"There was something more—a mere trifle."
"Yes. But most likely the one thing that I want."
"I returned to the spring again and again for months afterward. People thought I was mad. I may have been; but I found there one day a bit of reddish glass with a curious mark on it."
"You have it here?"
She brought it to me. It was a fragment of engraved sardonyx, apparently part of a seal; the upper part of a head was cut upon it; the short hairs curving forward on the low forehead showed that the head was that of Hercules.
Some old recollection rose in my brain, beginning, as I may say, to gnaw uncertainly. I went to my room for a few minutes to collect myself, and then sought Beardsley.
He was pacing up and down the walk to the stables, agitated as though he had been the murderer.
"Well, Floyd, well! What chance is there? What have you discovered?"
"Everything. One moment. I have a question or two to ask you. About ten years ago you commissioned me to buy for you in New York a seal—an intaglio of great value—a head of Hercules, as I remember. What did you do with it?"
"Gave it to Job Scheffer, William's father. Will has it now, though I think it is broken."