ney has never been able to
purchase it. There is just one consideration I can accept for it."

"And that?" inquired Gratz as the Sepoy paused.

"A lapse of memory," replied the Sepoy.

"A lapse of memory!" repeated Gratz.

"Yes. Unlock these handcuffs and forget that you have done so."

A sudden irradiation seemed to shoot from the gem. It was the impulse
communicated by the trembling hand of the detective, who, either to
conceal the flush that was gradually transforming his pallid face, or
from his reluctance to remove his gaze, continued to hold the brilliant
in much the same oblivious regard as that bestowed upon it by the
unhappy Raikes.

Gratz was having the struggle of his life.

The veins fretted through his temples with frightful distinction; his
forehead was moist with a profuse perspiration; his breath labored with
intermittent entrance and egress.

His well-known apathy, his exasperating negation of demeanor, where were
they now?

Gradually, however, in the manner of disheartened stragglers whipped
again into the firing line, there shadowed in his expression evidences
of moral recovery which the Sepoy did not like.

The professional instincts of the detective, reinspired by his better
nature, were making some very obvious appeals.

The eclat of this singular case beckoned. He seemed to brace himself
morally and physically as he leaned back in his chair and again looked
at his desperate companion.

At once the Sepoy, upon whom no vestige of this mental tumult was lost,
again restored the ebbing temptation to its flood by exclaiming:

"Here is a more convincing reason still," and raising his hands to his
breast, in order to give the detective easier access to the point
designated beneath his arms, he said: "Reach into the pocket on the
left."

For a moment Gratz hesitated. If he had found the first subsidy
difficult to refuse, how might he resist the second, or, he added to
himself, with a sort of usurious exaltation, the depravity of the two
combined?

Curiosity, too, without which no detective is truly fit for his calling,
moved him, so with the impatient impulse we so often witness when
rectitude is about to subject itself to the persuasions of the evil one
for the ostensible purpose of combating them and the private
determination to yield, Gratz extended a trembling hand toward the
Sepoy, who had drawn himself to the extreme limit of his sinewy height,
the better to accommodate his figur