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cement went hard as a rock. Kept her on her back, that and the current just there.”
    “Well, she needed some luck,” the Inspector said. “Anything else?”
    “This, sir.” Worraby shot out his right hand, opened it, and startled the Inspector and even made Jem Norton blink. Light stabbed from the grimy palm, so bright that it even surprised Worraby himself. He grinned. “Rolled out of the young woman’s person, sir.”
    “What?”
    “Neck of her dress, sir.”
    “Oh.” The Inspector took it. They stood beneath those bright lights which surrounded the stage; no light could have been better for the diamond. There it lay, the size of a peanut cut in a hundred or more tiny facets; and each facet scintillated, giving off a different light and a different hue. It silenced three hardened men for fully half a minute. Then: “Hum,” said the Inspector. “That might have been buried in the mud, that’s her second piece of luck. Or someone’s.” His hand closed over the diamond. “All right, nip across to the Terrace Steps, will you, or we’ll have those blasted landlubbers pinching all your glory.”
    Worraby kept a straight face. “Aye aye, sir,” he said, and turned smartly and stepped into the launch. It was soon chugging off across the dark breadth of the Thames.
    The Inspector turned away, his smile gone, and went towards the room where the girl lay. He went in. The doctor was not giving her an injection. The girl’s face was turned towards the door, and the Inspector’s thoughts were wrenched off the diamond. Even like that, mouth slack and eyes closed and a dribble of dirty Thames water coming out of her mouth, she was striking.
    “Only a kid,” he said, to no one in particular. “What are her chances?”
    The doctor grunted.
    “Eh?”
    “What - oh, never mind.” The Inspector glanced at the diamond, then looked back at the girl. He shook his head. He went into his office and telephoned the landlubbers, reporting the diamond. This was already a job for Scotland Yard, and the Yard would grouse like hell if any information were kept back even by half an hour. Once they had it they would probably sit on it all night, but there was no one to grouse at them.
    The job done, he went back into the other room.
    A policeman was covering the girl in blankets. The doctor stood against the wall, cigarette glowing at his lips, grey hair standing on end, sweat dropping from his forehead and upper lip. He had loosened his collar and tie, and the collar was soaked with sweat.
    The Inspector’s voice quickened with excitement.
    “How is she?”
    “If she dies, it won’t be from drowning,” the doctor said. “Get her to hospital, they should pull her through.”
     
    In spite of the long years of practice, Worraby was neither truly cynical nor superficially blasé, but a somewhat earnest man with unexpected quirks of humour and a natural ability to divine whenever his leg was being pulled. Hence his “Aye, aye, sir” to the Inspector. As the launch went straight across the smooth Thames, the steady chug-chug of the engine and the even splash of the water against the bows and broadside-on the only nearby sounds, he was wondering about that girl. Some girls depended on paint and powder for their looks, some depended on their vitality, just now and again a real beauty turned up. Something to do with bone structure, and this girl had it. She was young, too. If those two things weren’t enough to make him ponder, there was the diamond.
    “Sarge,” said Jem Norton.
    “What’s up?”
    “How much do you reckon that diamond was worth? Show it to my old woman, and she’d faint.”
    “Show it to mine, and she’d clout me, which is nothing to what I’d do to her,” said Worraby, and sniffed. “I dunno. Thousand quid, probably.”
    “Blimey! Wholesale?”
    “How the hell do you think I know if it’s wholesale or retail, you mutton-headed son of a - and look here, what’s the matter with you tonight? Anyone