There were tears in Marjorie's eyes--which was a weakness in one so born and in such a place, but she could hardly keep them back. They were tears as much of anger as of anything else. Upon Victoria Mosel's face--somewhat apart, and smiling awfully at the bunch of them--there was a look you could not see through. But upon the face of each of the three men who had been first down upon their knees--not upon the face of the Home Secretary--was now drawn an indefinable veil, as of instinctive protection against a censorious world. It had dawned upon each of them, in varying degrees of rapidity, that _he_ was possibly suspect. It had flashed first upon the lordlet. He lived and breathed in an air of challenge. It would not have surprised him if he had seen some day on a glaring sky sign flaming up large over Piccadilly Circus and winking in and out to compel the eye: "Attaboy? Who pulled Attaboy? Tommy Galton!" The Professor got the message to his brain about a quarter of a minute later. He very nearly spoke--but he caught the words in time. The Mullingar Diamond oppressed him: all the world pointed a finger at him, and the air was full of demoniac whispers: "Mullingar! Mullingar!" And as for the miserable McTaggart, he was already such a worm in his own eyes among these exalted folk that he thought his poverty might alone have him arrested that very night. It struck him with a pang that, in his innocence, he had remained there on his knees long after the others had risen. Then a new shaft stabbed him. Ingenuous, he had dug his own grave! They would interpret that cry, "I've found it!" as the sudden shock of a real discovery: for him there sounded dully all around, "Ar-r-rest that mon!"--and he was nearly sick. So there they stood--three men, none of whom had any idea what had happened, and each well convinced that he was the suspect who must fight it out sooner or later: each at the same time firmly believing that one of the other two was the culprit. In Marjorie's pure mind there spread a growing certitude that they were all of them guilty, all of them, and that each of them had the emerald in his pocket--yet were there not three emeralds but one emerald. At least, that was how it felt. But within the soul of the Home Secretary--if I might so call it--there was a strong sense of botheration and of wishing the beastly thing had never happened. Under the keen inward light of Victoria Mosel's intelligence, standing apart, a fascinating problem was being discussed. She was delighted. It would occupy her for days. It was just what she liked. In all that circle of heads, showing in different degrees--Victoria's least of all--the mood of the mind through some transfiguration of the face, each silent for the moment, only one head stood frankly stamped with a fierce joy. It was the head of the polar bear.