But Sep interrupted him. Glancing restlessly round the room, he laid his hand on the elder man’s arm, and whispered hoarsely:
“Don’t. Its unlucky.”
“And instead of spending our time drinking healths we’d better be deciding what to do with these dangerous little toys, now we’ve got them,” suggested Rees drily. “As long as they remain in their present form the sight of them by an outsider might expose our motives to misconstruction.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the door burst open, and the landlady, a rheumatic old woman in a rusty black cap, entered with only that perfunctory knock which is more like a fall against the door in the act of opening it, than a respectful request for permission to enter. Mrs. Williamson was quite taken aback at the sight of the treasures on the table. Luckily for them, the confederates also were so utterly overwhelmed by this unexpected surprise, that no one of them made so much as an instinctive movement as if to hide the jewels.
After a few moments’ dead pause, during which the old woman remained blinking at the gems, and the three men felt as if the handcuffs were already on their wrists, Mrs. Williamson, with a short laugh, put all their fears to flight with half a dozen words.
“Well, I never,” she said. “What finery to be sure!”
It had not for a moment occurred to this matter-of-fact Londoner that the crowns were “real.” Her words suddenly opened the eyes of the three men to a different view of the gold and precious stones before them. Knowing them to be genuine, they had seen them illuminated by the glow with which the consciousness of their value endowed them. Looking at them all at once from the landlady’s point of view, they saw that in the weak and murky daylight which came through the dirty window the jewels looked wonderfully little better than theatrical properties. The resourceful Amos hailed this idea with delight. Seizing one of the crowns, he held it over his own head, and asked gaily:
“Well, Mrs. Williamson, what do you think of my crown? You didn’t know that I went in for acting, did you? I’m going to play Richard the Third to-night.”
“And a very handsome-looking king too, I’m sure, sir. But you should have gone to ’Ales, in Wellington-street, for your crown, begging your pardon for suggesting it. He’d never have sent you such a one as that, with a dirty old piece of velvet in the middle not fit to touch. I’ve had a actor—not an amateur like you, sir, but one who did it for his living—on my third floor, and he had a much better one than that from ’Ales, much brighter and bigger jewels.”
“Well, I must remember that for the next time. I think now this will have to serve my purpose.”