"Well," continued Godfrey, "after I got the duplicates, I rolled them up in the cotton packets, and placed them back in the drawer, being careful to put the Mazarin at the bottom, where I had found it."
"It was lucky you thought of that," I said, "or Crochard would have suspected something."
Godfrey looked at me with a smile.
"My dear Lester," he said, "he knew that the game was up the instant he opened the first packet. Do you suppose he would be deceived? Not by the best reproduction ever made!"
And then I remembered the slow flush which had crept into Crochard's cheeks as he opened that first packet!
"I didn't expect to deceive him," Godfrey explained. "I just wanted to give him a little surprise. And to think I wasn't there to see it!"
"But if he knew they were imitations," I protested, "why should he go to all that trouble to steal them?"
"That is what puzzled me last night," said Godfrey; "and, for that matter, it puzzles me yet."
"Maybe he's got the real stones, after all," suggested Grady, who had been listening to all this with incredulous countenance. "The story sounds fishy to me. Maybe these are the imitations."
M. Pigot came forward and picked up the Mazarin and looked at it.