nd foe alike!
As for the rubbish which you call your collection, nine tenths of it, I
know as a positive fact, you have stolen out and out."

"Who stole my Sir Walter Raleigh pipe? Wasn't it a man named Pugh?"

"Look here, Joseph Tress!"

"I'm looking."

"Oh, it's no good talking to you, not the least! You're--you're dead to
all the promptings of conscience! May I inquire, Mr. Tress, what it is you
propose to do?"

"I _propose_ to do nothing, except summon the representatives of law and
order. Failing that, my dear Pugh, I had some faint, vague, very vague
idea of taking the contents of your ninepenny puzzle to a certain firm in
Hatton Garden, who are dealers in precious stones, and to learn from them
if they are disposed to give anything for it, and if so, what."

"I shall come with you."

"With pleasure, on condition that you pay the cab."

"I pay the cab! I will pay half."

"Not at all. You will either pay the whole fare, or else I will have one
cab and you shall have another. It is a three-shilling cab fare from here
to Hatton Garden. If you propose to share my cab, you will be so good as
to hand over that three shillings before we start."

He gasped, but he handed over the three shillings. There are few things I
enjoy so much as getting money out of Pugh!

On the road to Hatton Garden we wrangled nearly all the way. I own that I
feel a certain satisfaction in irritating Pugh, he is such an irritable
man. He wanted to know what I thought we should get for the diamond.

"You can't expect to get much for the contents of a ninepenny puzzle, not
even the price of a cab fare, Pugh."

He eyed me, but for some minutes he was silent. Then he began again.

"Tress, I don't think we ought to let it go for less than--than five
thousand pounds."

"Seriously, Pugh, I doubt whether, when the whole affair is ended, we
shall get five thousand pence for it, or, for the matter of that, five
thousand farthings."

"But why not? Why not? It's a magnificent stone--magnificent! I'll stake
my life on it."

I tapped my breast with the tips of my fingers.

"There's a warning voice within my breast that ought to be in yours, Pugh!
Something tells me, perhaps it is the unusually strong vein of common
sense which I possess, that the contents of your ninepenny puzzle will be
found to be a magnificent do--an ingenious practical joke, my friend."

"I don't believe it."

But I think he did; at any rate, I had unsettled the f