I took the pigtail from my pocket and dangled it before his eyes.
"Suppose you come into my study," I said, "and explain matters."
We entered the room which had been the scene of so many singular
happenings. The detective and I seated ourselves, but the
Scotsman, holding the Chinaman by the neck as though he had been
some inanimate bundle, stood just within the doorway, one of the
most gigantic specimens of manhood I had ever set eyes upon.
"You do the talking, sir," he directed the detective; "ye have
all the facts."
While Durham talked, then, we all listened--excepting the
Chinaman, who was past taking an intelligent interest in
anything, and who, to judge from his starting eyes, was being
slowly strangled.
"The gentleman," said Durham--"Mr. Nicholson--arrived two days
ago from the East. He is a buyer for a big firm of diamond
merchants, and some weeks ago a valuable diamond was stolen from
him------"
"By this!" interrupted the Scotsman, shaking the wretched Hi Wing
Ho terrier fashion.
"By Hi Wing Ho," explained the detective, "whom you see before
you. The theft was a very ingenious one, and the man succeeded
in getting away with his haul. He tried to dispose of the
diamond to a certain Isaac Cohenberg, a Singapore moneylender;
but Isaac Cohenberg was the bigger crook of the two.
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