Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/228

204 "A thousand down."

"A—thousand—down! A—thousand—pounds! Mein Gott!" Mr. Fungst's face was a picture. He seemed divided between tears and rage. "Oh, Harold Brooke, what a fool you are!"

"Not such a fool as I look, my Fungst. The stone was a wrong un."

"A wrong un! What you call a wrong un?"

"It was afflicted with the shivers. Cracked, my boy. It is more than probable that by now it is splintered into dust."

"Oh, good 'evins! Harold Brooke, what a fool you are!" Mr. Fungst raised his two fat hands above his well-oiled head, as if he were appealing to the skies. "It is more than a week ago since I saw in my own stone, in the very heart of it, a spot like a little speck of light."

"It was only this morning that I observed the same phenomenon in mine. I knew from painful experience what it meant."

"You knew what it meant? You thought you knew what it meant. As a matter of fact, you knew nothing at all about it, any more than me. When I see this little spot, I say to myself, 'It is all over. You are done for. Bang goes your little pile.' I have seen stones begin like that, and pulverise within a quarter of an hour—twenty minutes. It is a mystery which no man understands, not even the man who thinks he knows the most. I was fit to tear my hair. I rushed off in a cab, determined to sell the stone at any price if I could only be in time. You know how they used to do that sort of thing at Kimberley. As I was in the cab I kept looking