I was thus able
to predict the manner and place of the baronet's death--if he _be_
dead. Beside him, I said, would probably be found a white stone. For
Ul-Jabal, his ghastly impersonation ended, would hurry to the pocket,
snatch out the stone, and finding it not the stone he sought, would in
all likelihood dash it down, fly away from the corpse as if from
plague, and, I hope, straightway go and--hang himself.'
It was at this point that the black mask of Ham framed itself between
the python-skin tapestries of the doorway. I tore from him the paper,
now two days old, which he held in his hand, and under the heading,
'Sudden death of a Baronet,' read a nearly exact account of the facts
which Zaleski had been detailing to me.
'I can see by your face that I was not altogether at fault,' he said,
with one of his musical laughs; 'but there still remains for us to
discover whence Ul-Jabal obtained his two substitutes, his motive for
exchanging one for the other, and for stealing the valueless gem; but,
above all, we must find where the real stone was all the time that
these two men so sedulously sought it, and where it now is. Now, let us
turn our attention to this stone, and ask, first, what light does the
inscription on the cup throw on its nature? The inscription assures us
that if "this stone be stolen," or if it "chaunges dre," the House of
Saul and its head "anoon" (i.
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