the fifth Duke of Heatherlands, who bestowed them
upon his wife as a personal gift, so that they were never at any time
included in the entail."

"My dear Cleek," said Narkom, looking at him with positive bewilderment,
"is there anything you do not know? It is positively marvellous that you
should be in possession of all these details regarding the Siva stones."

Cleek looked down at his toes and a faint flush reddened his drooping
face.

"Not so marvellous as you may think, Mr. Narkom, when I tell you the
genesis of it," he said with a slight show of embarrassment. "The
S'aivas, or worshippers of Siva, have never relaxed their efforts to
regain possession of the stones and return them to their place in the
head of their desecrated idol. They have, in fact, offered immense sums
to the successive holders of them, and an immense reward to anybody who
shall be instrumental in restoring them. In the old times, in my
vanishing cracksman days, I once planned to get that reward by stealing
the gems, and if I had lived that life another month--if the eyes of a
woman had not dimmed the splendid opulence of these cold eyes of a
god----" His voice sank and dropped off into silence, and Narkom had the
good sense and the good taste to look out of the window and say nothing.

"And so these remarkable diamonds have been stolen after all, have
they?" said Cleek, breaking silence suddenly. "And that vulgar and
overbearing old shrew, the Dowager Duchess of Heatherlands, has paid
for the possession of them with her life! Ah, my dear Mr. Narkom, what a
disastrous thing lust of power and craving for position is! The lady
would better have stuck to her father's beer vats and the glory of
Hobson and Simkin's entire, and Heatherlands might better have left her
there instead of selling her the right to wear his ducal coronet. They
both would have lived and died a deal happier, I am sure."

"Yes," agreed Narkom. "They lived a veritable cat-and-dog life, I
believe, although it was years before my time, or yours either, for the
matter of that, so I can only speak from hearsay. His Grace didn't find
Miss Simkins, the brewer's daughter, so enviable a possession after
marriage as she had appeared before; and, as she held the
purse-strings--and held them closely, too--he got precious little but
abuse and unhappiness out of the bargain. The lady, feeling herself
miles above her former connections when she became duchess, cut her own
people comple