The Bird of the Difficult Eye

Observant men and women that know their Bond Street well will
appreciate my astonishment when in a jewellers' shop I perceived that
nobody was furtively watching me. Not only this but when I even picked
up a little carved crystal to examine it no shop-assistants crowded
round me. I walked the whole length of the shop, still no one politely
followed.

Seeing from this that some extraordinary revolution had occurred in
the jewelry business I went with my curiosity well aroused to a queer
old person half demon and half man who has an idol-shop in a byway of
the City and who keeps me informed of affairs at the Edge of the
World. And briefly over a pinch of heather incense that he takes by
way of snuff he gave me this tremendous information: that Mr. Neepy
Thang the son of Thangobrind had returned from the Edge of the World
and was even now in London.

The information may not appear tremendous to those unacquainted with
the source of jewelry; but when I say that the only thief employed by
any West-end jeweller since famous Thangobrind's distressing doom is
this same Neepy Thang, and that for lightness of fingers and swiftness
of stockinged foot they have none better in Paris, it will be
understood why the Bond Street jewellers no longer cared what became
of their old stock.

There were big diamonds in London that summer and a few considerable