"Exactly," he said; "your father went to survey a concession for us. My partner had been over the ground, and had returned convinced that there was a fine field for ruby-mining. We sent your father out to look carefully over the ground on our behalf, and a short time ago we received some very startling news from him. He cabled to us that in a fissure of the rock, where, as everyone knows, the finest rubies are found, he had made a most marvellous find. He had come across a ruby of priceless quality, and, as his work was done, he intended to return at once, bringing the ruby with him in order to place it himself in our hands." "And now he has mysteriously disappeared," sneered Baumann. His meaning was very plain, and Jack leapt to his feet with pale face and shining eyes. "Sir!" he cried. "Do you dare to hint that the ruby is the cause of my father's disappearance?" The German smiled, and Jack's anger grew. "It is impossible!" he cried. "My father is the soul of uprightness and honour. And do you think he would be tempted by a mere stone, whatever its value? He has handled rubies a hundred and a hundred times." "Ay," snarled the German, "but not such a ruby as this. What did he say himself? What was in his cablegram? 'The finest ruby by far that I have ever seen or handled!' He says that. He, Haydon, the first living expert on rubies, the man who knows everything of every big specimen in existence. _Himmel, Himmel_, what a stone was that! And what time are we losing! I would set every police of the world on his track. And we do no nothing, nothing!" "Gently, Baumann, gently, you know very well that I do not agree with you," said Mr. Lane. Jack turned eagerly to the senior partner. He felt that the whining German was below both his anger and contempt. "Sir," said Jack earnestly, "if my father had in his charge a stone so immensely precious, I fear he has met with foul play." "Who knew of it?" said Mr. Lane. "Had he mentioned anything about it to his man?" "No, he had not," said Jack, and narrated at once what he had heard from Buck Risley. "Yes," said Mr. Lane, nodding, "it was the possession of the great jewel which made him uneasy." "Who can say what it was worth?" broke in Baumann fiercely. "A big ruby of perfect colour and without flaw, remember, he said its like did not exist, is of all stones the most precious. Diamonds, poof! This ruby was worth a score of great diamonds." "And if my father had with him so wonderful a stone," urged Jack on Mr. Lane, "is it not almost certain that someone has learned of its existence? and again I say that he has met with foul play." "But who should know of it?" said Mr. Lane. "It is most unlikely that he should mention it to anyone; and you say, moreover, that his own companion knew nothing of it." "But," cried Jack, and thought this point was a clincher, "he cabled home to you about it, and word of it got abroad, perhaps, from the telegraph office."