“No,” replied Kitwater, shaking his head.  “Gideon Hayle is not the sort of man to allow himself to be photographed, and what’s more you must remember that when we reached Nampoung, the station on the frontier of Burmah, we had scarcely a rag upon our backs.  Any goods and chattels we might once have possessed were in the hands of the Chinese.  They had robbed us of everything, except what that arch thief, Hayle, had already stolen from us.”

As he said this, another look such as I had seen on the occasion of his previous visit spread over his face.

“The robber, the thief,” he hissed, almost trembling in his sudden excess of rage; “when I get hold of him he shall rue his treachery to the day of his death.  Upwards of a quarter of a million of money he stole from us, and where is it now?  Where is my sight, and where is Coddy’s power of speech?  All gone, and he is free.  ‘Vengeance is Mine,’ saith the Lord, but I want to repay it myself.  I want to——­”

Here he leant across the table and turned his sightless eyes upon me.

“This is certainly a curious sort of missionary,” I said to myself as I watched him, “He may be smitten on one cheek, but I scarcely fancy he would be content to turn the other to the striker.”

At this moment Coddy leant forward in his chair, and placed his hand upon his friend’s arm.  The effect was magical.  His fit of impotent rage died down as suddenly as it had sprung up, and immediately he became again the quiet, suave, smoothspoken individual who had first entered my office.

“I must beg your pardon, Mr. Fairfax,” he said, in a totally different voice to that in which he had just spoken.  “When I remember how we have been wronged I am apt to forget myself.  I trust you will forgive me?”

“I will do so willingly,” I answered.  “You have certainly won the right to be excused if you entertain a feeling of resentment for the man who has treated you so shamefully.  And now to resume our conversation?”

“What were you about to say?”

“I was about to ask you the number and description of the stones of which he robbed you.  You told me they numbered ninety-three in all, if I remember aright.  Can you tell me how many there were of each?”

“Forty-eight rubies and forty-five sapphires,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation.  “The rubies were uncut and of various sizes, ranging perhaps from ten to eighty carats.  They were true rubies, not spinels, remember that.  The sapphires ran from fifteen carats to sixty, and there was not a flaw amongst them.”

“Has Hayle any knowledge of the value of precious stones?”

“There’s not a keener judge in the East.  He would be a cunning man who would succeed in taking him in about the value of anything from a moonstone to a ruby.”

“In that case he would, in all probability, know where to place them to the best advantage?”

“You may be sure that was his intention in coming to England.  But we have tried Hatton Garden and can hear nothing of him there.”