"How do you know that I have not?"
"I will tell you how I know. If you had been so honest there would not be in existence now a warrant to arrest you on the charge of stealing them. Things being as they are, it happens that there is."
"It's an impudent lie!"
"Possibly you may believe it to be an impudent lie; still, it is the truth. A warrant for your arrest has been granted to-day to your friend Ireland, of Scotland Yard, on his sworn information. I merely mention this as evidence that you have not handed the stones to the police, that you have not returned them to the duchess, but that you have retained them in your possession with a view of using them for purposes of your own, and that, therefore, your standard of morality is about on a level with ours."
"What you say is, from first to last, a tissue of lies. You hound! You know that! Although it is a case of five to one, my hands are tied, and so it's safe to use what words you please."
Lawrence, coming closer to the table, leaned both his elbows on the board, and crossed his arms in front of him.
"It seems, Mr. Paxton, as if you, a man of whose existence I was unaware until the other day, have set yourself to disappoint me in two of the biggest bids I have ever made for fortune and for happiness. I am a thief. It has never been made sufficiently plain to me that the difference between theft and speculation is such a vital one as to clearly establish the superiority of the one over the other. But even a thief is human--sometimes very human. I own I am. And it chances that, for some days now, I had begun to dream dreams of a most amusing kind--dreams of love--yes, and dreams of marriage. I chanced to meet a certain lady--I do not think, Mr. Paxton, that I need name any names?"
"It is a matter of indifference to me whether you do so or not."
"Thank you, very much. With this certain lady I found myself in love. I dreamt dreams of her--from which dreams I have recently arisen. A new something came into my life. I even ventured, in my new-learned presumption, to ask her would she marry me. Then for the first time I learned that what I asked for already had been given, that what I so longed for already was your own. It is strange how much one suffers from so small a thing. You'd not believe it. In our first fall, then, it seems that you have thrown me.
"Then there is this business of the Datchet jewels. A man of your experience cannot suppose that an affair of this magnitude can be arranged and finished in a moment. It needs time, and careful planning, and other things to boot. I speak as one who knows. Suppose you planned some big haul upon the Stock Exchange, collected your resources, awaited the propitious second, and, when it came, brought off your coup. If in that triumphant moment some perfect stranger were to carry off, from underneath your very nose, the spoils for which you had risked so much, and which you regarded, and rightly regarded, as your own, what would your feelings be towards such an one? Would you not feel, at least, that you would like to have his blood? If you have sufficient imagination to enable you to place yourself in such a situation, you will then be able to dimly realise what, at the present moment, our feelings are towards you."