Lexy straightened up in her chair, and stared at him.
“You don’t really mean that?” she demanded. “There isn’t really an emerald?”
He smiled.
“I’m afraid it hasn’t much to do with the case—with either of the cases,” he said; “but there is an emerald—my sister’s.”
“It didn’t come from India?”
“It did, though!”
“Don’t tell me it was stolen from a temple! That would be too good to be true!”
“I’m sorry,” he said; “but as far as I know, it’s never been stolen at all, and its history for the last eighty years hasn’t been sinister. One of the old rajahs gave it to my grandfather—a reward of merit, you know. When my father married, it went to my mother. She never had any trouble with it. She never wore it, because she didn’t like it.”
“Why?”
“Well, you see, it’s an ostentatious sort of thing, and she wasn’t ostentatious.” He paused a moment. “My father told me, before he died, that he wanted Muriel to have it when she was eighteen; and so, three years ago, I sent it over to her.”