“How about this?” said Scrivener after a pause. “You think yourselves safe enough,” he added, looking at the chief, his ugly small eyes flashing, “but I said we did wrong to get to the black side of a man like Rowton. How about this?” He put his hand into his breast pocket, drew out a small morocco case, and touched a spring. The case flew open, and the black diamond was revealed to view.
Long John was a man not easily moved; his outward calm seldom or never deserted him. He took the diamond from its case, looked at it, and put it back again.
“That black diamond,” he said, “was, by my orders, to be sold by Rowton in Spain. He came here and told a dastardly lie about it. Did I not say that fighting-cock, that bravado, wanted humiliating, crushing, defying? He said he had received fifteen hundred pounds for the gem; five hundred, as I told him at the time, too little. He gave me the money in your presence, mates.”
“He did that,” said a man who stood near. “I don’t know what all this row is about,” he continued, “we never had a straighter fellow among us than Silver.”
“Hush, there! When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it. Now, Scrivener, speak. How did you come by this diamond?”
“There’s treachery in the matter,” said Scrivener.
“Well, man, speak up, out with it.”
“It is this,” said Scrivener; “Silver has played us a scurvy trick. Instead of selling the gem and putting it out of the power of the police to trace it to us, he kept it and gave it to his wife. Mrs. Rowton wore the black diamond in her hair on the night of the ball at Rowton Heights.”
“You swear this as a fact?” said Long John.
“My proof, sir, is that I have the diamond,” said Scrivener. “A girl of the name of Hester Winsome, whom I heavily bribed while staying at Pitstow, managed to secure it for me. She took it out of her mistress’s wardrobe after the lady had retired for the night. And here it is, sir.” Scrivener pointed to the gem as he spoke.