“Ugh!” ejaculated Ingleborough, and his foot flew out suddenly as if aimed at the person of whom they spoke. “Don’t know anything about diamonds! What things people will do for the sake of a bit of glittering glass! Look here, West, for all his talk I wouldn’t trust him with a consignment of stones any farther than I could see him.”
“Don’t be prejudiced!” said West. “You don’t like him, and so you can only see his bad side.”
“And that’s all round,” replied Ingleborough laughing. “No; I don’t like him. I never do like a fellow who is an unnatural sort of a prig. He can’t help being fat and pink and smooth, but he can help his smiling, sneaky manner. I do like a fellow to be manly. Hang him! Put him in petticoats, with long hair and a bonnet, he’d look like somebody’s cook. But if I had an establishment and he was mine, I should be afraid he’d put something unpleasant into my soup.”
“Never mind about old Anson,” said West merrily, “but look here. What about that illicit-diamond-buying? Do you think that there’s much of it taking place?”
“Much?” cried his companion. “It is tremendous. The company’s losing hundreds of thousands of pounds yearly.”
“Nonsense!”
“It’s a fact,” said Ingleborough earnestly; “and no end of people are hard at work buying stolen diamonds, in spite of the constant sharp look-out kept by the police.”
“But I should have thought that the licences and the strict supervision would have checked the greater part of it.”
“Then you’d have thought wrong, my boy. I wish it did, for as we are going on now it makes everyone suspicious and on the look-out. I declare that for months past I never meet any of our people without fancying they suspect me of buying and selling diamonds on the sly.”
“And that makes you suspicious too,” said West quietly.