A little puff of ironic disappointment escaped his pursed-up
lips. For at one glance he could see that it held no mystery. The
only mystery about it all was that he had been theatrical enough
to imagine it could prove anything that was not sordid and
worthless.
For lying on the paper before him was nothing more than a litter
of mortar and wall plaster, interspersed with stone chips. It was
nothing more than the sweepings a brick-layer had left behind
him, a pile of worthless rubbish, a bundle of refuse, another
white elephant on his hands.
Trotter stirred the heap of dust and lime, impassively,
disdainfully. There was nothing more than an occasional brick
corner, an occasional piece of wall plaster. The only other thing
was one larger fragment of stone. Trotter looked at it
indolently. It was merely a piece of granite--an ounce or two of
stone with one highly polished end, a bit of refuse which a
hurrying mason might have used to "rubble" a wall crevice. And he
had been fool enough to cart it up four flights of stairs!
He turned the piece of stone over in his hands. It was of
porphyritic granite, with distinct crystals of feldspar embedded
in a fine grained matrix.
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