Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/104

 alwys be on the syfe side, as the fat boy sed as 'e swalloed 'is tenth mutton pie. Yes—I think 'e'll be syfer in jug, syfer for me, that is!”

And he had gone to the police, had given a description of a necklace of diamonds of which he had been robbed, had sworn to a search warrant by the strength of which a very similar string of diamonds—“as like to mine as peas in a pod,” he had said—had been found in Ali Yusuf Khan's small safe. And, by this entirely crude, but entirely efficient method, the latter was told twenty-four hours later by Police Captain Hodges that everything he might say would be used against him, while Sergeant Horatio Pinker banked a neat check which Mr. Preserved Higgins had given him and dreamt of promotion.

All Yusuf Khan had taken his imprisonment with a great deal of blandly philosophic calm and had driven Mr. Robertson, the young lawyer whom the court had assigned to him, nearly to distraction by absolutely refusing to say where and how he had got the necklace, and by simply smiling into his patriarchal beard when confronted with the fair enough statement that a man in his position had no business having such valuable jewels in his possession.

“Yes,” he had said, in his soft, halting English, “the diamonds—they are mine—yes, saheb. Yes. I can prove it.”

“Then why don't you? Why do you let it come to trial?”

“Because …” Ali Yusuf Khan had interrupted himself. “Tell me, saheb. Mr. Higgins—he must come—I mean be present at my trial?”