"Indeed, yes," replied Cleek. "I have good reason to know of them, as I shall prove to you presently. My knowledge of the diamonds is so complete that I can tell you at once that they weigh twenty-four and one sixty-fifth carats each; that, apart from their marvellous and most unusual colour, a delicate azalea pink, like the first flush of the morning, they are, perhaps, the most perfectly cut and most perfectly matched pair of diamonds in the world. What may be their earliest history it is impossible to state. All that is positively known of them is that they once formed two of the three eyes of the god Siva, and that they were abstracted from the head of the idol during the loot of the Hindu temples after Clive's defeat of Suraja Dowlah, in 1757. They were subsequently brought to England, where, in course of time, they passed into the possession of the fifth Duke of Heatherlands, who bestowed them upon his wife as a personal gift, so that they were never at any time included in the entail."
"My dear Cleek," said Narkom, looking at him with positive bewilderment, "is there anything you do not know? It is positively marvellous that you should be in possession of all these details regarding the Siva stones."
Cleek looked down at his toes and a faint flush reddened his drooping face.
"Not so marvellous as you may think, Mr. Narkom, when I tell you the genesis of it," he said with a slight show of embarrassment. "The S'aivas, or worshippers of Siva, have never relaxed their efforts to regain possession of the stones and return them to their place in the head of their desecrated idol. They have, in fact, offered immense sums to the successive holders of them, and an immense reward to anybody who shall be instrumental in restoring them. In the old times, in my vanishing cracksman days, I once planned to get that reward by stealing the gems, and if I had lived that life another month--if the eyes of a woman had not dimmed the splendid opulence of these cold eyes of a god----" His voice sank and dropped off into silence, and Narkom had the good sense and the good taste to look out of the window and say nothing.
"And so these remarkable diamonds have been stolen after all, have they?" said Cleek, breaking silence suddenly. "And that vulgar and overbearing old shrew, the Dowager Duchess of Heatherlands, has paid for the possession of them with her life! Ah, my dear Mr. Narkom, what a disastrous thing lust of power and craving for position is! The lady would better have stuck to her father's beer vats and the glory of Hobson and Simkin's entire, and Heatherlands might better have left her there instead of selling her the right to wear his ducal coronet. They both would have lived and died a deal happier, I am sure."