Consequently, I laid
my plans, just as you have discovered, and got Martin Dubois up from
Rouen to carry the case I gave him down to Havre. I had had another
box prepared and wrapped in brown paper, with my address in New York
written thereon. The moment I emerged from the auction room, while my
friend the cowboy was holding up the audience, I turned my face to the
door, took out the genuine diamonds from the case and slipped it into
the box I had prepared for mailing. Into the genuine case I put the
bogus diamonds. After handing the box to Dubois, I turned down a side
street, and then into another whose name I do not know, and there in a
shop with sealing wax and string did up the real diamonds for posting.
I labelled the package "Books", went to the nearest post office, paid
letter postage, and handed it over unregistered as if it were of no
particular value. After this I went to my rooms in the Grand Hotel
where I had been staying under my own name for more than a month. Next
morning I took train for London, and the day after sailed from
Liverpool on the _Lucania_. I arrived before the _Gascoigne_, which
sailed from Havre on Saturday, met my box at the Customs house, paid
duty, and it now reposes in my safe.
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