"Got them," he croaked, "What do you think of this, my noble Countess?"
A stream of living fire, a ripple of all the colours of the rainbow. Balmayne shut the cases as if jealous of the eyes of the night.
"Saved," he said. "Take these and hide them, take the rope and hide that. I must be off to Charing Cross like the wind. This is, perhaps, the best night's work I have had in my experience. Now begone." A moment later and the courtyard was deserted.
"No you don't," said Lawrence coolly. "Of course, it would be a very dramatic finish to the night's adventure, but I can't permit it. Go easy."
Charlton gave up the struggle. Those jewels, the cause of all his misfortunes, had lain there at the bottom of the well where he had intended them to stay. He hated the very mention of them. Had not diamonds inspired some of the most awful crimes since crime began?
They should stay there for all time, those stones with the blood upon them, but now, when they were being carried off by the woman who had robbed him of all that life holds dear, Charlton's passion flared out.
He would have followed those people and demanded them. But Lawrence held him back until his passion was spent. He yielded suddenly.
"It matters a great deal," Lawrence replied. "You want your jewels back----"
"My dear sir, the first beggar in the street can have them for all I care."
"Well, you don't want those people to get them. Neither will they for long. It is all part of my little scheme. If you had dashed out just now you would certainly have caused a great sensation, and there would have been a great gap in the dazzling ranks of fashion, but you would have ruined my plans."
"But will those people be punished eventually?"
"Of course they will. But there are viler crimes than the theft of diamonds. There is the conspiracy to rob a good man of his good name, to make the lives of that man and the girl he is going to marry dark for the sake of a passing caprice. I tell you this has been done, and a murder has been committed in the doing of it. And I am going to get to the bottom of the foul tangle."
It was not the usual voice of Gilbert Lawrence that spoke. There was a dogged grimness about him that would have surprised his friends. "Let us light the gas and smoke here for a time," he said. "There is not the slightest chance of those people coming back, and there are no windows overlooking this one. I have a good deal to say to you."