“See here, Mr. Moss. We police have a duty to do, but no innocent person need be afraid of us. We only want to secure the guilty. And we’re always ready to help the innocent when we can. We know you were on Mr. Templeton’s yacht—we know he had been with you on Saturday afternoon—and we know you left in the devil of a hurry and took these diamonds with you. You will serve your purpose, and ours, best by telling us all you know.” Isaac Moss took out his cigarette case. “Do you mind if I smoke?” “By all means.” He poured himself out some more whisky, drank it and said: “Where do you want me to begin?” “At the point when you had an interview with Templeton on Saturday afternoon. Tell us _why_ he came to you.” “It was about these diamonds. I am agent for a firm in South Africa, Ehbrenstein & Co.—a well-known firm. They wrote telling me they had a consignment of uncut stones which they wished me to take to Amsterdam—to be cut, in the usual way of business. We are always very careful, of course, in these consignments, and if there is anyone well known to the firms or dealers coming over, it is a common thing to ask him to bring them. My letter of advice told me that Mr. Templeton—whom I knew slightly—would bring them over, and that I was to give him the receipt on delivery. It would, of course, be a matter of commission for him. The letter also said that he would communicate with me when he reached England. He didn’t at first. I knew the boat on which he was sailing had arrived in Plymouth, and grew anxious, especially as I knew that Templeton was an erratic and peculiar man, with little regard for business methods. Then I heard from him—from Poole—saying he was yachting on the South Coast, probably finishing up at a little place called Marsh Quay, when he would run up to town and deliver the stones. He also told me to write to him at the G.P.O., Ryde, if I had anything to say. I was getting still more anxious, and wrote at once, suggesting that as, by a coincidence, I had a week-end place at Marsh Quay, he should bring me the stones there. I described exactly where my house stood. He replied saying he would be with me on Saturday afternoon.” “Yes, we know that,” said the superintendent. “I was sitting on my lawn when he came. We talked a bit there, and then went into the house—into my study, and had a whisky and soda each. It was there that he produced these stones—in a little bag like this one—and I turned them out on the table and counted them. There were thirty-two—the correct number. I put them back in the bag and gave him the receipt. Just before he went he said, ‘I’d like to keep that little bag. I’ve carried it a good many hundred miles.’ I said, ‘Certainly.’ I unlocked a drawer in my writing-desk, emptied the stones into a little tin box, locked it up and gave him the bag. Then I walked down to my landing-stage and watched him row back to his yacht. That was the last I saw of him—alive.”