"You advise me to take it."
The Senior Partner smiled and nodded. Cyrus Alton rose. "I thank you sincerely, sir, for this interview and for your opinion on my bogus gem." The Senior Partner also rose, and in shaking hands laid his other hand on the visitor's shoulder. "It may console you, Mr. Alton, to know that you are not the first person—nor the hundredth, for that matter—to be undeceived here in this office. The brightest hopes, especially with would-be pearls and diamonds, often vanish even more swiftly than they come."
While the smiling, leisurely mouth of Cyrus was getting ready to reply, a door opened, and a man entered. It was a short, stout man with fierce black eyebrows, black eyes and a heavy black beard, all in striking contrast to the whitest and baldest of heads.
"Ah, Mr. Bressani!" exclaimed the Senior Partner. "You are just the man!" After presenting Mr. Bressani to the visitor he said: "Give us the truth about this stone. What is it?" And he took the stone from Cyrus and handed it to the new arrival.
Now Mr. Bressani was more than an expert. His instinct in the matter of gems was abnormal. It was something more than instinct. It was a singular, innate sense; one of those unexplained faculties that enables its possessor to judge offhand, with certainty and precision, where others must weigh and reason. In important matters he was sought by jewelers. And there was no recorded case in which he had been deceived.
Now, as he held the doubtful object in his fat, white fingers, he suspected from the smile on the face of the Senior Partner that a joke was in the air. When he saw what was in his hand—apparently a piece of greenish glass—he raised his heavy black eyebrows, and, with a sidelong glance, studied the faces of the three men, one after another, to make sure they were not laughing at him. Nephew William smiled but shook his head. "No, we are serious. Tell us what you think."
Still doubtful, Mr. Bressani held it nearer his eye, turned it over in his large, baby fingers, moved it slowly up and down, evidently guessing its weight, and slowly passed a thumb over its surface. Then, as if surprised, he stepped hastily to the window and held it between his eyes and the light. Wheeling about, his eyebrows darted up in surprise. These eyebrows, thick and heavy, flew heavenward so swiftly and they traveled so far that they seemed to pull upon his big black eyes to twice their usual size and roundness. These astonished orbs he rolled toward the three men as if startled by a miracle. They proclaimed a bewildering, overwhelming astonishment that his half-open lips could not express.
"BUT WHO EVER SAW SUCH A DIAMOND?"—Page 199