Captain Ducie awaited with hidden impatience the hour when it should please M. Platzoff to fulfil his promise.  He had not long to wait.  Three evenings later, as they sat in the smoking-room, said Platzoff:  “To-night you shall see the Great Hara Diamond.  No eyes save my own have seen it for ten years.  I must ask you to put yourself for an hour or two under my instructions.  Are you minded so to do?”

“I shall be most happy to carry out your wishes in every way,” answered Ducie.  “Consider me as your slave for the time being.”

“Attend, then, if you please.  This evening you will retire to your own rooms at eleven o’clock.  Precisely at one-thirty a.m., you will come back here.  You will be good enough to come in your slippers, because it is not desirable that any of the household should be disturbed by our proceedings.  I have no further orders at present.”

“Your lordship’s wishes are my commands,” answered Ducie, with a mock salaam.

They sat talking and smoking till eleven; then Ducie left his host as if for the night.  He lay down for a couple of hours on the sofa in his dressing-room.  Precisely at one-thirty he was on his way back to the smoke-room, his feet encased in a pair of Indian mocassins.  A minute later he was joined by Platzoff in dressing-gown and slippers.

“I need hardly tell you, my dear Ducie,” began the latter, “that with a piece of property in my possession no larger than a pigeon’s egg, and worth so many thousands of pounds, a secure place in which to deposit that property (since I choose to have it always near me) is an object of paramount importance.  That secure place of deposit I have at Bon Repos.  This you may accept as one reason for my having lived in such an out-of-the-world spot for so many years.  It is a place known to myself alone.  After my death it will become known to one person only—­to the person into whose possession the Diamond will pass when I shall be no longer among the living.  The secret will be told him that he may have the means of finding the Diamond, but not even to him will it become known till after my decease.  Under these circumstances, my dear Ducie, you will, I am sure, excuse me for keeping the hiding-place of the Diamond a secret still—­a secret even from you.  Say—­will you not?”

With a malediction at his heart, but with a smile on his lips, Captain Ducie made reply.  “Pray offer no excuses, my dear Platzoff, where none are needed.  What I want is to see the Diamond itself, not to know where it is kept.  Such a piece of information would be of no earthly use to me, and it would involve a responsibility which, under any circumstances, I should hardly care to assume.”

“It is well; you are an English gentleman,” said the Russian, with a ceremonious inclination of the head, “and your words are based on wisdom and truth.  It is necessary that I should blindfold you:  oblige me with your handkerchief.”