“You have them?”
“I deposited them as usual.”
“Bring them.”
Angry as I was, I saluted, wheeled, and hastened off to the safe deposit. The jewel-bag was delivered when I presented my printed slip; I picked it up and marched back, savagely biting my mustache and striving to control my increasing exasperation. Never before had I endured insolence from a superior officer.
Mornac was questioning Speed as I entered, and that young man, who has much self-control to learn, was already beginning to answer with disrespectful impatience, but my advent suspended matters, and Mornac took the bag of jewels from my hands and examined it. He seemed to be in no hurry to empty it; he lolled in his chair with an absent-minded expression like the expression of a cat who pretends to forget the mouse between her paws. Danger was written all over him; I squared my shoulders and studied him, braced for a shock.
The shock came almost immediately, for, without a word, he suddenly emptied the jewel-bag on the desk 147 before him. The bag contained little pebbles wrapped in tissue-paper.
I heard Speed catch his breath sharply; I stared stupidly at the pebbles. Mornac made a careless, sweeping gesture, spreading the pebbles out before us with his restless, ringed fingers.
“Suppose you explain this farce?” he suggested, unmoved.
“Suppose you explain it!” I stammered.
He raised his delicately arched eyebrows. “What do you mean?”