While his mind had been growing thus strangely active, his body had been slowly losing--or rather suspending--its vitality. Slowly and imperceptibly his limbs had grown utterly powerless and inert, till now, if a kingdom had been offered him, he could not have raised hand or foot two inches from the bed. Not that he had any desire to move hand, or foot, or head, or tongue; only to lie still for ever, thinking his own thoughts, weighing the universe in the balance of his own mind and finding it wanting. Grant him but that, ye powers of earth and air, and for the rest, the word "nihil" might be written, and all things come to an end.
Suddenly through the mist of perfume that filled the room he saw, or seemed to see, a black and threatening figure rise from the floor close by his bedside.
"Surely," he thought to himself, "this must be the presence belonging to the voice that whispered in my ear as I was playing cards with the Memphian image. He has come to claim his pledge--he has come for the Mogul Diamond."
To him, just now, the Mogul Diamond was as valueless as a grain of sand. That black and threatening figure by his bedside might take it and welcome.
"Strange," he thought, "that the minds of men should ever grow to such trifles."
The power of despising others thoroughly, but without emotion, is one of the final products of pure intellect: and to that serene height he had now attained.
The black figure bent over him. In one hand it held a dagger.
Ducie felt no alarm. Such a human emotion as fear affected him not, nor quickened the equable pulses of his being.
As the face pertaining to the figure bent nearer to his own, he recognised it as the face of Cleon the mulatto. Even then he was not surprised. The mulatto made as though he would have struck Ducie to the heart, but stopped the dagger when it was within an inch of his breast. He passed his other hand across his forehead, and seemed to stagger.
Was it possible that the powerful odour was affecting him as it had affected his victim? He hurriedly replaced his dagger in its sheath, and putting his hand to Ducie's neck, as if he knew instinctively that such a thing was there, he felt for the chain from which was suspended the sealskin pouch that held the Diamond. He had no difficulty in finding the chain, nor the sachet, nor the Diamond. He extracted the great flashing gem from its hiding-place, even as Ducie had extracted it a few weeks before from the head of the Indian idol. He held it up between his eye and the night-lamp, and muttered a few guttural words to himself.