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He resumed his old trick of dancing about the room.

“I was a fool ever to let you have the box! I ought to have known better than to have trusted you; goodness knows you have given me sufficient cause to mistrust you! Over and over again! Your character is only too notorious! You have plundered friend and foe alike–friend and foe alike! As for the rubbish which you call your collection, nine tenths of it, I know as a positive fact, you have stolen out and out.”

“Who stole my Sir Walter Raleigh pipe? Wasn’t it a man named Pugh?”

“Look here, Joseph Tress!”

“I’m looking.”

“Oh, it’s no good talking to you, not the least! You’re–you’re dead to all the promptings of conscience! May I inquire, Mr. Tress, what it is you propose to do?”

“I PROPOSE to do nothing, except summon the representatives of law and order. Failing that, my dear Pugh, I had some faint, vague, very vague idea of taking the contents of your ninepenny puzzle to a certain firm in Hatton Garden, who are dealers in precious stones, and to learn from them if they are disposed to give anything for it, and if so, what.”

“I shall come with you.”

“With pleasure, on condition that you pay the cab.”

“I pay the cab! I will pay half.”

“Not at all. You will either pay the whole fare, or else I will have one cab and you shall have another. It is a three-shilling cab fare from here to Hatton Garden. If you propose to share my cab, you will be so good as to hand over that three shillings before we start.”

He gasped, but he handed over the three shillings. There are few things I enjoy so much as getting money out of Pugh!

On the road to Hatton Garden we wrangled nearly all the way. I own that I feel a certain satisfaction in irritating Pugh, he is such an irritable man. He wanted to know what I thought we should get for the diamond.

“You can’t expect to get much for the contents of a ninepenny puzzle, not even the price of a cab fare, Pugh.”

He eyed me, but for some minutes he was silent. Then he began again.

“Tress, I don’t think we ought to let it go for less than–than five thousand pounds.”

“Seriously, Pugh, I doubt whether, when the whole affair is ended, we shall get five thousand pence for it, or, for the matter of that, five thousand farthings.”

“But why not? Why not? It’s a magnificent stone–magnificent! I’ll stake my life on it.”

I tapped my breast with the tips of my fingers.

“There’s a warning voice within my breast that ought to be in yours, Pugh! Something tells me, perhaps it is the unusually strong vein of common sense which I possess, that the contents of your ninepenny puzzle will be found to be a magnificent do–an ingenious practical joke, my friend.”

“I don’t believe it.”

But I think he did; at any rate, I had unsettled the foundations of his faith.

We entered the Hatton Garden office side by side; in his anxiety not to let me get before him, Pugh actually clung to my arm. The office was divided into two parts by a counter which ran from wall to wall. I advanced to a man who stood on the other side of this counter.

“I want to sell you a diamond.”

“WE want to sell you a diamond,” interpolated Pugh.

I turned to Pugh. I “fixed” him with my glance.

“I want to sell you a diamond. Here it is. What will you give me for it?”

Taking the crystal from my waistcoat pocket I handed it to the man on the other side of the counter. Directly he got it between his fingers, and saw that it was that he had got, I noticed a sudden gleam come into his eyes.