"Large? Nonsense! It is the sort of fee that might easily be swallowed up in half a day's expenses. And besides--a rich diamond merchant like yourself!" Bouvier looked up quickly. "Diamond merchant?" he said. "I do not understand. I have lost my diamond--there was but one." "And yet you go to Hatton Garden every day." "What!" cried Bouvier, letting his hand fall from the table, "you know that too?" "Of course," Dorrington laughed, easily; "it is my trade, I tell you. But write the cheque." Bouvier produced a crumpled and dirty cheque-book and complied, with many pauses, looking up dazedly from time to time into Dorrington's face. "Now," said Dorrington, "tell me where you kept your diamond, and all about it." "It was in an old little wooden box--so." Bouvier, not yet quite master of himself, sketched an oblong of something less than three inches long by two broad. "The box was old and black--my grandfather may have made it, or his father. The lid fitted very tight, and the inside was packed with fine charcoal powder with the diamond resting in it. The diamond--oh, it was great; like that--so." He made another sketch, roughly square, an inch and a quarter across. "But it looked even much greater still, so bright, so wonderful! It is easy to understand that my grandfather did not sell it--beside the danger. It is so beautiful a thing, and it is such great riches--all in one little box. Why should not a poor charcoal-burner be rich in secret, and look at his diamond, and get all the few things he wants by burning his charcoal? And there was the danger. But that is long ago. I am a man of beesness, and I desired to sell it and be rich. And that Jacques--he has stolen it!" "Let us keep to the point. The diamond was in a box. Well, where was the box?" "On the outside of the box there were notches--so, and so. Round the box at each place there was a tight, strong, silk cord--that is two cords. The cords were round my neck, under my shirt, so. And the box was under my arm--just as a boy carries his satchel, but high up--in the armpit, where I could feel it at all times. To-night, when I come to myself, my collar was broken at the stud--see--the cords were cut--and all was gone!" "You say your cousin Jacques has done this. How do you know?" "Ah! But who else? Who else could know? And he has always tried to steal it. At first, I let him wait at the Café des Bons Camarades. What does he do? He prys about my house, and opens drawers; and I catch him at last looking in a box, and I turn him out. And he calls me a thief! _Sacré!_ He goes--I have no more of him; and so--he does this!" "Very well. Write down his name and address on this piece of paper, and your own." Bouvier did so. "And now tell me what you have been doing at Hatton Garden." "Well, it was a very great diamond--I could not go to the first man and show it to sell. I must make myself known." "It never struck you to get the stone cut in two, did it?"