Part 20 (2/2)

”Tell me,” said I, ”you had no help in this work?”

”You saw that I had none,” she cried. ”Look at the other crystals; there are five of them. You have seen them come straight from the crucible--and you know that I have succeeded. Will you buy my sapphire?

Buy it in proof that I have conquered you. When you return to-morrow I will tell you everything. I am exhausted now. The work always excites me terribly. My nerves are all unstrung; I can do no more to-day.”

”If you will sell me the stone you hold in those tongs, I will give you fifty pounds for it,” I said, concluding that, even had I been tricked, a real jewel, and a very good one, was before my eyes. But at this promise she cried out with joy, and putting the stone in a little box with lightning speed, she handed it to me.

”Pay me to-morrow, any time,” she said. ”It was good of you to come here, and to listen to me. I am very grateful. When you come again you shall know all my secret. Only think well of me and be my friend.”

With this she led the way quickly into her own room, and the lackey appeared in answer to her ring. The interview was at an end, abruptly as it seemed to me, and I left her with a strange feeling of dizziness, and my head burning with excitement--but her sapphire was in my pocket.

When I met Bracebridge, who was waiting in my room for me, he had an ugly leer upon his face.

”Well,” said he, ”I fancy my hundred's all right?”

”What hundred?”

”With Oldfield,” said he. ”I bet him a hundred she'd sell you a piece of gla.s.s for a sapphire; and I don't suppose you'll deny that she did it?”

”I'm not going to deny anything of the sort,” said I; ”she did sell me gla.s.s, and of the commonest kind. I am now seeking an undiscovered superlative. The biggest fool in London is no designation for me.”

”Ah,” said he, ”you should take it quietly. She's done a complete dozen of us at the game. That paraphernalia which Jack Lucas rigged up in her conservatory for her is the medium, I fancy. Lucas, you know, is a professor or something at Emmanuel, Cambridge. He taught her all that jargon about crystals.”

”But,” said I, as I pitched her gla.s.s into the fireplace, ”what I want to know is, how did I come to think that the stuff was real? I could have sworn to it.”

”So could we all,” he replied, with a great burst of laughter; ”but I'll tell you in a word--she hypnotized you. I always said you were a grand subject.”

I looked him in the face for a minute, during which he made an heroic attempt to be serious. But it was too much for him. Presently he gave one great shout of hilarity which you could have heard half-way down the street, and then rolled about in his chair uncontrollably.

”You seem to find it amusing,” said I, ”but I fail to catch the point.”

”You'll be seeing it by-and-by,” said he, and at that he went off to the club to be first with it.

THE END.

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