Rubies have always been associated with royalty. Why this should be, I, quite frankly, do not know. Perhaps because of the great value of perfect rubies; it may be because of their warmth and fire. In any event, somewhere on the loose in these United States are two very precious, evenly matched, blood-red rubies worth a king's ransom.

Here is a valuable lost treasure, which could be right in your own home, in some dusty attic, in some old forgotten trunk--or right in the very room in which you are sitting.

The history of these rubies is a story of blood, murder, and theft. Their origin is lost in antiquity, but they first were known to have been the eyes of a statue of a pagan goddess in a Korean temple dating back to the year 167 A.D. It was during this era that the rubies became known as "The Eyes."

In the tenth century Korea suffered a bloody revolution, and during this period "The Eyes" disappeared. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the history of lost treasures. Very valuable paintings, for example, have suddenly disappeared for hundreds of years, only to show up in a new part of the world centuries later.

Legally, the reason is very simple. One cannot give a better title to personal property than one has received. Therefore, if you have a stolen object d'art in your possession, there is nothing you can do but keep it hidden.

Following this pattern, "The Eyes" appeared next in Turkey in the possession of Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566. Suleiman, so the story goes, fell madly in love with a very unemotional blonde from Britain. Hoping to win the young damsel over to harem life, the Sultan presented her with the rubies. The young lady took one look at the blood-red jewels and went into a March thaw.

Her decision, however, proved to be her death sentence. Less than six months later someone entered the harem at night, crept stealthily to the couch of the sleeping girl, and strangled her. The murderer escaped with the rubies.

Years later "The Eyes" reappeared in the magnificent court of Louis XV. History has it that the pompous Louis personally placed the jewels around the lovely neck of the beautiful Madame Pompadour, extravagant mistress of His Majesty.

When the ministers objected to the enormous price the King had paid for the rubies, it was Pompadour who laughingly replied, "After us, the deluge." Her prediction wasn't far wrong. Before the end of the Seven Years' War she sold the jewels to a Russian nobleman in order to help finance the tottering French monarchy.

What happened to "The Eyes" in Russia is unknown, but in 1894 one Klaus Gudden, a notorious German gem thief, came into possession of the stones. The efficient German police soon learned that he had the jewels and set machinery in motion to apprehend him. Klaus was spotted finally in the industrial district of Berlin and a guard was posted in the hope that he would return.

A few days after, the thief did return to the same neighborhood and the police closed in. After a spirited chase through buildings and over roof tops, Klaus Gudden was finally dropped by a fusillade of bullets. When they reached him, the notorious thief was dead. The rubies were not on his person.

Gudden was buried in potter's field and soon forgotten, but many people who knew about the rubies wondered what had happened to them. Pawnshops and fences were queried but to no avail. The jewels had again disappeared.

Three years later an Englishman named Michael Graves, a well-known collector of gems, decided he could pick up the trail of "The Eyes." He went into the industrial district of Berlin and began a store-to-store, factory-to-factory survey of the neighborhood in which Klaus Gudden had met his death.

One day he came to a little ceramic factory. Entering, he showed a picture of Gudden to the proprietor and asked if he had ever seen the man. Much to Graves's surprise, the factory owner said that he not only had seen him, but he had sold him a glazed cat, which had never been called for.

He went on to relate how Gudden had come into his place of business one morning and ordered a cat specially prepared, to be glazed, and had examined it carefully. The proprietor remembered clearly that this particular cat was still wet and soft, having just been taken out of the mold. After the price had been agreed upon, Gudden took the cat and placed a small X on the underside of the body to identify it. He departed, promising to return within a week to pick it up.

You may well imagine how Graves felt, hearing this news. He knew now what had happened to the precious jewels. Gudden had hidden them in the soft clay cat. He asked the proprietor if he still had the cat, adding that he would like to have it as a keepsake. The ceramic maker shook his head. No, when Gudden failed to return after a long time, he had shipped the cat, with hundreds of others, to America.

Graves didn't show the disappointment he must have felt. Somewhere in America he knew that the two blood-red rubies were securely hidden within the body of the cat.

He made a few other polite inquiries so as not to arouse suspicion and learned further that the cat was exactly eight inches high, was in a lying position, its tail wrapped around its forepaws, and that the consignment could have been shipped to one of thirty American customers.

Graves left for America to trace this "Cat with the Crimson Eyes" but was doomed to bitter disappointment. The intervening years had made the search almost impossibly difficult. Someone had purchased the cat, never knowing that within its clay body are two precious stones worth a half million dollars.

In the search for "The Cat with the Crimson Eyes" Graves visited hundreds of antique shops and secondhand stores, but eventually gave up.

This much-sought-for cat is now more than hundred years old and will bear evidences of age. Fine cracks will be apparent on its body glaze. Its color, originally yellow, will have become darkened.

If upon inspection you find that this cat is not in your own home, try the antique shops and secondhand stores. If you should find the cat you would indeed be lucky, for the cat was not a particularly better work of art, and it is more than likely that it has arrived in the city dump years ago.