Many contending emotions were at work just then in Ducie's breast, chief
of which was a burning, almost unconquerable desire to make that
glorious gem his own at every risk. In his ear a fiend seemed to be
whispering.

"All you have to do," it seemed to say, "is to grip old Platzoff tightly
round the neck for a couple of minutes. His thread of life is frail and
would be easily broken. Then possess yourself of the Diamond and his
keys. Go back by the way you came and fasten everything behind you. The
household is all a-bed, and you could get away unseen. Long before the
body of Platzoff would be discovered, if indeed it were ever discovered,
you would be far away and beyond all fear of pursuit. Think! That tiny
stone is worth a hundred and fifty thousand pounds."

This was Ducie's temptation. It shook him inwardly as a reed is shaken
by the wind. Outwardly he was his ordinary quiet, impassive self, only
gazing with eyes that gleamed on the gleaming gem, which shone like a
new-fallen star on the forehead of that hideous image.

The spell was broken by Platzoff, who, going up to the idol, and passing
his hand through an orifice at the back of the skull, took the Diamond
out of its resting-place, close behind the hole in the forehead, through
which it was seen from the front. With thumb and forefinger he took it
daintily out, and going back to Ducie dropped it into the outstretched
palm of the latter.

Ducie turned the Diamond over and over, and held it up before the light
between his forefinger and thumb, and tried the weight of it on his
palm. It was in the simple form of a table diamond, with only sixteen
facets in all, and was just as it had left the fingers of some Indian