He took it in his hands, and began examining it. Mo kept a close watch on it, hovering over us like a hen over her chickens when a hawk is about. It was plain that he valued his charm quite a good deal.
“The finest crystal I ever saw, with any one of these sorcerers,” I declared, handling it....
I don’t know how the idea came into my head, but it did come, like a shock from a battery—just about as hard and as quick. And what was queer, it came into the Marquis’ head at exactly the same moment. For just as my hand made a sudden clutch at the crystal, his hand met it and the two hands closed on each other. Our eyes met, and if mine were as glaring and excited as his——
I think they must have been. Mo had the thing out of our two hands before we knew where we were. It was gone, back in the bag like a conjuring trick, and the stony veil had fallen before the sorcerer’s face again.
We were both breathing hard, like men who have run a race, but I think we kept pretty cool. It was the Marquis who begged then, by signs, to see the crystal again, and succeeded in getting Mo to show the end of it, shining out of the green wrapping of fresh banana-leaf, between the string meshes of the bag. But it was I who pulled my watch out and got the face of it up against the point of the crystal—all of it that Mo would let us touch now. The sharp end of the thing scored into the glass of it as if it had been butter.
What the Marquis said that time I have always wanted to know—it sounded much livelier than the last. I cut him short with a kick.
“For God’s sake, keep cool,” I said. “Don’t let him suspect anything; it’s our only chance. You don’t know how they value those charms of theirs—it’s no question of buying.... Come away and leave him alone. Don’t let him think we care about it.”
I almost dragged him away. It was deliciously cool and fresh in the moon outside; there was a smell of coming rain, and the wind brought whiffs of pawpaw blossom from somewhere in the forest, heavy and treacly-sweet. The noise of the dance was dying down: it was almost quiet.
Under the marea, in the space among the piles, that doglike whimper went on. But the Marquis and I were too excited to notice it. Afterward, I remembered how we had heard it.
“It’s bigger than the Kohinoor, but not near so big as the Cullinan,” I said, when we were out of earshot.