"An' now," he said, at the end of this harangue, and plunging his hand into his coat pocket to fish out the gem, "now I restore it—'Ullo!" he frowned; the groping of his hand in his pocket looked like some small animal fighting in a bag. "'Ullo!" he repeated and still he groped. "'Ullo—'ullo! Wot's this!" His face grew black. He eyed successively with some disfavour the Professor, McTaggart and Galton. "You were all close together," he said suspiciously, "as we came through that winder!" Then suddenly, "Ah! 'ere it is! Smother me if it 'adn't gone through a hole in the lining. That's my missus, that is. She's that careless." And turning the receptacle inside out he gingerly picked the jewel from the tear between the sateen, with threads still attached to its setting.
"There now! Wot was I saying? I restore it to its rightful owner!" And with a bow, unlike that of Lord Chesterfield's dancing master, he handed it to Marjorie.
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Collop, thank you!" said Marjorie. "Thank you a thousand times. I don't know how to thank you!"
"It's really very remarkable, Mr. Collop, very remarkable indeed. Very remarkable," said the Home Secretary. He went so far as to wring his subordinate by the hand. "We are infinitely obliged to you."
The guilty three were less enthusiastic; but they murmured as though they would be polite—though Galton's murmur, overheard by Vic, was, "I believe he pinched it himself!" And Vic answered in a second whisper, "Fat-head!"—a chosen epithet delivered with such real contempt in the slit of a dark eye as made the poor horse-puller wince.
Then Aunt Amelia bleated:
"I don't quite understand. Who does Mr. Collop say stole the emerald?"
"Amelia! Amelia!" protested her brother severely.
"But I want to know," began poor Aunt Amelia pathetically. "I didn't hear properly. I want to know who it is has been found to have stolen the ..."
Her brother interrupted desperately.