"If Allah is willing, the jewel is found--but the money is not enough."
"Not enough!" said I, choking almost with anger, "the money is not enough! Why, you brazen-faced blackguard, what do you mean?"
He replied with an appeal to the beard of the Prophet, and an evident word of contempt for my commercial understanding. The irony of the whole situation was so great, and his immobility so stupendous, that I quickly forbore my anger and said,--
"Very well, Sidi, we will make it fifteen hundred francs." And with that he went off again, and I saw him no more until the next day, when he repeated the _incha Alläh_ and the intimation that the price was too low. On this occasion my anger overcame me. I seized him by the throat, and shaking him roughly, said,--
"You consummate rascal, I believe you have the jewels all the time; if you don't bring them in an hour, I will take you to the police myself."
My anger availed me no more than my forbearance. It did but awaken that inherent dignity before which I cowed; and when I had done with him, he left me and came no more for three days. On the third morning when he returned he looked at me with reproach marked in his deep black eyes; and raising his hands to heaven he protested once more in the old words, and to the old conclusion. I was then so wearied of the very sound of his voice that I took him by the shoulders and held him down upon an ottoman until he would consent to bargain with me, shekel by shekel for the return of my gems; and in the end he consented to make me the longest speech that I had yet had from his lips.
"By the beard of my father," said he, "I protest to milord that neither I nor my people have the precious thing he wots of; but the dog of a thief, upon whose head be desolation, is known to me. For money he took the jewel, for money he shall lay it again at milord's feet; yet not here, but in the house of his people, where none shall see and none shall know."
A long argument, and some fine bargaining, enabled me to get to the bottom of the whole story; but only under a solemn oath that the keeping of the secret should be shared by no one. With much fine recital and many appeals to the holy marabouts to bear witness, Sidi demonstrated that the thief was no other than Mohammed the porter, who had the stone hidden with extraordinary cunning, and from whom it was to be got only at my own personal risk.