place of business in Hatton Garden is a few doors away from the
Hatton Garden entrance to the old Mitre Tavern, which lies between
that street and Ely Place. On, as far as I can remember, the seventh
or eighth of March last, I went into the Mitre about half-past eleven
o'clock one morning, expecting to meet a friend of mine who was often
there about that time. He hadn't come in--I sat down with a drink and
a cigar to wait for him.

In the little room where I sat there were three other men--two of them
were men that I knew, men who dealt in diamonds in a smallish way. The
other was a stranger, a thick-set, middle-aged, seafaring sort of man,
hard-bitten, dressed in a blue-serge suit of nautical cut; I could
tell from his hands and his general appearance that he'd knocked about
the world in his time. Just then he was smoking a cigar and had a
tumbler of rum and water before him, and he was watching, with a good
deal of interest, the other two, who, close by, were showing each
other a quantity of loose diamonds which, evidently to the seafaring
man's amazement, they spread out openly, on their palms.

After a bit they got up and went out, and the stranger glanced at me.
Now I am, as you see, something of the nautical sort myself, bearded
and bronzed and all that--I'm continually crossing the North Sea--and
it may be he thought I was of his own occupation--anyway, he looked at
me as if wanting to talk.

"I reckon they think nothing of pulling out a fistful o' them things
hereabouts, mister," he said. "No more to them than sovereigns and
half-sovereigns and bank-notes is to bank clerks."

"That's about it," said I. "You'll see them shown in the open street
outside."

"Trade of this part of London, isn't it?" he asked.

"Just so," said I. "I'm in it myself." He gave me a sharp inquiring
look at that.

"Ah!" he remarked. "Then you'll be a gentleman as knows the vally of a
thing o' that sort when you sees it?"

"Well I think so," I answered. "I've been in the trade all my life.
Have you got anything to dispose of? I see you're a seafaring man, and
I've known sailors who brought something nice home now and then."

"Same here," said he; "but I never known a man as brought anything
half as good as what I have."

"Ah!" said I. "Then you have something?"

"That's what I come into this here neighbourhood for, this morning,"
he answered. "I have something, and a friend o' mine, says he to me,
'Hatton Garden,' he says, 'i