Summary
A Parisian Bouie cabinet—lacquer shimmering like blood on obsidian—crosses the Atlantic as both trophy and tomb; inside its marquetry veins rest the sapphires of Countess Simone, first jewel in a corset of crimes that cinches Manhattan’s elite. Vantine, aesthete and acquisitor, unlocks the cabinet’s mirrored womb only to drop dead, twin amethyst bruises flowering on his hand like nightshade. Detectives follow, each succumbing to the same lacework of cyanosis, until Jack Godfrey—a gum-cheeked newsboy with ink in his arteries—dons gauntlets of cold steel and stalks the artifact into Police Headquarters, where caged shadows hum. Meanwhile Crochard, continental prince of larceny, glides through Ellis Island fog with Mimi—femme-fatale as mercury—and a retinue of switchblades disguised as violin cases, all hungering for the stones that pulse within the cabinet’s false bottom. Their pas de deux with Godfrey ricochets from rooftop chiaroscuro to Hudson wharfs, climaxing in a precinct lock-up where the cabinet, now mythic reliquary, splits open to reveal not only diamonds but the gasp of a century turning on its hinge.
Synopsis
The Countess Simone, whose jewels are famous, is selected for the first victim of the band. Vantine, a noted connoisseur, has purchased in Paris a wonderfully perfect Bouie cabinet. It is brought to his home in New York carrying with it Death, for Vantine, while examining it, is mysteriously slain, the only marks upon him being two livid stains on the back of his left hand. One after another investigators of the cabinet are slain in an equally unfathomable way. There appears to be no solution of the puzzle till Jack Godfrey, a "cub" reporter tackles the circumstances. Godfrey, armed with steel gloves, undertakes to discover the secret of the murderous cabinet. In the meantime, Crochard, the international crook, who has used the cabinet as a hiding place for part of his booty, pursues it to America, together with Mimi, his accomplice, and others of his retinue. Through a skillful ruse he gains access to the death-cabinet which has become so deadly that the police have seized it and placed it in a cell at "Headquarters." Disgusted as the detective, who has followed him across the Atlantic, Crochard exercises his cunning and his wits and makes a laughing stock of the man set on his trail. The climax is startling.
