o wait, in the matter of a sale of anything, until
they found somebody who would give their price."

"You say these things--rubies, I think--were worth a lot of money?" I
asked.

"Heaps of money!" he affirmed. "Do you know anything about rubies? Not
much?--well, the ruby, I daresay you do know, is the most precious of
precious stones. The real true ruby, the Oriental one, is found in
greatest quantity in Burma and Siam, and the best are those that come
from Mogok, which is a district lying northward of Mandalay. These
rubies that the Quicks had came from there--they were remarkably fine
ones. And I know how and where those precious villains got them!"

"Yes?" I said, feeling that another dark story lay behind this
declaration. "Not honestly, I suppose?"

"Far from it!" he replied, with a grim smile. "Those two rubies formed
the eyes of some ugly god or other in a heathen temple in the
Kwang-Tung province of Southern China where the Quicks carried on more
nefarious practices than that. They gouged them out--according to
their own story. Then, of course, they cleared off."

"You saw the rubies?" I asked.

"More than once--on that island in the Yellow Sea," he answered. "Noah
and Salter would have bartered either, or both, for a ship at one
period. But!" he added, with a sneering laugh, "you may lay your life
that when they boarded that Chinese fishing-boat on which they made
their escape they'd pay for their passage as meanly as possible.
No--my belief is that they still had those rubies on them when they
turned up in England again, and that, as likely as not, they were
murdered for them. Take all the circumstances of the murder into
consideration--in each case the dead man's clothing was ripped to
pieces, the linings examined, even the padding at chest and shoulder
torn out and scattered about. What were the murderers seeking for? Not
for money--as far as I remember, each man had a good deal of money on
him, and not a penny was touched. What was it, then? My own belief is
that after Salter Quick joined Noah at Devonport, both brothers were
steadily watched by men who knew what they had on them, and that when
Salter came North he was followed, just as Noah was tracked down at
Saltash. And I should say that whoever murdered them got the
rubies--they may have been on Noah; they may have been on Salter; one
may have been in Salter's possession; one in Noah's. But there--in the
rubies--lies, in my belief, the secret of