ure."

"Not if you've got a good description of them," protested Grady.
"I'll make it a point to warn every dealer in the country; I'll keep
my whole force on the job; I'll get Chief Wilkie to lend me some of
his men...."

"Oh, there is no use taking all that trouble," broke in Godfrey,
negligently. "Crochard won't try to sell them."

"Won't try to sell them?" echoed Grady. "What's the reason he won't?"

"Because he hasn't got them," answered Godfrey, smiling with an
evidently deep enjoyment of Grady's dazed countenance.

"Oh, come off!" said that worthy disgustedly. "If he hasn't got 'em
I'd like to know who has!"

"I have," said Godfrey, and cleared my desk with a sweep of his arm.
"Spread out your handkerchief, Lester," and as I dazedly obeyed, he
picked up the little leather bag, opened it, and poured out its
contents in a sparkling flood. "There," he added, turning to Grady,
"are the Michaelovitch diamonds."

CHAPTER XXVIII

CROCHARD WRITES AN EPILOGUE

For an instant, we gazed at the glittering heap with dazzled eyes;
then Grady, with an inarticulate cry, sprang to his feet and picked
up a handful of the diamonds, as though to convince himself of their
reality.

"But I don't understand!" he gasped. "Have you got Croshar too?"

"No such luck," said Godfrey.

"Do you mean to say he'd give these up without a fight!"

The same thought was in my own mind; if Godfrey had run down Crochard
and got the diamonds, without a life-and-death struggle, that
engaging rascal must be much less formidable than I had supposed.

"My dear Grady," said Godfrey, "I haven't seen Crochard since the
minute you took him off the boat. I'd have had him, if you had let
Simmonds call me. That's what I had planned. But he was too clever
for us. I knew that he would come to-day...."

"You knew that he would come to-day?" repeated Grady blankly. "How
did you know that--or is it merely hot air?"

"I knew that he would come," said Godfrey, curtly, "because he wrote
and told me so."

M. Pigot laughed a dry little laugh.

"That is a favourite device of his," he said; "and he always keeps
his word."

"The trouble was," continued Godfrey, "that I didn't look for him so
early in the day, and so he was able to send me on a wild-goose chase
after a sensation that didn't exist. There's where I was a fool. But
I discovered the secret drawer ten days ago--while the cabinet was
still at Vantine's--the evening after the veiled