Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/146

 I was talking to him on this extraordinary affair when the Major came on deck. The captain said to me: "Hold him in chat. I'll judge for myself," and asked me to describe how he might quickly find the pistol-case. This I did, and he went below.

I joined the Major, and talked on the first subjects that entered my head. He was restless in his manner, inattentive, slightly flushed in the face; wore a lofty manner, and being half a head taller than I, glanced down at me from time to time in a condescending way. This behaviour in him was what Captain North and I had agreed to call his "injured air." He'd occasionally put it on to remind us that he was affronted by the captain's insensibility to his loss, and that the assistance of the police would be demanded on our arrival at Cape Town.

Presently looking down the skylight, I perceived the captain. Mackenzie had charge of the watch. I descended the steps, and Captain North's first words to me were:—

"It's no diamond!"

"What, then, is it?"

"A common piece of glass not worth a quarter of a farthing."

"What's it all about, then?" said I. "Upon my soul, there's nothing in Euclid to beat it. Glass?"

"A little lump of common glass; a fragment of bull's-eye, perhaps."

"What's he hiding it for?"

"Because," said Captain North, in a soft voice, looking up and around, "he's mad!"

"Just so!" said I. "That I'll swear to now, and I've been suspecting it this fortnight past."

"He's under the spell of some sort of mania," continued the captain; "he believes he's commissioned to present a diamond to the Queen; possibly picked up a bit of stuff in the street that started the delusion, then bought a case for it, and worked out the rest as we know."

"But why does he want to pretend that the stone was stolen from him?"

"He's been mastered by his own love for the diamond," he answered. "That's how I reason it. Madness has made his affection for his imaginary gem a passion in him."

"And so he robbed himself of it, you think, that he might keep it?"

"That's about it," said he.

After this I kept no further look-out upon the Major, nor would I ever take an opportunity to enter his cabin to view for myself the piece of glass as the captain described it, though curiosity was often hot in me,

We arrived at Table Bay in twenty-two days from the date of my seeing the Major with the pistol in his hand. His manner had for a week before been marked by an irritability that was often beyond his control. He had talked snappishly and petulantly at table, contradicted aggressively, and on two occasions gave Captain North the lie; but we had carefully avoided noticing his manner, and acted as though he were still the high bred, polished gentleman who had sailed with us from Calcutta.

The first to come aboard were the Customs people. They were almost immediately followed by the harbour-master. Scarcely had the first of the Custom House officers stepped over the side when Major Hood, with a very red face, and a lofty, dignified carriage, marched up to him, and said in a loud voice:—

"I have been robbed during the passage from Calcutta of a diamond worth fifteen thousand pounds, which I was bearing as a gift from the Maharajah of Ratnagiri to Her Majesty the Queen of England."

The Customs man stared with a lobster-like expression of face: no image could better hit the protruding eyes and brick-red countenance of the man.

"I request," continued the Major, raising his voice into a shout, "to be placed at once in communication with the police at this port. No person must be allowed to leave the vessel until he has been thoroughly searched by such expert hands as you and your confrères no doubt are, sir. I am Major Byron Hood. I have been twice wounded. My services are well known, and I believe duly appreciated in the right quarters. Her Majesty the Queen is not to suffer any disappointment at the hands of one who has the honour of wearing her uniform, nor am I to be compelled, by the act of a thief, to betray the confidence the Maharajah has reposed in me."

He continued to harangue in this manner for some minutes, during which I observed a change in the expression of the Custom House officers' faces.

Meanwhile Captain North stood apart in earnest conversation with the harbour-master. They now approached; the harbour-master, looking steadily at the Major, exclaimed:—

"Good news, sir! Your diamond is found!"

"Ha!" shouted the Major. "Who has it?"

"You'll find it in your pistol-case," said the harbour-master.

The Major gazed round at us with his wild,