“Tut! You will make nothing of that!”
“Plenty more here, Count. Here is the robbery in the train deluxeto the Riviera on February 13, 1892. Here is the forged checkin the same year on the Credit Lyonnais.”
“No; you’re wrong there.”
“Then I am right on the others! Now, Count, you are a card-player. When the other fellow has all the trumps, it saves time tothrow down your hand.”
“What has all this talk to do with the jewel of which you spoke?”
“Gently, Count. Restrain that eager mind! Let me get to thepoints in my own humdrum fashion. I have all this against you;but, above all, I have a clear case against both you and yourfighting bully in the case of the Crown diamond.”
“Indeed!”
“I have the cabman who took you to Whitehall and the cabmanwho brought you away. I have the commissionaire who saw younear the case. I have Ikey Sanders, who refused to cut it up foryou. Ikey has peached, and the game is up.”
The veins stood out on the Count’s forehead. His dark, hairyhands were clenched in a convulsion of restrained emotion. Hetried to speak, but the words would not shape themselves.
“That’s the hand I play from,” said Holmes. “I put it all uponthe table. But one card is missing. It’s the king of diamonds. Idon’t know where the stone is.”
“You never shall know.”
“No? Now, be reasonable, Count. Consider the situation. Youare going to be locked up for twenty years. So is Sam Merton.
What good are you going to get out of your diamond? None inthe world. But if you hand it over—well, I’ll compound a felony.
We don’t want you or Sam. We want the stone. Give that up, andso far as I am concerned you can go free so long as you behaveyourself in the future. If you make another slip—well, it will be thelast. But this time my commission is to get the stone, not you.”
“But if I refuse?”
“Why, then—alas! —it must be you and not the stone.”
Billy had appeared in answer to a ring.
“I think, Count, that it would be as well to have your friend Samat this conference. After all, his interests should be represented.
Billy, you will see a large and ugly gentleman outside the frontdoor. Ask him to come up.”
“If he won’t come, sir?”
“No violence, Billy. Don’t be rough with him. If you tell him thatCount Sylvius wants him he will certainly come.”
“What are you going to do now?” asked the Count as Billydisappeared.
“My friend Watson was with me just now. I told him that I hada shark and a gudgeon in my net; now I am drawing the net and upthey come together.”
The Count had risen from his chair, and his hand was behindhis back. Holmes held something half protruding from the pocketof his dressing-gown.
“You won’t die in your bed, Holmes.”
“I have often had the same idea. Does it matter very much?
After all, Count, your own exit is more likely to be perpendicularthan horizontal. But these anticipations of the future are morbid.
Why not give ourselves up to the unrestrained enjoyment of thepresent?”
A sudden wild-beast light sprang up in the dark, menacing eyesof the master criminal. Holmes’s figure seemed to grow taller as hegrew tense and ready.
“It is no use your fingering your revolver, my friend,” he said in aquiet voice. “You know perfectly well that you dare not use it, evenif I gave you time to draw it. Nasty, noisy things, revolvers, Count.
Better stick to air-guns. Ah! I think I hear the fairy footstep ofyour estimable partner. Good day, Mr. Merton. Rather dull in thestreet, is it not?”
The prize-fighter, a heavily built young man with a stupid,obstinate, slab-sided face, stood awkwardly at the door, lookingabout him with a puzzled expression. Holmes’s debonair mannerwas a new experience, and though he vaguely felt that it washostile, he did not know how to counter it. He turned to his moreastute comrade for help.
“What’s the game now, Count? What’s this fellow want? What’sup?” His voice was deep and raucous.
The Count shrugged his shoulders, and it was Holmes whoanswered.
“If I may put it in a nutshell, Mr. Merton, I should say it was allup.”
The boxer still addressed his remarks to his associate.
“Is this cove trying to be funny, or what? I’m not in the funnymood myself.”
“No, I expect not,” said Holmes. “I think I can promise you thatyou will feel even less humorous as the evening advances. Now,look here, Count Sylvius. I’m a busy man and I can’t waste time.
I’m going into that bedroom. Pray make yourselves quite at homein my absence. You can explain to your friend how the matter lieswithout the restraint of my presence. I shall try over the Hoffman‘Barcarole’ upon my violin. In five minutes I shall return for yourfinal answer. You quite grasp the alternative, do you not? Shall wetake you, or shall we have the stone?”
Holmes withdrew, picking up his violin from the corner as hepassed. A few moments later the long-drawn, wailing notes of thatmost haunting of tunes came faintly through the closed door ofthe bedroom.
“What is it, then?” asked Merton anxiously as his companionturned to him. “Does he know about the stone?”
“He knows a damned sight too much about it. I’m not sure thathe doesn’t know all about it.”
“Good Lord!” The boxer’s sallow face turned a shade whiter.
“Ikey Sanders has split on us.”
“He has, has he? I’ll do him down a thick ’un for that if I swingfor it.”
“That won’t help us much. We’ve got to make up our mindswhat to do.”
“Half a mo’,” said the boxer, looking suspiciously at the bedroomdoor. “He’s a leary cove that wants watching. I suppose he’s notlistening?”
“How can he be listening with that music going?”
“That’s right. Maybe somebody’s behind a curtain. Too manycurtains in this room.” As he looked round he suddenly saw for thefirst time the effigy in the window, and stood staring and pointing,too amazed for words.
“Tut! it’s only a dummy,” said the Count.
“A fake, is it? Well, strike me! Madame Tussaud ain’t in it. It’s theliving spit of him, gown and all. But them curtains Count!”
“Oh, confound the curtains! We are wasting our time, and thereis none too much. He can lag us over this stone.”
“The deuce he can!”
“But he’ll let us slip if we only tell him where the swag is.”
