“Poor old Bobby! I’ve got the last bit of him,” he said. “Two ounces, Burchell? I’ve just about that on me, or a little more. Weigh it for yourself.”
He thrust his hand into his trousers-pocket and took out a packet.
“What’s this?” he said. “This isn’t my gold.” He pulled the wrapper off and flung down upon the table—the Sorcerer’s Stone.
I felt my heart turn over and do a somersault inside my chest. I don’t know what I looked like, but nobody was noticing me, so it did not matter. Everybody was looking at the great crystal as it lay there on the table, like a double-ended bit off a glass chandelier. Hubbard stared at it uncomprehendingly and said, “Where’s my gold gone to?” with several strong expressions.
I put my hand in my pocket and felt a small heavy parcel.... Of course!
It was all clear to me now. I had been carrying the diamond in my trousers-pocket, because it was the best place to hide it, in a country where one wore so few clothes as one did about the Kiloki. Hubbard and I were wearing exactly the same pattern of rough store clothes; we had got them mixed when we dressed together in a hurry down on the river bank, with the spear that the natives had thrown at us sticking in the sand at our elbows, to liven us up. And there was the gem that the Marquis and I had been concealing all these weeks, almost at the cost of our lives, lying out on the bar before the eyes of a crowd of sharps and scamps from all the odd corners of Australia!
One thinks quickly in moments of sudden emergency; at least, if one doesn’t, one won’t continue thinking or living long in a country like Papua. I saw that there was nothing for it but bluff to carry us through. Giving the Marquis a kick under the table, to warn him that the affair was best left to me (he had taken the incident with wonderful coolness), I stretched out my hand carelessly and remarked:
“Why, that’s my crystal. Where did you get it?”
I would have given all I possessed for a quiet word with Hubbard, whom I knew I could trust; but there was no chance of that, so I had to do as best I could. The thing was so enormous for a diamond and so glass-like in appearance, here in the dim light of the bar, that I thought it might pass as a mere curio, if only I could keep my nerve.
“I don’t know where I got it, but I do know my gold isn’t in my pocket,” grumbled Hubbard, feeling all over himself.