A GUNSHOT WOUND
77
"Then I left him," Hereford assented.
He folded and unfolded with his good hand the corner of a chance scrap of paper that lay on the desk, almost nervously.
"The next incident that concerns the emerald was the visit Baraka paid me this morning at my office," he recommenced. "He had been first to my rooms, but I left home very early this morning. The stone had disappeared and he came to me on the evident suspicion of my complicity in its disappearance."
"Because you had seen him open the box?"
"Yes; it was, he claimed, the first time the box ever had been opened except in the presence of the royal pair."
"But Baraka himself, you have said, knew the secret of the box?"
