“When did he give you this?”
“The very night of his death. I met him in the Place de l’Opera. He had been seized by strange pains in his heart, and I assisted him to a seat by a table before the Café de la Paix. Those pains alarmed him. It was the tenth day after he had received the red star. He thought he might be dying, and, finding I was an American and in full sympathy with Dreyfus, he entrusted me with the metal ball, pledging me to secrecy, and making me promise to defend it with my life, till a person with the proper signal called for it. My promise of silence has caused me to keep still, and has given you an opportunity to say I did not trust you.”
Diamond had been intensely interested all along, but now he was athrob with excitement.
“But you are telling me now!” he exclaimed. “The metal ball—where is it?”
“Gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes. I am released from my pledge.”
“You delivered it into the proper hands?”
“No.”
“What then?”