nwood drawer.

Caldew pulled the drawer open. Inside was a lady's thin gold neck chain,
with a bundle of charms and trinkets attached to the end, which had
evidently been left behind and forgotten. He glanced at the chain
carelessly, and was about to replace it in the drawer, when his eye was
arrested by one of the trinkets. It was a small image, not much over an
inch in length; a squatting heathen god, with crossed arms and a satyr's
face--a wonderful example of savage carving in miniature.

It was not the perfection of the carving or the unusual nature of the
ornament which attracted Caldew's attention, but the material, of which
it was composed, a clear almost transparent stone, with the faintest
possible tinge of green. Holding it in the sunlight, Caldew was able to
detect one or two minute black flecks in the stone. There was no doubt
about it--the image was of the same peculiar material as the trinket he
had seen in the murdered woman's room the previous night.

As he stood there examining the charm, the murmur of voices not far away
fell on his ears. Looking cautiously out of the window, he saw Musard
and Miss Heredith walk round the side of the house to the garden, deep
in earnest conversation. Caldew backed away to an angle where he was not
visible from beneath, and watched them closely. Musard was talking,
occasionally using an impressive gesture, and Miss Heredith was
listening attentively, with a downcast face, and eyes which suggested
recent tears. As she passed underneath the window at which he was
watching, she raised a handkerchief to her face and sobbed aloud. Caldew
wondered to see the proud and reserved mistress of the moat-house show
her grief so freely in the presence of Musard, until he remembered what
his sister had told him of their supposed early love for each other. And
with that thought came another. It must have been Musard, the explorer,
the man who had wandered afar in strange lands in search of precious
stones, who had brought to the moat-house the peculiar stone of which
the missing brooch and the little image had been fashioned.

Acting on the swift impulse to take the image to Miss Heredith and see
how she received it, Caldew slipped the chain into his pocket and
hurried downstairs. At the bottom of the staircase he was stopped by
Tufnell, who had evidently been waiting for him to descend. The usually
imperturbable dignity of the butler was for once ruffled, and he looked
slightly fl