In the small chamois bag lurking next his heart was the talisman that was to make an existence of comfort and good living possible to the vagabond and outcast.  The diamond is the true philosopher’s stone.

Nicholas put in a few days sauntering about Melbourne, swinging a neatly-rolled silk umbrella, smoking very excellent cigars.  He passed several frowsy acquaintances of other days, and on two he bestowed small alms.  He felt great satisfaction in the fact that none of his former companions recognised Nickie the Kid in the well-groomed, well-dressed, sleek, whiskered citizen.

On the third afternoon Mr. Crips entered a jeweller’s shop, and placing a small stone on the pad before the man behind the counter, said: 

“Would you be so good as to tell me the value of that diamond, sir?  I picked it up on the floor of a first-class railway carriage the other day, and having no means of testing it, I thought I might, eh, venture to ask an expert.”

The jeweller took up the stone, examined it, subjected it to a simple test, and handed it hack to Mr. Crips: 

“A good carbon, but practically valueless,” he said.

Had Nicholas Crips received a blow full in the face he would not have betrayed greater consternation.  His cheeks turned grey, he gripped the counter, all his assumed ease fell from him, he dropped every precaution, forgot the grim necessity for care and cunning.

“It is not a diamond?” he gasped.

The jeweller shook his head.  “It an awful disappointment,” he said, “but you may be sure you’ll hear of it pretty quickly if you ever have the luck to pick up a true diamond of that size.”

Nicholas hadn’t the spirit to thank the man.  He turned into the street.  The buildings swam in a garish light, he felt his head rocking, and his feet seemed scarcely to touch the paving stones rising and dipping under him like a choppy sea.  He drifted into a bar, and drank brandy, and went forth again with renewed strength and revived hopes.

The jeweller was mistaken or ignorant, the diamonds must be genuine.  Nickie selected another stone, and told the same tale at a pawnbroker’s shop in another part of the city.  The benignant Hebrew passed judgment after a glance.

“Paste, my boy,” he said, “not vorth ninepenth.”

Grown rash in his anguish and anxiety, Nicholas Crips visited other shops.  The experts all told the same tale.  The chamois bag held nothing but carbon counterfeits!  The prospect of a life of ease and elegance faded away.  It had been a vision, an illusion.  Nickie’s philosophy was not proof against this stroke.  He felt broken, beaten.  In the seclusion of his small room in a respectable suburban boarding-house, Nicholas wept and brooded.  And now that the possibility of the splendid reward was gone, Nickie dwelt upon the fearful risk he had run more than he had done in all the long months since he knelt by the murdered man in Bigg’s Buildings.  He realised that in offering these sham stones for inspection he had probably done a mad thing.  The act might bring the noose about his neck, if he were arrested, who would believe the absurd story he had to tell.