Page:The Dorrington Deed-Box.pdf/131

Rh he dies a rich man, and nobody knows. What does his wife do? She has the jewel, and she has a little money that has been got from the dead Prussians. So when the war is over, she comes to London with my cousin, the bad Léon, and she has the café—Café des Bons Camarades. And Léon grows up, and his mother dies, and he has the café, and with the jewel is a rich man—nobody knowing; nobody but me. But, figure to yourself; shall I burn charcoal and starve at Bonneuil with a rich cousin in London—rich with a diamond that should be mine? Not so. I come over, and Léon, at first he lets me wait at the café. But I do not want that—there is the stone, and I can never see it, never find it. So one day Léon finds me looking in a box, and—chut! out I go. I tell Léon that I will share the jewel with him or I will tell the police. He laughs at me—there is no jewel, he says—I am mad. I do not tell the police, for that is to lose it altogether. But I come here and I offer you one quarter of the diamond if you shall get it."

"Steal it for you, eh?"

Jacques Bouvier shrugged his shoulders. "The