meantime don't forget Daniel Quare, Samuel Knibb, or Ahasuerus Fromanteel, who although unhonored by stones in the Abbey, are well worthy of being remembered."