"Well," Herman Joost queried, "do we stay here all night?"
Bill Peck bowed his head. "Look here," he demanded suddenly, "do you know a good diamond when you see it?"
"I do," Herman Joost replied.
"Will you wait here until I go to my hotel and get one?"
"Sure."
Bill Peck limped painfully away. Forty minutes later he returned with a platinum ring set with diamonds and sapphires.
"What are they worth?" he demanded.
Herman Joost looked the ring over lovingly and appraised it conservatively at twenty-five hundred dollars.
"Take it as security for the payment of my check," Peck pleaded. "Give me a receipt for it and after my check has gone through clearing I'll come back and get the ring."
Fifteen minutes later, with the blue vase packed in excelsior and reposing in a stout cardboard box, Bill Peck entered a restaurant and ordered dinner. When he had dined he engaged a taxi and was driven to the flying field at the Marina. From the night watchman he ascertained the address of his pilot friend and at midnight, with his friend at the wheel, Bill Peck and his blue vase soared up into the moonlight and headed south.