"I can," said George Whaley, in tones of gloom, and moved by a mighty resolution. He was standing upright now; he fixed his employer with a steady glance, and each hand was half clenched at his side. "The emerald, sir!" And he waited for his effect. "Oh, damn the emerald!" shouted Humphrey de Bohun. "If you think this is the time, after all these two days ..." "It is the time," said George Whaley firmly, with a reminiscence of the worthy mother who had brought him up in the Countess of Huntingdon's connection and under all the discipline of the Jacobean Scriptures. "Yea, now is the acceptable time." "By God!" shouted the now inflamed minister, "this has got to stop! I'll have you certified! I'll ... I'll ..." But he got the thing full in the face. In a key nearly an octave lower than that he had been using for the purposes of the great interview, George Whaley stretched out a rigid solemn arm towards his master and spoke the words of doom. "I know all... Thou art the man! It is you, sir, that have on you the lost emerald!" Let me not do Humphrey de Bohun injustice. He had never yet in his life taken an initiative. He had never tackled any one of the human species. But there is a god latent in us all, and his name is Pan. "The emerald!" he shrieked. "Blackmail, eh, you damned lousy son of a ----!" He sprang at the astonished servitor, seized him round the neck--a dangerous gambit between elderly men, for it leads to strokes on both sides--shook him madly from side to side, then dug his right hand into his collar behind, swerved him round, and gave him one of those enormous kicks which form epochs in the history of Britain. Savagely did the unrestrained elder statesman, all the repressed manhood of half a century bursting forth, plant his foot upon what should properly be called the person of his unfortunate dependant and with a second gesture sent him sprawling through the open door into the hall. "The emerald!" he kept on shouting, as George Whaley, groaning, pulled himself up miserably, like a wounded sea lion. "When the hell am I to hear the last of the emerald ... you and your emerald! ... all of you and your emeralds! ... I wish to God! ..." A blasphemy was almost on his lips; he had almost said that he wished the emerald had been strangled at birth, and by such a phrase would he have forfeited the luck of the Boneses. "Get out!" he continued, in a somewhat milder because exhausted tone, as the ill-treated Good Samaritan hobbled towards the door which led to the offices, rubbing the affected portions of his frame. "Out! Out! Out! Never let me see your face again!" And they parted to meet no more. The conclusion of their mutual relations was concluded by correspondence. * * * * * * *