drifted into a bar, and drank brandy, and went
forth again with renewed strength and revived hopes.

The jeweller was mistaken or ignorant, the diamonds must be genuine.
Nickie selected another stone, and told the same tale at a pawnbroker's
shop in another part of the city. The benignant Hebrew passed judgment
after a glance.

"Paste, my boy," he said, "not vorth ninepenth."

Grown rash in his anguish and anxiety, Nicholas Crips visited other
shops. The experts all told the same tale. The chamois bag held nothing
but carbon counterfeits! The prospect of a life of ease and elegance
faded away. It had been a vision, an illusion. Nickie's philosophy was
not proof against this stroke. He felt broken, beaten. In the seclusion
of his small room in a respectable suburban boarding-house, Nicholas wept
and brooded. And now that the possibility of the splendid reward was
gone, Nickie dwelt upon the fearful risk he had run more than he had done
in all the long months since he knelt by the murdered man in Bigg's
Buildings. He realised that in offering these sham stones for inspection
he had probably done a mad thing. The act might bring the noose about his
neck, if he were arrested, who would believe the absurd story he had to
tell.

Nickie had been careful to betray no particular interest in the great
murder case in the presence of his friends in the Museum of Marvels. He
knew that the fictitious Rev. Andrew Rowbottom had been inquired for by
the police as a man who might provide a clue, but the search for him had
not been warmly followed up, it being assumed that he was some trumpery
imposter. In any case, his importance was forgotten in a splendid
dramatic idea entertained by the detectives, inculpating a clever and
notorious criminal. The notorious criminal proved an alibi, and after
being a nine days' wonder the great diamond robbery and murder case was
supplanted in the public mind by an even more sensational crime. Nickie
in his terror of being associated with the murder had been careful, up to
now, to betray no interest. He had evaded conversation about it, and only
occasional papers had come into his hands at the show. Now he was eager
to know all the evidence, anxious to account for the presence of the
paste stones in the pocket of a reputable diamond dealer.

Mr. Crips determined to seek out "Mary Stuart." All hope of a comfortable
future was not lost. "Mary Stuart" must provide for her scape-goat. It
should be he