"
He led the way into another chamber, which was furnished in antique
style, with hangings of the rarest and richest tapestry. The floor was
a mosaic of coloured marbles, scattered over with mats of costly fur.
There was little furniture, but a number of Louis Quatorze cabinets
of ebony and silver with delicately-painted plaques were ranged round
the apartment.
"It is perhaps hardly fair to dignify it by the name of a museum," said
Raffles Haw. "It consists merely of a few elegant trifles which I have
picked up here and there. Gems are my strongest point. I fancy that
there, perhaps, I might challenge comparison with any private collector
in the world. I lock them up, for even the best servants may be
tempted."
He took a silver key from his watch chain, and began to unlock and draw
out the drawers. A cry of wonder and of admiration burst from Robert
McIntyre, as his eyes rested upon case after case filled with the most
magnificent stones. The deep still red of the rubies, the clear
scintillating green of the emeralds, the hard glitter of the diamonds,
the many shifting shades of beryls, of amethysts, of onyxes, of
cats'-eyes, of opals, of agates, of cornelians seemed to fill the whole
chamber with a vague twinkling, many-coloured light.
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