Lal Singh hesitated for a moment and glanced round the room suspiciously. Then his fingers played delicately round his white turban for a palpitating second or two, and there flashed across the drabness of the squalid room the emerald-sapphire brilliance of the ‘Peacock’s Eye.’ Its rendezvous was reached at last!
Stefanopoulos eyed the dazzling gem with greedy lust.
“So!” he permitted himself to mutter.
“I have come to trade,” declared Lal Singh. His tone held the silkiness of malevolent menace. “If you will deal justly with me. If not—I will kill you as I killed for——”
Demetri broke in. “This—eh?” His cunning eyes gleaming with cupidity caught those of Lal Singh and held them for a brief period.
The Indian laughed cruelly. “You have said. ’Twas but Justice if you only knew.”
Stefanopoulos was silent. He held out his hand for this stone of liquid beauty that had come to him so unexpectedly, yet was not for him. His fingers itched to hold it—to feel some of its flaming fire. “Let me look at the stone,” he growled.
Lal Singh pushed it over very slowly, watching the old man as a hungry cat regards a mouse. Stefanopoulos held it to the light watching its flashing points of scintillating brilliance play round the room. The eyes of Lal Singh wandered upward, fascinated at what the Greek was doing. As they did so Cuypers rose like lightning and covered the Indian with his revolver. Simultaneously, Mr. Bathurst, similarly armed slipped through the door behind which he had been standing and covered Lal Singh from the rear.
“Don’t move,” he said, “or I’ll put a bullet through you. You are arrested for the murder of Sheila Delaney at Seabourne in England on July fifth. See to him, Cuypers!”
As the little Dutchman advanced and snapped the handcuffs upon the prisoner, Anthony was acutely aware of a flow of concentrated hatred and devilry that flooded him from the dark vindictive eyes of the arrested man. They flicked from Stefanopoulos and Cuypers to the Crown Prince and Sir Austin Kemble, embracing them all, but they always returned to dwell balefully upon Mr. Bathurst. Unmoved—the last-named walked quietly to the prisoner. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I don’t think any of you quite realise yet the real truth of what has happened.” His hand went to Lal Singh’s face and he jerked suddenly and strongly at the Indian’s beard. The spirit gum failed to withstand the challenge. The beard came away in his hand. “Don’t you find the costume rather chilly, Bannister,” he said lightly, “for this particular season of the year?”