"Then you suppose wrong. She won't have nothing to do with notes--trust her. It's all in gold and diamonds."
"Diamonds! How do you know they're diamonds?"
Miss Welsh glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. The conversation was carried on in the back garden at Acacia Villa, which was extensive and secluded. The time was evening, that season which is popularly supposed to be conducive to sentimental intercourse.
"Perhaps I know as much about diamonds as here and there a few."
Her tone was peculiar, almost suggestive. For an instant Mr. Bennett meditated making a clean breast of it, and asking Miss Welsh to come in on sharing terms. But he had an incurable objection to collaboration. Besides, in this case sharing terms would probably mean that he would have to go through the form, at any rate, of making her his wife.
"Where does she keep them? In a safe, I hope."
He did not hope so, though he said he did. At the very best, a safe, to a professional man, means the wasting of valuable time.
"She keeps them in her bedroom, in the chest of drawers, in a red leather box, in the little top drawer on the left-hand side."
Mr. Bennett felt a glow steal all over him. He began to conceive quite a respect for Miss Cecilia Jones.
"And the gold--where does she keep that?"