’You are surprised; for you argue that if we are to take the baronet’s evidence at all, we must take it in this particular also, and he positively asserts that he saw the Persian take the stone.  It is true that there are indubitable signs of insanity in the document, but it is the insanity of a diseased mind manifesting itself by fantastic exaggeration of sentiment, rather than of a mind confiding to itself its own delusions as to matters of fact.  There is therefore nothing so certain as that Ul-Jabal did steal the gem; but these two things are equally evident:  that by some means or other it very soon passed out of his possession, and that when it had so passed, he, for his part, believed it to be in the possession of the baronet.  “Now,” he cries in triumph, one day as he catches Sir Jocelin in his room—­“now you have delivered all into my hands.”  “All” what, Sir Jocelin wonders.  “All,” of course, meant the stone.  He believes that the baronet has done precisely what the baronet afterwards believes that he has done—­hidden away the stone in the most secret of all places, in his own apartment, to wit.  The Persian, sure now at last of victory, accordingly hastens into his chamber, and “locks the door,” in order, by an easy search, to secure his prize.  When, moreover, the baronet is examining the house at night with his lens, he believes that Ul-Jabal is spying his movements; when he extends his operations to the park, the other finds pretexts to be near him.  Ul-Jabal dogs his footsteps like a shadow.  But supposing he had really had the jewel, and had deposited it in a place of perfect safety—­such as, with or without lenses, the extensive grounds of the manor-house would certainly have afforded—­his more reasonable role would have been that of unconscious nonchalance, rather than of agonised interest.  But, in fact, he supposed the owner of the stone to be himself seeking a secure hiding-place for it, and is resolved at all costs on knowing the secret.  And again in the vaults beneath the house Sir Jocelin reports that Ul-Jabal “holds the lantern near the ground, with his head bent down”:  can anything be better descriptive of the attitude of search?  Yet each is so sure that the other possesses the gem, that neither is able to suspect that both are seekers.

’But, after all, there is far better evidence of the non-possession of the stone by the Persian than all this—­and that is the murder of the baronet, for I can almost promise you that our messenger will return in a few minutes.  Now, it seems to me that Ul-Jabal was not really murderous, averse rather to murder; thus the baronet is often in his power, swoons in his arms, lies under the influence of narcotics in semi-sleep while the Persian is in his room, and yet no injury is done him.  Still, when the clear necessity to murder—­the clear means of gaining the stone—­presents itself to Ul-Jabal, he does not hesitate a moment—­indeed, he has already made elaborate preparations for that