Page:The orange-yellow diamond by Fletcher, J. S. (Joseph Smith).djvu/155

 stud things are going to play a good part, and when you and your police have got to the bottom of it, you'll sure find that something else has a big part, too!"

"What?" asked Purdie.

"Why, diamonds!" answered the American, with a quiet smile. "Just diamonds! Diamonds'll be at the bottom of the bag—sure!"

There was a moment of surprised silence, and then Melky turned eagerly to the American.

"Mister!" he said. "Let's be getting at something! What do you know, now, about this here Levendale?"

"Not much," replied Guyler. "But I'm open to tell what I do know. I've been a bit of a rolling stone, do you see—knocked about the world, pretty considerable, doing one thing and another, and I've falsified the old saying, for I've contrived to gather a good bit of moss in my rollings. Well, now, I was located in Cape Town for a while, some five years ago, and I met Spencer Levendale there. He was then a dealer in diamonds—can't say in what way exactly—for I never exactly knew—but it was well known that he'd made a big pile, buying and selling these goods, and he was a very rich man. Now I and five other men—all of different nationalities—were very useful to Levendale in a big deal that he was anxious to carry through—never mind what it was—and he felt pretty grateful to us, I reckon. And as we were all warmish men so far as money was concerned, it wasn't the sort of thing that he could hand out cheques for, so he hit on the notion of having sets of studs made of platinum—which is, as you're aware, the most valuable metal known, and on every stud he had a device