now in one way, now in another, looking at it in this light and in that;
trying to find the first faint indications of a clue which, judiciously
followed up, might conduct him step by step to the heart of the mystery.
Two questions naturally offered themselves for solution. First: Did
Platzoff habitually carry the Diamond about his person? Second: Was it
kept in some skilfully-devised hiding-place about the house? These were
questions that could be answered only by time and observation.

So Captain Ducie went about Bon Repos like a man with half-a-dozen pairs
of eyes, seeing, and not only seeing but noting, a hundred little things
such as would never have been observed by him under ordinary
circumstances. But when, at the end of a week, he came to sum up and
classify his observations, and to consider what bearing they had upon
the great mystery of the hiding-place of the Diamond, he found that they
had no bearing upon it whatever; that for anything seen or heard by him
the world might hold no such precious gem, and the Russian's letter to
Signor Lampini might be nothing more than an elaborate hoax.

When the access of chagrin caused by the recognition of this fact had in
some degree subsided, Ducie was ready enough to ridicule his own foolish
expectations. "Platzoff has had the Diamond in his possession for years.
For him there is nothing of novelty in such a fact. Yet here have I been
foolish enough to expect that in the course of one short week I should
discover by some sign or token the spot where it is hidden, and that too
after I knew from his own confession that the secret was one which he
guarded most jealously. I might be here for five years and be not one
whit wiser at the end of that time as regards the hiding-place of the
Diamond than I am now. From this day I give up the affair as a bad job."

Nevertheless, he did not quite do that. He kept up his habit of seeing