Not one of those present, crass or sympathetic, but felt himself the witness to a tragedy in which a man of noble aspirations had been overtaken and hopelessly crushed by an ingrained weakness which had expressed itself in sordid crime.
Even the hard face of Searle softened. With the diamonds gleaming where they lay, he began mechanically to replace the contents of the box. But at the first sound of rustling papers, the minister appeared to rouse again. He had stood all alone. No one had touched him. No one had addressed him. The most indifferent in this circle were stricken dumb by the spectacle of his fall, while his friends were almost as much appalled and dazed as he himself appeared to be.
"I suppose," he said with melancholy interest, at the same time moving round the table to the box, "that I may take it now."
"Certainly, Doctor," replied Searle suavely, yielding his place. Nevertheless, there was a slight expression of surprise upon his face, as upon those of the others, at the minister's sudden revival of concern in what must now be an utterly trifling detail so far as his own future went. Hampstead appeared to perceive this.
"There are sacred responsibilities here," he explained gravely, with a halting utterance that proclaimed the deeps that heaved within him; "which, strange as it may seem to you gentlemen, even at such an hour I would not like to forget."
Taking up a handful of the papers, he ran them through his fingers, his eye pausing for a moment to scan each one of them, and his expression kindling with first one memory and then another, as if he found a mournful satisfaction in recalling past days when many a man and woman had found peace for their souls in making him the sharer in their heart-burdens,—days which every member of that little circle felt instinctively were now gone forever.
Last of all his eye checked itself upon the envelope marked "Wadham Currency." Allowing the other papers to slip back to their place in the box the minister turned his glance into the open side of this remaining envelope. It was empty, save for a card tucked in the corner.
"This thing appears to have served its purpose," he commented absently, as if talking to himself. Then casually he tore the envelope across, and then again and again; finer and finer; yet not so fine as to excite suspicion. Looking for a wastebasket and finding none, he was about to drop the fragments in his coat pocket.
"I will take them," said the vault custodian, holding out his hand. To it the minister unhesitatingly committed the shredded envelope and card which contained the only documentary clue to any other person than himself as the thief of the Dounay diamonds. A few minutes later, this clue was in the wastebasket outside. The next morning it was in the furnace.
The group in the vault room broke away with dispirited slowness, as mourners turn from the freshly heaped earth. Behind all the minister lingered, as if unwilling to leave the presence of his dead reputation.