Trying to tug the fierce moustache out of his mild face.
"Give it him back," I said. But Uvo set his teeth against us both, looking almost what he had just been called—looking abominably like that fine evil gentleman in Hampton Court—and I could stand the whole thing no longer. I rammed my own hand into Delavoye's pocket. And down and away out into the night, like a fiend let loose, went Guy Berridge and the ring with the peacock enamelled in white on a blood-red ground.
I turned again to Delavoye. His shoulders were up to his ears in wry good humour.
"You may be right, Gilly, but now I ought really to sit up with him all night. In any case I shall have it back in the morning, and then neither you nor he shall ever see that unclean bird again!"
But he went so far as to show it to me across my counter, not many minutes after young Berridge had shambled past, with bent head and unshaven cheeks, to catch his usual train next morning.
"I did sit up with him," said Uvo. "We sat up till he dropped off in his chair, and eventually I got him to bed more asleep than awake. But he's as bad as ever again this morning, and he has surrendered the infernal ring this time of his own accord. I'm to break matters to the girl by giving it back to her."