“My dear Tress, I was only going—­”

Bob came in with the breakfast tray.

“Pugh, you will either hand me that at once, or Bob shall summon the representatives of law and order.”

He handed me the diamond.  I sat down to breakfast with a hearty appetite.  Pugh stood and scowled at me.

“Joseph Tress, it is my solemn conviction, and I have no hesitation in saying so in plain English, that you’re a thief.”

“My dear Pugh, it seems to me that we show every promise of becoming a couple of thieves.”

“Don’t bracket me with you!”

“Not at all, you are worse than I. It is you who decline to return the contents of the box to its proper owner.  Put it to yourself, you have some common sense, my dear old friend!—­do you suppose that a diamond worth more than a thousand pounds is to be honestly bought for ninepence?”

He resumed his old trick of dancing about the room.

“I was a fool ever to let you have the box!  I ought to have known better than to have trusted you; goodness knows you have given me sufficient cause to mistrust you!  Over and over again!  Your character is only too notorious!  You have plundered friend and foe alike—­friend and foe alike!  As for the rubbish which you call your collection, nine tenths of it, I know as a positive fact, you have stolen out and out.”

“Who stole my Sir Walter Raleigh pipe?  Wasn’t it a man named Pugh?”

“Look here, Joseph Tress!”

“I’m looking.”

“Oh, it’s no good talking to you, not the least!  You’re—­you’re dead to all the promptings of conscience!  May I inquire, Mr. Tress, what it is you propose to do?”

“I propose to do nothing, except summon the representatives of law and order.  Failing that, my dear Pugh, I had some faint, vague, very vague idea of taking the contents of your ninepenny puzzle to a certain firm in Hatton Garden, who are dealers in precious stones, and to learn from them if they are disposed to give anything for it, and if so, what.”

“I shall come with you.”

“With pleasure, on condition that you pay the cab.”

“I pay the cab!  I will pay half.”

“Not at all.  You will either pay the whole fare, or else I will have one cab and you shall have another.  It is a three-shilling cab fare from here to Hatton Garden.  If you propose to share my cab, you will be so good as to hand over that three shillings before we start.”

He gasped, but he handed over the three shillings.  There are few things I enjoy so much as getting money out of Pugh!

On the road to Hatton Garden we wrangled nearly all the way.  I own that I feel a certain satisfaction in irritating Pugh, he is such an irritable man.  He wanted to know what I thought we should get for the diamond.

“You can’t expect to get much for the contents of a ninepenny puzzle, not even the price of a cab fare, Pugh.”