"Most old ladies are eccentric, but there is a limit, and my
great-aunt had overstepped it. I had believed her to be wealthy--she
died bankrupt. Still, I knew there was one thing she did possess, and
that was the famous Crimson Diamond. Now, of course, you know who my
great-aunt was.

"Excepting the Koh-i-noor and the Regent, this enormous and unique
stone was, as everybody knows, the most valuable gem in existence. Any
ordinary person would have placed that diamond in a safe-deposit. My
great-aunt did nothing of the kind. She kept it in a small velvet bag,
which she carried about her neck. She never took it off, but wore it
dangling openly on her heavy silk gown.

"In this same bag she also carried dried catnip-leaves, of which she
was inordinately fond. Nobody but myself, her only living relative,
knew that the Crimson Diamond lay among the sprigs of catnip in the
little velvet bag.

"'Harold,' she would say, 'do you think I'm a fool? If I place the
Crimson Diamond in any safe-deposit vault in New York, somebody will
steal it, sooner or later.' Then she would nibble a sprig of catnip
and peer cunningly at me. I loathed the odor of catnip and she knew
it. I also loathed cats. This also she knew, and of course surrounded
herself with a dozen. Poor old lady! One day she was found dead in her
bed in her apartments at the Waldorf. The doctor said she died from
natural causes. The only other occupant of her sleeping-room was a
cat. The cat fled when we broke open the door, and I heard that she
was received and cherished by some eccentric people in a neighboring
apartment.