Page:The orange-yellow diamond by Fletcher, J. S. (Joseph Smith).djvu/250



The silence that followed on this extraordinary exclamation was suddenly broken: the mortuary keeper, who had been advancing towards a door at the side of the room, dropped a bunch of keys. The strange metallic sound of their falling roused Ayscough, who had started aside, and was staring, open-mouthed, at Mirandolet's waving hands. He caught the doctor by the arm.

"What on earth do you mean?" he growled. "Speak man—what is it?"

Mirandolet suddenly laughed.

"What is it?" he exclaimed. "Precisely what I said, in plain language! That fellow has, of course, gone off with the diamond—worth eighty thousand pounds! Your card!—Oh, man, man, whatever have you been doing? Be quick!—who is this Japanese?—how came he by your card? Quick, I say!—if you want to be after him!"

"Hanged if I know what this means!" muttered Ayscough. "As to who he is—if he's the fellow I gave a card to, he's a young Japanese medical student, one Yada, that was a friend of those Chinese—I called on him tonight, with Rubinstein, to see if we could pick up a bit of information. Of course, I sent in my professional card to him. But—we saw him set off to the East End!"