“There is a feeling of sadness upon me this morning; I have the blooming hump,” said the Marquis, his fat chin resting upon his pink fat hand. “If you offered me the—the big diamond itself—in payment, I could not dance a step.”
“That’s right. I reckon you’d better keep on feeling that way as long as you can,” I said. “We’ve trouble enough on our hands without making any more, and your accomplishments do seem to bring the thunder about one’s ears, somehow. Mark, let’s talk it all out.”
“Perfectly,” said the Marquis, turning his full-moon face round upon me.
“Look here. We’ve got to get that diamond. And we’ve got to avoid being poisoned, as the girl was. And we’ve got to get our carriers out safe with ourselves, and be on our way to the coast inside of a day or so at the most: it isn’t healthy to stop here too long.”
“Perfectly. That’s right.”
“Well, then, I reckon the sorcerer’s not going to go on keeping the diamond where he did, because a blind baby could have seen that we wanted it. We must get some idea of likely hiding-places——”
“Hold a minute. Could we not buy it, quite simply?”
“No, Mark; I’ve tried.”
“Already?”
“This morning, while you were choosing between your heliotrope shirt with the green tie, and your pink one with the blue, I went and had a talk with the brute—I’d rather have pounded him to a jelly, but you can’t always do the thing you ought to do, up-country in Papua. Told him we had a fancy for his magic crystal; said you were a bit of a sorcerer yourself, and would give a lot for it; offered all it was safe to offer. No go; he didn’t rise to it worth twopence. You see, if I had shown him all we had, he would simply have looted our stores and had us knocked on the head—or tried to—and anything I offered didn’t tempt him, in comparison with the stone. We have pretty short tucker, you know, Mark—I’m not blaming you, for I know you couldn’t afford a big outfit, but there it is: we can’t bid high even if it was safe to show everything.”