With a smothered cry he sprang forward, gripped the bag in a trembling, faltering clutch, and dropped it with a groan to the floor, where it fell with a heart-breaking, distracting lightness, which, nevertheless, smote like a mighty weight upon his bursting heart.
“My God!” he cried, “this is incredible!” and the miserable creature stood for a moment with an appalling vacancy shadowing in his countenance, which was illumed for one fitful moment with a ray of hope as he inserted his hand in his waistcoat pocket to assure himself that the diamond which he had placed in that receptacle the night before at least was safe.
The diamond—ah, yes!
There was still some consolation in that.
Its value still maintained a close proportion to his loss. If there was no gain there was, at least, a sort of evil restitution.
But his exploring fingers found only an empty pocket.
In a palsy of fear, and with the demeanor of one who feels the first twinge of a mortal affliction and awaits in fearful silence the grewsome confirmation of another, he stood without sound or motion, his set, staring eyes directed with unseeing intensity upon the vacant air.
The next instant, with feverish animation and impotent apprehension, five writhing fingers leaped from their futile search, like scotched reptiles, into the opposite pocket and withdrew the two useless keys with which he fastened his abortive latch on the door.
And then, with a frightful glitter in his eyes, an ugly ooze about his bloodless lips, a flickering effort of his shriveled fingers to adjust themselves to some ribald rhythm, Raikes began to sing, with the dry rasp and ancient husk of a galvanized sphinx:
“And her name it was Dinah,
Scarce sixteen years old;
She’d a very large fortune
In greenbacks and gold.
Sing turi-li-luri——