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"Certainly I would, sir. There's nothing to be got by beating about the bush. Say it's a commission from London. That and your letter will be enough."

He heard me out, still hesitating.

"Don't you think we'd do better in the morning?" he whispered, with his hand on the door of the shop.

"Sir," said I, for I knew the time had come when it must be neck or nothing, "if you want to turn your back on ten thousand pounds, which you can have almost for the asking, my advice is that you take the next train back to Paris."

"Well," said he, turning the handle suddenly, "you're a bold man, and ye've got the devil's own head on your shoulders. Bedad! I'll go through with it, if it lands the pair of us in the town jail before the morning."

He said this, and the next moment we were in the shop. It was a smallish place, so to speak, for such a man as Lobmeyr, who's talked of as the biggest diamond merchant in Vienna; but you could see with half an eye that there was valuable stuff under the glass cases, and there was the suggestion of solidity in the very chairs. I hadn't been in the house ten seconds when I marked a couple of rubies which would have fetched a thousand pounds apiece in Bond Street, and as for diamonds, they were there as big as nuts, and of a quality which made the whole shop a perfect sparkle of dazzling lights. I saw at once that we should get what we wanted; and I waited for. Sir Nicolas to speak to the bald-headed little man, who