“Then you will come to-night at twelve, and see how your master is by that time?” said Ducie.

“It is part of my duty to do so,” answered Cleon.

“Then I will wait here till that time,” said the Captain.  Cleon bowed and disappeared.

So Ducie kept watch and ward for four hours, during the whole of which time Platzoff lay, except for his breathing, like one dead.  As the last stroke of midnight struck Cleon reappeared.  His master showed not the slightest symptom of returning consciousness.  Having examined him narrowly for a moment or two, he turned to Ducie.

“You must pardon me, sir, for leaving you alone,” he said, “but I must now take my master off to bed.  He will scarcely wake up for conversation to-night.”

“Proceed as though I were not here,” said Ducie.  “I will just finish this weed, and then I too will turn in.”

Platzoff’s private rooms, forming a suite four in number, were on the ground floor of Bon Repos.  From the main corridor the first that you entered was the smoking-room already described.  Next to that was the dressing-room, from which you passed into the bed-room.  The last of the four was a small square room, fitted up with book-shelves, and used as a private library and study.

Cleon, who was a strong, muscular fellow, lifted Platzoff’s shrivelled body as easily as he might have done that of a child, and so carried him out of the room.

Ducie met his host at the breakfast-table next morning.  The latter seemed as well as usual, and was much amused when Ducie told him of his alarm, and how he had summoned Cleon under the impression that Platzoff had been taken dangerously ill.

Platzoff rarely indulged in the luxury of drashkil-smoking oftener than once a week.  His constitution was delicate, and a too frequent use of so dangerous a drug would have tended to shatter still further his already enfeebled health.  Besides, as he said, he wished to keep it as a luxury, and not, by a too frequent indulgence in it, to take off the fine edge of enjoyment and render it commonplace.  Ducie had several subsequent opportunities of witnessing the process of drashkil-smoking and its effects, but one description will serve for all.  On every occasion the same formula was gone through, precisely as first seen by Ducie.  The pipe was charged and lighted by Cleon (after he became ill, by the new servant Jasmin).  Precisely at midnight Cleon returned, and either conducted or carried his master to bed, as the necessities of the case might require.  It was his knowledge of the latter fact that stood Ducie in such good stead later on, when he came to elaborate the details of his scheme for stealing the Great Hara Diamond.

But as yet his scheme was in embryo.  His visit was drawing to a close, and he was still without the slightest clue to the hiding-place of the Diamond.

CHAPTER XV.