time. Perhaps they were gifts; perhaps
they were stolen--these emeralds. Anyhow, I'd never heard of them until
that year. And I travelled all the way up from Constantinople to get
a glimpse of them if it were possible. I had to do some mighty fine
wire-pulling. For one of those stones I would give half of all I own. To
see them in the possession of another man would be a supreme test to my
honesty."

"You old pirate!" said Burlingame.

"But why the word jeopardy?" persisted Kitty, who was intrigued by the
phrase.

"Probably some Hindu trick. It is a language of flowery metaphors. It
means, I suppose, that when you touch the drums they bite. In journeying
from one spot to another they always leave misfortune behind, as I
understand it. Just coincidence; but you couldn't drive that into an
Oriental skull. This is what makes the study of precious stones so
interesting. There is always some enchantment, some evil spell. To
handle the drums is to invite a minor accident. Call it twaddle;
probably is; and yet I have reason to believe that there's something to
the superstition."

Burlingame sniffed.

"I can prove it," Cutty declared. "I held those drums in my hands one
day. I carried them to a window the better to observe them. On my return
to the hotel I was knocked down by a horse and laid up in bed for a
week. That same night someone tried to kill the man who showed me the
emeralds. Coincidence? Perhaps. But these days I'm shying at thirteen,
the wrong side of the street, ladders, and religious curses."

"An old hard-boiled egg like you?" Burlingame threw up his hands in mock
despair.

"I laugh, too; but I duck, nevertheless. The chap who showed me
the stones was what you'd call the honorary custodian; a privileged
character because of his genius. Before approaching him I sent him a
copy of my monograph on green stones. I found that he was quite as crazy
over green as I. That brought us together; and while I drew him out I
kept wondering where I had seen him before. Both his name and his face
were vaguely familiar. It seems a superstition had come along with the
stones, from India to Persia, from there to Russia. A maid fortunate
enough to see the drums would marry and be happy. The old fellow
confessed that occasionally he secretly admitted a peasant maid to gaze
upon the stones. But he never let the male inmates of the palace find
this out. He knew them a little too intimately. A bad lot."

"And this palace?"