Colonel Lowther, who had not taken his keen eyes off the jeweler's face during the speech, appeared impressed by Mr. Boon's earnestness. His neck jerked spasmodically half a dozen times before he said:
"I believe you. I'll take it. But first mark it--in pounds; thirteen thousand pounds." And he looked on, eagle-eyed, while Mr. Boon himself wrote out a new price-tag. Evidently he would take no chances with sleight-of-hand substitutions. "Put it here," he said, "beside me."
It made Mr. Boon say, half angry, half amused: "We won't change it for an imitation string. We are really a reputable firm, Colonel Lowther."
"Oh! Ah! Really, I--ah!" stammered the colonel, "I wasn't thinking of such a thing!" He looked so absurdly guilty, however, that Mr. Boon forgave him. "I think you'd better show me others--ah!--cheaper, you know, in case the duke should not wish to go above ten thousand pounds. Say, that one--and this!--and this!"
He had selected the three next best; but Boon figured very closely and in all instances named a price below cost: fifty-seven thousand five hundred dollars, fifty thousand dollars, and forty-five thousand dollars.
"Put them here also with the first one," said Colonel Lowther..
"Don't you wish us to put them in boxes?" asked Mr. Boon.
"Ah--ah!--I say, bring the boxes in and I'll put them in. We'll do it more quickly," he finished, lamely.
There flashed across Mr. Boon's mind the possibility of crookedness. Colonel Lowther did not trust them--perhaps because he hoped to avert suspicions by that same attitude of distrust! Mr. Boon determined to watch closely. He asked a clerk to bring some cases for the necklaces.
"You fix them, Boon," said Colonel Lowther, who was watching the jeweler's hands as children watch the hands of a prestidigitator.
It actually eased Boon's mind to be taken for a crook. He arranged the necklaces, each in its own Russia-leather case, and then gratefully helped Colonel Lowther to select two dozen scarf-pins, amounting in value to eighteen thousand dollars, a score of rings worth in all a little over twenty-five thousand dollars, and a few lorgnette-chains and other trinkets. Once all these were duly price-tagged, packed, and placed beside the necklaces, Colonel Lowther, after a series of mild cervical convulsions, said, calmly: