[Illustration]
THE
DIAMOND SHIP
BY
MAX PEMBERTON
[Illustration]
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1912
_To_
THE REV. WILLIAM BAKER, D.D.
(LATE HEADMASTER OF MERCHANT TAYLORS’ SCHOOL),
THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED
BY HIS OLD PUPIL.
* * * * *
“_He spake, and into every heart his words_
_Carried new strength and courage._”
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.—THE PREFACE OF TIMOTHY MCSHANUS,
JOURNALIST 1
II.—IN WHICH HARRIET FABOS TELLS OF HER
BROTHER’S RETURN TO DEEPDENE HALL, IN
SUFFOLK 14
III.—IN WHICH HARRIET FABOS CONTINUES HER
NARRATIVE 20
IV.—EAN FABOS BEGINS HIS STORY 30
V.—THE MAN WITH THE THREE FINGERS.—_Dr. Fabos
continues his Story_ 38
VI.—A CHALLENGE FROM A WOMAN.—_Dr. Fabos
joins his Yacht, “White Wings”_ 49
VII.—MY FRIEND MCSHANUS.—_Dr. Fabos at
Dieppe_ 56
VIII.—WE VISIT AFRICA.—_The Voyage of the
“White Wings”_ 66
IX.—THE NIGHT IS NOT SILENT.—_The
Justification of Dr. Fabos_ 72
X.—THE VISION OF THE SHIP.—_Dr. Fabos
proposes to visit the Azores_ 81
XI.—DEAD MAN’S RAFT.—_The Voyage to the
Azores and an Epistle_ 94
XII.—SANTA MARIA.—_Dr. Fabos leaves the
Yacht, “White Wings”_ 99
XIII.—THE CAVE IN THE MOUNTAINS.—_Dr. Fabos
makes Himself acquainted with the Villa San
Jorge_ 113
XIV.—VALENTINE IMROTH.—_Dr. Fabos meets the
Jew_ 125
XV.—THE ALARM.—_Dr. Fabos is made a Prisoner_ 131
XVI.—AT VALLEY HOUSE.—_Joan Fordibras makes a
Confession_ 142
XVII.—THE NINE DAYS OF SILENCE.—_Dr. Fabos
comes to Certain Conclusions_ 151
XVIII.—DOWN TO THE SEA.—_Dr. Fabos leaves the
Valley House_ 163
XIX.—IN THE MEANTIME.—_Dr. Fabos hears the
News_ 175
XX.—THE SKIES BETRAY.—_A Message comes from
the Diamond Ship_ 182
XXI.—A PILLAR OF LIGHT.—_“White Wings” Dares
a Venture_ 200
XXII.—THE CRIMSON ROCKET.—_Joan Fordibras is
discovered on the Diamond Ship_ 210
XXIII.—WE DEFY THE ROGUES.—_And receive an
Ultimatum from Them_ 218
XXIV.—DAWN.—_And some Talk of a Ship that
passed in the Night_ 228
XXV.—THE THRASHER AND THE WHALE.—_We
determine to harass the Diamond Ship_ 233
XXVI.—SEVEN DAYS LATER.—_The Rogues fall out_ 244
XXVII.—DR. FABOS BOARDS THE DIAMOND
SHIP.—_And learns the Truth there_ 257
XXVIII.—THE STRONG ROOM OF THE OCEAN.—_Dr.
Fabos fails to find Joan Fordibras_ 267
XXIX.—THE BRIDGE AND AFTERWARDS.—_Dr. Fabos
visits Colin Ross_ 276
XXX.—JOAN TELLS HER STORY.—_And We are
Homeward Bound_ 298
XXXI.—THE END OF THE DIAMOND SHIP.—_Dr. Fabos
turns his Eyes towards England_ 310
XXXII.—WE HEAR OF THE JEW AGAIN.—_Once more
in London_ 318
XXXIII.—THE MASTER CARD.—_We visit Canvey
Island_ 328
EPILOGUE.—THE EPILOGUE OF TIMOTHY MCSHANUS,
JOURNALIST 346
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
THE DIAMOND SHIP.
CHAPTER I.
THE PREFACE OF TIMOTHY McSHANUS, JOURNALIST.
It would have been at the Fancy Fair and Fête at Kensington Town Hall
that my friend, Dr. Fabos, first met Miss Fordibras. Very well do I
recollect that he paid the price of it for the honourable company of the
Goldsmith Club.
“McShanus,” said he, “if there’s anyone knows his way to a good supper,
’tis yourself and no other. Lead forth to the masquerade, and I follow.
Spare no expense, McShanus. Your friends are my friends. I would have
this a memorable night—the last I may be in London for many a year.”
There were seven of us who took him at his word and got into the cab
together. You must know that he had paid for a little dinner at the
Goldsmith Club already, and never a man who did not justice to his
handsome hospitality. The night was clear, and there were stars in the
heavens. I mind me that a little of the _dulce_ and the _desipere_ moved
us to sing “Rule, Britannia” as we went. ’Tis a poor heart that never
rejoices; and Ean Fabos paid for it—as I took the opportunity to remark
to my good friend Killock, the actor.
“Shall we pay for the cab?” says he.
“Would you insult the most generous heart in Great Britain this night?”
says I.
“On reflection,” says he, “the man who does not pay will have no trouble
about his change,” and with that we went into the hall. It is true that
we were a remarkable company. My old comrade, Barry Henshaw, had come in
a velvet shooting coat and a red neckcloth that was not to the taste of
the officials at the box-office. Killock himself, the darling of the
ladies, God bless him, had diamonds strewn upon his vest thick enough to
make a pattern of chrysanthemums. My own cravat would have been no
disgrace to the Emperor Napoleon. And there we stood, seven members of
seven honourable professions, like soldiers at the drill, our backs to
the wall of the dancing room and our eyes upon the refreshment buffet.
“’Tis time for a whisky and soda,” says Barry Henshaw, the famous
dramatist, directly his coat was off his back.
“Shame on ye,” says I,—“you that were lapping the poison they call
‘kummel’ not the half of an hour ago. Beware of the drink, Barry—the
secret habit.”
“Oh,” says he, “then you’re coming with me, I suppose?”
And then he remarked:
“If Fabos were a gentleman he would join the procession and pay for it.
But that’s the worst of these shows. You always lose the man with the
money.”
I passed the observation by as impertinent, and we went to the buffet.
What they called the Fancy Fair was in full swing by this time; though
devil a wig on the green for all their money. Slips of beauty dressed as
shepherdesses mistook me and my friend for their sheep, and would have
fleeced us prettily; but our lofty utterance, coming of a full heart and
two shillings and tenpence in the purse, restrained their ardour, and
sent them to the right-about. ’Twas a fair, be it told, for the sailor
boys at Portsmouth; and when you had bought a bunch of daisies for ten
shillings, of a maid with blue eyes and cherry lips, you could waltz
with the same little vixen at five shillings a time. My friend Barry, I
observed, turned very pale at this suggestion.
“Do you not lift the sprightly toe?” asked I.
“Man,” he said, “it’s worse than a Channel passage.”
“But Fabos is dancing,” said I, pointing to our host in the midst of the
rabble. “See what comes of the plain living, my boy. He’ll dance until
the sun shines and think nothing of it. And a pretty enough five
shillings’ worth he has on his arm,” I put in as an after-thought.
’Twas odd how we fell to discussing this same Dr. Ean Fabos upon every
occasion that came to us. Was it because of his money—riches beyond
dreams to poor devils who must please the public or die dishonoured in
the market-place? I venture, no. We of the Goldsmith Club care for no
man’s money. Bid the Vanderbilts come among us, and we lift no hats.
’Tis true that in so far as they assist the mighty sons of Homer and
Praxiteles to meet their just obligations upon quarter day, they have
some use in the world. I have known circumstances when they have kept
precious lives from the Underground Railway or the Round Pond in
Kensington Gardens. But this is to betray the secrets of my club and of
my poor friends Killock and Barry Henshaw and the rest.
What I was saying was that Ean Fabos’s riches made no more mark upon us
than a lady’s parasol upon the back of a mule. They said he was a doctor
of Cambridge, whose father had made a fortune out of Welsh coal and then
joined his ancestors. My homage to his consideration, says I. May the
warmth of his discovery glow in many hearts and long blaze in beneficent
profusion up the chimneys of the Goldsmith Club! He has bequeathed us a
noble son, whose dinners are second to none in the empire. Again I say,
hats off. ’Twas a gentleman entirely.
But I speak of his son dancing with the little girl in red at the Fancy
Fair at Kensington. Be sure that his six feet one would go bending to
sixty-eight inches and whispering soft things in her ear at five
shillings the waltz, as the programme told ye. And he such a silent man
ordinarily—not to be moved from that rogue of a taciturn smile we see
so often upon his face even when the wit of the club is worthy of the
name we bear. They call Ean Fabos many names. Some say misogynist;
others cynic; a few speak of his lacking heart; there are those who call
him selfish. What’s he to do with all his money? Do his friends share
it? The sacred shrines of Bacchus know better. He buys diamonds, they
say. Just that, great diamonds and rubies and sapphires, not for a
woman’s pretty arms or her white shoulders, you must know; but to lock
up in his safe at his great house down Newmarket way; to lock up and
hide from men and gloat upon in the silence of the night. That’s what
the world says. I’d add to it that there’s no true charity in all London
which has not benefited secretly by his generous alms. But that is known
to few, and was never known to me until I met the daughter of my friend
Oscroft, the painter; left an orphan as she was in the same unkind city.
What is it, then, about Ean Fabos that turns all eyes upon him in
whatever company he may be? Some, for sure, hope to borrow money of him.
So much my great heart for humanity must admit. They hope to borrow
money from him and to save him from others who would do likewise. ’Tis
their way of friendship. But, mark ye, there are many more, strangers to
him, enemies because of the favour he enjoys, and these are on their
knees with the rest. What is it, then? I’ll tell you in a word. ’Tis
that great power of what they call personal magnetism, a power that we
can give no right name to, but must admit whenever we find it. Ean Fabos
has it beyond any man I have known. Let him say three words at a table,
and the whole room is listening. Let him hold his tongue and the people
are looking at him. You cannot pass it by. It grips you with both hands,
draws you forward, compels you to give best. And that’s why men gather
about my friend Dr. Ean Fabos, as they would about the fine gentlemen of
old Greece could they come back to this London of ours. They have no
will of their own while he is among them.
Now, this is the very man whom I saw dancing twice (at five shillings a
time, though naturally the money would be nothing to him, while much to
poor souls who have had their pictures flung into the mud by the sorry
Sassenachs who sit at Burlington House), dancing twice, I say, with a
black-haired shepherdess in a red cloak; not one that I myself, who have
a fine eye for the sex, would have been lavishing my immortal wit upon;
but just a merry bit of laughing goods that you can sample in any
ball-room. When he surrendered her to her father, a stately old
gentleman, stiff as a poker in the back, and one who reminded me of my
dead friend General von Moltke, of Prussia—when he did this, I say, and
I asked him who she might be, he answered me with the frankness of a
boy:
“Timothy McShanus,” says he, “she’s the daughter of General Fordibras,
whose ancestor went to America with the Marquis de Lafayette. That is
the beginning and end of my knowledge. Lead me forth to the cellar, for
I would quench my thirst. Not since I was the stroke of the great
Leander boat at Henley did there drop from my brow such honest beads of
sweat. Man alive, I would not go through it again for the crown ruby of
Jetsapore.”
“Your friend Lafayette was known to my grandfather,” says I, leading him
straight to the buffet, “though I do not remember to have met him. As
for the labour that ye speak of, I would ask you why you do it if ye
have no stomach for it. To dance or not to dance—shall that be the
question? Not for such men as we, Dr. Fabos; not for those who dwell
upon the Olympian heights and would fly higher if ye could oblige them
with the loan——”
He cut me very short, mistaking my words. Not a man who is given to what
is called dramatic gesture, I was much astonished when he took me by the
arm and, leading me away to a corner, made the strangest confession that
ever fell from such a man’s lips.
“I danced with her, McShanus,” said he, “because she is wearing the
bronze pearls that were stolen from my flat in Paris just three years
ago.”
Be sure that I looked hard enough at him.
“Is there but one bronze pearl in the world?” I asked him after a while
of surprise.
He turned upon me that weary smile which intellect may turn upon
curiosity sometimes, and rejoined as one who pitied me.
“There are just ten of that particular shape, McShanus,” says he, “and
she is wearing four of them in the pendant she has upon her neck. The
heart of it is a rose diamond, which once belonged to Princess
Marguerite of Austria. There is a sweet little white sapphire in the
ring she wears that I fancy I remember somewhere, though the truth of it
has gone out of my head. If she will give me another dance by-and-by I
will tell you more perhaps. But do not speculate upon my actions any
further. You have known me long enough to say that waltzing is not an
employment which usually occupies my attention.”
“’Tis true as all the gospels,” cried I; “and yet, what a story to hear!
Would you have me think that yon bit of a girl is a thief?”
“Oh,” says he, his clear blue eyes full upon me, “does an Irishman ever
give himself time to think? Come, McShanus, use your wits. If she or her
father knew that the jewels were stolen, would she be wearing them in a
ball-room in London?”
“Why, no, she certainly would not.”
“Wrong every time, Timothy McShanus. She would wear them for mere
bravado. That’s what I’ve been telling myself while I danced with her.
If she does not know the truth, her father does.”
“What! The military looking gentleman who so closely resembles my friend
General von Moltke?”
“No other at all. I have my doubts about him. He knows that his daughter
is wearing stolen jewels, but he has not the smallest idea that I
know—either that, or he is clever enough to play Hamlet in a
tam-o’-shanter. Excuse my unwonted agitation, McShanus. This is really
very interesting.”
I could see that he found it so. In all the years I have known him,
never have I seen Ean Fabos so much put about or so little anxious to
escape from his own thoughts. Fine figure of a man that he was, with
great square shoulders hammered out in the rowing boats, a very Saxon
all over him with a curly brown wig and a clean-shaven chin and boy’s
eyes and a man’s heart—that was the body corporate of Ean Fabos. His
mind not a man among us had ever read. I would have named him yesterday
the most careless banker of his riches and money in the three kingdoms
of Ireland, Wales, and England. And here I found him, set thinking like
a philosopher, because he had stumbled across a few paltry pearls stolen
from his cabinet. Should I alter my opinion of him for that? Devil a
bit. ’Twas the girl of whom he thought, I could see.
So here was Timothy McShanus deserting the baked meats, to say nothing
of his convenient corner in the buffet, to go out and stare at a red
shepherdess with picture books and maizypop to sell. And what kind of a
colleen was it that he saw? Why, nothing out of the ordinary when viewed
from afar. But come a little closer, and you shall see the blackest and
the wickedest pair of eyes that ever looked out from the face of Venus.
’Tis no common man I am in my judgment of the sex; but this I will say,
that when the girl looked at me, she found me as red in the face as a
soldier at a court-martial. Not tall above the common; her hair a deep
chestnut, running almost to black; her mouth just a rosebud between two
pretty cheeks; there was something of France and something of America
helping each other to make a wonder of her. Young as she was—and I
supposed her to be about eighteen—her figure would have given her five
years more according to our northern ideas; but I, who know Europe as I
know Pall Mall, said no—she is eighteen, McShanus, my boy, and America
has kept that peach-blossom upon her cheeks. Had I been mistaken, her
voice would have corrected me. ’Twas a young girl’s voice when she
spoke, clear and musical as the song of silver bells.
“Now won’t you buy a novel?” she said, bustling up to me just like a
bunch of roses. “Here’s Sir Arthur Hall Rider’s very latest—an
autograph copy for one guinea.”
“Me dear,” says I, “’tis Timothy McShanus who reads his own novels.
Speak not of his poor rivals.”
“Why, how clever of you!” says she, looking at me curiously. “And, of
course, your books are the best. Why didn’t you send me some to sell on
my stall?”
“Bedad, and they’re out of print, every won av them,” says I, speaking
the Sassenach’s tongue to her as it should be spoken. “Here’s the
Archbishop and the Lord Chancellor together lamentin’ it. ‘Timothy,’
says his lordship, ‘the great masters are dead, Timothy. Be up and
doing, or we are lost entirely.’ The riches of America could not buy one
of my novels—unless it were that ye found one av them upon an old
bookstall at fourpence.”
She didn’t know what to make of me.
“How strange that I don’t know your name!” says she, perplexed. “Did
they review your novels in the newspapers?”
“My dear,” says I, “the newspaper reviewers couldn’t understand ’em. Be
kind to them for it. Ye can’t make a silk purse out a sow’s ear any more
than ye can make black pearls out of lollypops. Could it be, Timothy
McShanus would be driving his own motor-car and not rejuiced to the back
seat of the omnibus. ’Tis a strange world with more wrong than right in
it.”
“You like my pearls, then?” she asked.
I said they were almost worthy of her wearing them.
“Papa bought them in Paris,” she ran on, as natural as could be.
“They’re not black, you know, but bronze. I don’t care a bit about them
myself—I like things that sparkle.”
“Like your eyes,” cried I, searching for the truth in them. For sure, I
could have laughed aloud just now at my friend Fabos’s tale of her.
“Like your eyes when you were dancing a while back with a doctor of my
acquaintance.”
She flushed a hair’s-breadth, and turned her head away.
“Oh, Dr. Fabos? Do you know him, then?”
“We have been as brothers for a matter of ten short years.”
“Is he killing people in London, did you say?”
“No such honourable employment. He’s just a fine, honest, independent
gentleman. Ye’ve nothing much richer in America, maybe. The man who says
a word against him has got to answer Timothy McShanus. Let him make his
peace with heaven before he does so.”
She turned an arch gaze upon me, half-laughing at my words.
“I believe he sent you here to say so,” cries she.
“Indeed, an’ he did,” says I. “He’s anxious for your good opinion.”
“Why, what should I know of him?” says she, and then, turning to stare
after him, she cried, “There he is, talking to my father. I’m sure he
knows we’re picking him to pieces.”
“Pearls every one,” says I.
“Oh, dad is calling me,” she exclaimed, breaking away upon the words and
showing me as pretty an ankle, when she turned, as I am likely to behold
out of Dublin. A minute afterwards, what should I see but the General
and her walking off with my friend Fabos just as if they had known him
all their lives.
“And may the great god Bacchus, to say nothing of the little divinities
who preside over the baked meats, may they forgive him!” I cried to
Barry Henshaw and the rest of the seven. “He has gone without leaving us
the money for our supper, and ’tis two and tenpence halfpenny that
stands for all the capital I have in this mortal world.”
We shook our heads in true sorrow, and buttoned our coats about us. In
thirst we came, in thirst must we return.
“And for a bit of a colleen that I could put in my pocket,” says I, as
we tramped from the hall.
But what the others said I will make no mention of, being a respecter of
persons and of the King’s English—God bless him!