“Examine it closely,” said the man in the unusual caped overcoat. “It
will repay examination.”
I held the little object in the palm of my hand, bending forward over
the marble-topped table and looking down at it with deep curiosity. The
babel of tongues so characteristic of Malay Jack's, and that mingled
odour of stale spirits, greasy humanity, tobacco, cheap perfume, and
opium, which distinguish the establishment faded from my ken. A sense of
loneliness came to me.
Perhaps I should say that it became complete. I had grown conscious of
its approach at the very moment that the cadaverous white-haired man had
addressed me. There was a quality in his steadfast gaze and in his oddly
pitched deep voice which from the first had wrapped me about--as though
he were cloaking me in his queer personality and withdrawing me from the
common plane.
Having stared for some moments at the object in my palm, I touched it
gingerly; whereupon my acquaintance laughed--a short bass laugh.
“It looks fragile,” he said. “But have no fear. It is nearly as hard as
a diamond.”
Thus encouraged, I took the thing up between finger and thumb, and
held it before my eyes. For long enough I looked at it, and looking, my
wonder grew. I thought that here was the most wonderful example of the
lapidary's art which I had ever met with, east or west.
It was a tiny pink rose, no larger than the nail of my little finger.
Stalk and leaves were there, and golden pollen lay in its delicate
heart. Each fairy-petal blushed with June fire; the frail leaves were
exquisitely green. Withal it was as hard and unbendable as a thing of
steel.
“Allow me,” said the masterful voice.
A powerful lens was passed by my acquaintance. I regarded the rose
through the glass, and thereupon I knew, beyond doubt, that there was
something phenomenal about the gem--if gem it were. I could plainly
trace the veins and texture of every petal.
I suppose I looked somewhat startled. Although, baldly stated, the fact
may not seem calculated to affright, in reality there was something so
weird about this unnatural bloom that I dropped it on the table. As
I did so I uttered an exclamation; for in spite of the stranger's
assurances on the point, I had by no means overcome my idea of the
thing's fragility.
“Don't be alarmed,” he said, meeting my startled gaze. “It would need a
steam-hammer to do any serious damage.”
He replaced the jewel in his pocket, and when I returned the lens to
him he acknowledged it with a grave inclination of the head. As I
looked into his sunken eyes, in which I thought lay a sort of sardonic
merriment, the fantastic idea flashed through my mind that I had fallen
into the clutches of an expert hypnotist who was amusing himself at my
expense, that the miniature rose was a mere hallucination produced by
the same means as the notorious Indian rope trick.
Then, looking around me at the cosmopolitan groups surrounding the many
tables, and catching snatches of conversations dealing with subjects
so diverse as the quality of whisky in Singapore, the frail beauty
of Chinese maidens, and the ways of “bloody greasers,” common sense
reasserted itself.