Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/172

156 to him in the hollow of my hand his two great rubies and the emerald.

"Here you are," said I. "Don't ever say again that a kind act does not meet with its reward—not but what I'd given them to you, anyway," said I.

Rosenthal froze into a colossus in stone. The rosy, after-eating glow faded from his face, leaving it an ivory yellow. The big, bushy eyebrows went up at least three inches and he cocked his head to one side, while the staring, mottled eyes bulged at the gems. Then, back came the colour into the big, heavy-lined face. His thick tongue wagged like the tongue of a parrot, but only gurgles came. He reached for the cognac which had been served with our coffee and took a gulp straight from the decanter.

"Sapristi!" he rumbled, "sapristl!"

Suddenly he reached for the stones and turned them lovingly in his huge hand.

"It is too much," he muttered. "It is a leetle too mooch for Isidor Rosenthal."

"When you have recovered from your shock, Baron," said I, "let me tell you a story."

"Go on," he growled. "Dis is not the kind of a shock to injure the health. I am mooch more knocked aback dan ven I lost der stones, but I am not at all sick." He gave a ferocious grin.

"One usually looks to be robbed," said I, "but you don't often think of restitution."

"No," says he. "Now let us haf der story."

So without any more preliminary I started in and gave him the whole yarn from the very start, holding back neither facts nor names. Rosenthal leaned