Rollie sat on the very edge of the Morris chair, his elbows on the ends of its arms, while his head hung forward with an expression of ghastliness upon the weakly handsome features.
"You saw the paper?" he began.
The minister nodded.
"Here they are!" the young man gulped, the words breaking out of him abruptly. At the same time there was a quick motion of his hand, and a rainbow flash from his coat pocket to the blotter upon the desk, where the circlet of diamonds coiled like a blazing serpent that appeared to sway and writhe as each stone trembled from the force with which Burbeck had rid himself of the hateful touch. The minister started back with shock and a sudden sense of recollection.
"Oh, Rollie," he groaned, and then asked, as if not quite able to believe his eyes: "You took them?"
"I—I stole them," the excited man half-whispered.
"Why?" questioned Hampstead, still wrestling with his astonishment.
"Because I am short in my accounts," Rollie shuddered, passing a despairing hand across his eyes. "I have to have money to-day, or I am ruined."
"But you could not turn these into money. You must have been beside yourself."
"No!" replied the excited man, with husky, explosive utterance; "the scheme was all right. Spider Welsh was going to handle 'em for me. We were to split four ways. But the Red Lizard fell down."