Fauntley broke the silence at last.

“There you are, Mannering — the Gabrienne collection, reckoned the purest stones found during the early nineteenth century. It’s my prize piece. I’ve others, of course, but in ones and twos; there’s no collection to match this. I’m talking of diamonds, of course. The Karenz rubies are matchless too, and the Deveral sapphires. Let me see . . .” The peer rubbed his forehead and frowned. “You must see the rubies — I think they’re in the third safe.”

Mannering saw them, and a dozen other examples of the jewel-setter’s art that made his eyes agate-hard. He could take gems from this room worth ten or twenty thousand pounds, and Fauntley would hardly notice they were gone. In the safe where the Gabrienne collection was kept there were half a dozen other cases of smaller stones; and he knew the combination! If he managed to get them it might be months before Fauntley missed what had been taken.

He was nearing the end of his run, he knew. The Black-jack-Feodora double helped a little, but unless he stopped gambling his resources would last another month, perhaps; two at the outside. It was absurd, he admitted, to rely on winning enough to keep going; he would soon touch bottom.

What did that mean ?

It meant absolute poverty, the loss of position, the loss of friends, the loss of pleasures. It meant going without clothes — real clothes — and perhaps without food. He had realised all that before, of course, but he had not faced it. He had determined to strain the flesh-pots of indulgence to their utmost, and then let Fate make of him what it wanted. In fact, he admitted, he had never faced what would happen after the crash; he had only known that the crash would come, and that anything was better than the life he had been leading over the past five years. Until the month at Overndon he had been contented enough. He admitted it. But the Overndon month had split him asunder.