The Home Secretary, as he moved by the young man's side towards the big drawing-room where they were all to assemble, felt in his mind something like a kaleidoscope or like the music in the drunken scene of "The Master Singer," or like a Wiggle-Woggle or like the Witching Waves.... Galton had seen Cousin William with the emerald. He had seen it with his own eyes--or else he lied. Cousin William had worked an infallible scientific test, and the Emerald had certainly been on McTaggart or else _he_ lied. And yet McTaggart had not got it--or else _he_ lied. The Home Secretary's powerful mind kept on returning to the central point, "How the hell could they _all_ have it, and least of all how could Collop have it? That _must_ be nonsense! ... Anyhow, Collop was there, that was a relief. It was his business to find out." Had Mr. de Bohun been in the habit of prayer he would have prayed fervently that Collop would track down the real man. But side by side with that relief rose an immense wave of apprehension, for he remembered what manner of deep-sea beast Collop was, and he sickened at the coming ordeal of the dinner. Nor was he wrong. * * * * * * * In the hall the Devil and the Angel were having a most furious row. "What I want to bring home to you," said the Devil, pressing a red-hot forefinger upon a smoking palm, "is that you've intruded. You've done something I only had the right to do. It was my place to suggest McTaggart passing the Emerald on!" "It was nothing of the sort," said the Angel angrily. "You're like all devils; you won't listen to reason." Then he began to count off on the larger feathers of his wing. "Firstly, it's up to me to protect the young man. _Secondly_, it does no sort of harm if the 'tec finds that stone; why, it's all the better for him! It relieves a lot of honest and dishonest men from suspicion. Thirdly"-- Here he hesitated, as theologians often do upon thirdly, thinking what he could scrape up. But the Devil interrupted him. "Never mind your 'thirdly.' It's a dirty trick, slipping jewels into people's pockets! And dirty tricks are my stunts, not yours. Wasn't it me," he added with a rising grievance in his voice, "that made the old Don stick it into his pocket to begin with?" Then the Angel played the trick which I am sorry to say is always being played upon poor devils: he played the trick of the superior person. "Well," he said, "you may be right. I can't bother about it. I've got something else to do, and you can go back to hell."