“I am flattered,” she said. “To what do I owe the honor of this—very late—call?”
I looked her straight in the eyes.
“What will you take for your cassowary,” I said, “your cassowary that is sick (though it doesn’t look it) and that will probably die in a day or two, suddenly?”
I always said the woman was an adventuress. She never turned a hair or hesitated a moment.
“A thousand pounds,” she said.
“You mean fifty,” I told her.
“A thousand,” she said, opening her eyes very wide and trying to stare me down. The wind was working up for night; we had to shout at each other in order to be heard.
“Fifty,” I said again. “It isn’t worth a thousand to you to be driven out of the country by that story.”
“Perhaps it is,” said she insolently.
“You forget,” I told her, “that this is going to be a world-famous stone. You can’t go to—Tahiti—or Nounea—or anywhere, and cut loose from a tale that links you up to a thing like the Kohinoor. You’ll go with that story chained to you like the ball on a convict’s leg and a thousand pounds in your pocket—or we’ll keep our own counsel, and you’ll keep yours and fifty pounds.”