diamond,
which he had just recovered under such remarkable if not suspicious
circumstances. Young heads and old were meeting over it, and I was
straining my ears to hear such comments as were audible above the
general hubbub, when Mr. Grey made a quick move and I looked his way
again in time to mark his air of concern and the uncertainty he showed
whether to advance or retreat.

Unconscious of my watchful eye, and noting, no doubt, that most of the
persons in the group on which his own eye was leveled stood with their
backs toward him, he made no effort to disguise his profound interest
in the stone. His eye followed its passage from hand to hand with a
covetous eagerness of which he may not have been aware, and I was not
at all surprised when, after a short interval of troubled indecision, he
impulsively stepped forward and begged the privilege of handling the gem
himself.

Our host, who stood not far from the inspector, said something to that
gentleman which led to this request being complied with. The stone was
passed over to Mr. Grey, and I saw, possibly because my heart was in my
eyes, that the great man's hand trembled as it touched his palm. Indeed,
his whole frame trembled, and I was looking eagerly for the result of
his inspection when, on his turning to hold the jewel up to the light,
something happened so abnormal and so strange that no one who was
fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be present in the house at that
instant will ever forget it.

This something was a cry, coming from no one knew where, which,
unearthly in its shrillness and the power it had on the imagination,
reverberated through the house and died away in a wail so weird, so
thrilling and so prolonged that it gripped not only my own nerveless and
weakened heart, but those of the ten strong men congregated below me.
The diamond dropped from Mr. Grey's hand, and neither he nor any one
else moved to pick it up. Not till silence had come again--a silence
almost as unendurable to the sensitive ear as the cry which had preceded
it--did any one stir or think of the gem. Then one gentleman after
another bent to look for it, but with no success, till one of the
waiters, who possibly had followed it with his eye or caught sight of
its sparkle on the edge of the rug, whither it had rolled, sprang and
picked it up and handed it back to Mr. Grey.

Instinctively the Englishman's hand closed on it, but it was very
evident to me, and I think to all, th