Page:Jepson--The house on the mall.djvu/57

Rh "Good," said Montague Burge.

"If we'd had it earlier, we could have distributed the actual Aldington emeralds among three tiaras and three necklaces instead of between these two sets," said Mr. Rawnsley.

"It wouldn't do to run your motor car over these four pieces as you ran it over the first two and smash up the settings again. Our jewelers might think a double accident suspicious," said Montague Burge, doubtfully.

"I should think they would!" cried Mr. Rawnsley impatiently. "No, no; these two sets will go to their purchasers as they are. The police are never likely to hear that the Rajah has replicas of the Aldington jewels. At any rate they won't learn it for a good long while; and by that time our purchases of emeralds will have so confused things that there'll be no tracing anything, to say nothing of the fact that I'm going to have a fire and get our books burnt. But what I want to know is about the emeralds in the ear-rings; can they be used in this third tiara and necklace?"

"Two of the four have been used already," said Montague Burge, taking up a tiara and running his eye over it. "Let's see; here's one of them." He laid his finger on one of the emeralds in the top row of the tiara. Then he picked up the other tiara, ran his eye over it, set it down, picked up one of the necklaces and looked at it, laid his finger on the