Or Reginald either, for that matter. A vulture and a crow-but that's between ourselves, Well, if you will go, good night."

"Good night," Chloe said, took a step forward, and looked back suddenly. "You aren't going to try it again yourself.?"

"Not I," Lord Arglay said. "I'm going to talk to them a little and then go. No more aerial flights to-day. Till to-morrow then." He watched her out of the gate and well along the street before he returned to the others.

He discovered then that Reginald had not been wasting his time. Anxious to lay hands as soon as possible on some of the colossal fortune that seemed to be waiting, the young man had extracted permission from Sir Giles to make an effort to remove a small chip from the Stone, and had been away to bring a chisel and hammer from the tool-box. Arglay looked at Tumulty.

"You're sure it won't damage it?" he asked.

"They all say it won't," Sir Giles answered. "The fellow I had it from and Ali Khan who was here the other night and the manuscripts and all. The manuscripts are rather hush-hush aboutit it-all damnably veiled and hinting. 'The division is accomplished yet the Stone is unchanged, and the virtues are neither here nor there but allwhere'-that kind of thing. They rather suggest that people who get the bits had better look out, but that's Reginald's business-and his covey of company- promoters. He'd better have a clause in the agreement about not being responsible for any damage to life or limb, but it's not my affair. I don't care what happens to them."

"Who is this Ali Khan?" Arglay asked, watching Reginald arrange the Stone conveniently.

"A fellow from the Persian Embassy," Sir Giles told him. "He was on to me almost as soon as I reached England, wanting to buy it back. So I had him out here to talk to him about it, but he couldn't tell me anything I didn't know or guess already. "

Reginald struck the chisel with the hammer, and almost fell forward on to the table. For, unexpectedly, since the Stone had been hard enough to the touch, it yielded instantaneously to the blow, and, as Reginald straightened himself with an oath, they saw, lying on the table by the side of the Crown, a second Stone apparently the same in all respects as the first.

"Good God!" Lord Arglay exclaimed, while Reginald gazed open-mouthed at the result of his work, and Sir Giles broke into a cackle of high laughter. But they all gathered round the table to stare.

Except that one Stone was in the Crown and the other not they could not find any difference. There was the same milky colour, flaked here and there with gold, the same jet-black markings which might be letters and might be only accidental colouring, the same size, the same apparent hardness.

"'The division is accomplished yet the Stone is unchanged'", Lord Arglay quoted at last, looking at his brother-in-law. "It is, too. This is all very curious."

Tumulty had thrust Reginald aside and was peering at the two Stones. After a minute, "Try it again, Reginald," he said -"the new one, not the old. Come round here, Arglay." He caught the Chief Justice by the arm and brought him round the table. "There," he said, "now watch." He himself, while Lord Arglay leant forward over the table, moved a step or two off and squatted down on his heels, so that his eyes were on a level with the Stone. "Now slowly, Reginald, slowly." Montague adjusted it, set the chisel on it, raised the hammer, and struck, but this time with less force. The watchers saw the chisel move down through the Stone which seemed to divide easily before it and fall asunder on both sides. Sir Giles scrambled to his feet and he and Lord Arglay leaned breathlessly forward. There on the table, exactly alike, lay two Stones, each a faithful replica of its original in the Crown.

Montague put the chisel and hammer down and stepped back. "I say," he said, ."I don't like this.