CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT WHITE DIAMOND
Nicky did not forget his visit to the Maison d'Or for a very long time. He would have remembered it longer if I had not found something else for him to think about, and set him going on a job which I shall always look back upon as the boldest we ever undertook in all our years together. It was this job which carried me for the first time in my life to the city of Vienna; and I can recollect, as if it happened yesterday, the night when we arrived there, and played the first card in as big an undertaking as two men ever put their hands to.
They were just beginning to light up the shops in the Graben and the Kohlmarkt, when we found the place we wanted, and stood for a minute, bitter cold as it was, to look at all the pretty things in the windows. Such passers-by as we saw were mostly business folk hurrying home to their dinners. Trade was done for the day, and done early, as it always is in that queen of cities, Vienna. Yet Sir Nicolas and I were at the very start of the greatest venture of our lives.
It seemed odd to me, I will say, to stand there in that old-town street of pretty shops and pretty
