"Not from me, Colonel! I never saw the old lady, dead or alive, and I never knew until just now when you told me, that she'd ever had this cross."
"Who gave it to you?"
"Colonel, did you ever know me to split on a pal unless he split first?"
"No, Spotty. I never did."
"Well, then, you stand a fine chance in getting me to do it now. Go to it if you like. I'm through spielin'!" and the crook turned away with an air of indifference.
The colonel knew that Spotty never would tell, until he wanted to, but it did not deter him. He "went at" Spotty. What happened in the quiet room, near the police headquarter cells, need not form part of this record. Enough to say that when they let Spotty go staggering back to his dungeon, a wreck of a man physically and mentally for the time being, he had not told.
And the glittering stones in the crushed cross were not more silent than he in his misery—deserved perhaps, but none the less misery.
And when the colonel, rather upset himself by what he had been forced to go through, started back for Colchester, he took with him the memory of Spotty's rather sneering face and the echo of his words:
"Well, Colonel, I didn't tell!"
And he had not. The diamond cross still kept its mystery.