Gorman stared for a moment at the stones which lay on the floor in their crushed setting. Then he turned to Sir Bartholomew.
“You don’t mean to say,” he said, “that you were such a d——d ass as to send Madame sham stones?”
Sir Bartholomew’s face was a sufficient answer to the question. Gorman took him by the arm and led him out of the room without a word.
“You’d better go home,” he said. “Madame Ypsilante is violent when roused, and it is not safe for you to stay. But how could you have been such an idiot——!”
“I never thought of her having the stones valued,” said Sir Bartholomew.
“Of course she had them valued,” said Gorman. “Anyone else in the world would have known that she’d be sure to have them valued. Of all the besotted imbeciles—and they call you a statesman!”
Sir Bartholomew, having got safely into the street, began to recover a little, and attempted a defence of himself.
“But,” he said, “a pendant like that—emeralds of that size are enormously expensive. The Government would not have sanctioned it. After all, Mr. Gorman, we are bound to be particularly careful about the expenditure of public funds. It is one of the proudest traditions of British statesmanship that it is scrupulously honourable even to the point of being niggardly in sanctioning the expenditure of the tax-payer’s money.”
“Good Lord!” said Gorman. “I didn’t think—I really did not think that I could be surprised by anything in politics—But when you talk to me—You oughtn’t to do it, Potterton. You really ought not. Public funds. Tax-payers’ money. Scrupulously honourable, and—niggardly. Good Lord!”