t
revealed that he conducted his business at the end of a long passage
with a bend in the middle. When this passage was traversed, Mr.
Wendover's name was once more seen, this time on a door, with a notice
underneath inviting the visitor to enter without knocking.

Within, a young Jew with a sensual face was busily writing at a desk in
the corner, with his back to the door. He ceased and turned around at
the sound of the opening door, and, thrusting his fountain pen behind an
ear already burdened with a cigarette, waited to be informed what the
visitors wanted.

"Is Mr. Wendover in?" Colwyn inquired.

"Yes, he is. What name, please?" The young Jew scrambled down from his
stool preparatory to carrying a message.

In answer Colwyn tendered Musard's card of introduction. The young Jew
scanned it, shot an appraising glance at the two detectives, and
vanished into an inner room. He reappeared swiftly in the doorway, and
beckoned them to enter.

The inner room was furnished with leather chairs, a good carpet, and a
large walnut table. Mining maps and framed photographs of famous
diamonds hung on the walls, but there was nothing about the man seated
at the table to suggest association with precious stones except the
gleam of his small grey eyes, which were as hard and glistening as the
specimen gems in the showcase at his elbow. His face was long, thin and
yellow, of a bilious appearance. His gaunt frame was clothed in black,
and his low white collar ended in front in two linen tags, fastened with
a penny bone stud instead of the diamond which might have been expected.
This device, besides dispensing with a necktie, revealed the base of a
long scraggy neck, with a tuft of grey hair pushing its way up from
below and falling over the interstice of the collar, matching a similar
tuft which dangled pendulously from the diamond merchant's nether lip.
Altogether, as Mr. Austin Wendover sat at his table with his long yellow
hands clasped in front of him waiting for his visitors to announce their
business, he looked not unlike a Methodist pastor about to say grace, or
a Garden City apostle of culture for the masses preparing to receive a
vote of thanks for a lecture on English prose at a workers' mutual
improvement society. Even his name suggested, to the serious mind, the
compiler of an anthology of British war poets or the writer of a book of
Nature studies, rather than the material wealth, female folly, late
suppers, greenroo