"One of the Van Hutten diamonds," was the triumphant reply. "Look at it well. You won't see it again. By this time to-morrow it will have been cut."
Aaron Rodd was stupefied. He looked from the stone up to his companion's face. Even his demand for some elucidation was mute.
"I had the duplicate ready," Harvey Grimm explained. "That was my game. I changed them underneath my handkerchief. It was perfectly easy. They've got the imitation one at police head-quarters and they aren't feeling particularly pleased with themselves. That fellow Brodie is about the bummest detective who ever crossed the Atlantic."
Aaron Rodd was sitting transfixed. His fingers were shaking as they beat upon the desk.
"My God," he exclaimed as light streamed in upon him, "we're thieves!"
"Don't talk like a fool," the other admonished. "It's a fair enough game between crooks. We've stolen a stolen jewel, and by doing it we've saved the girl and her grandfather and her brother, too, from gaol. That's fair do's, isn't it? When I've finished with that, there'll be a matter of three or four thousand pounds for us to divide. What about it, eh?"
He swept the jewel back into his pocket. Aaron Rodd's fingers were still idly beating upon the desk. The walls of his dusty, bare apartment had fallen away, the thrall of his sordid poverty lay no longer like a dead weight upon his spirits. Three or four thousand pounds to divide!
"What you need," Harvey Grimm declared briskly, handing him his hat, "is a drink. Come right along."