“Talking of the prices of birds, I’ve seen an ostrich that cost three
hundred pounds,” said the taxidermist, recalling his youth of travel.
“Three hundred pounds!”
He looked at me over his spectacles. “I’ve seen another that was refused
at four.”
“No,” he said, “it wasn’t any fancy points. They was just plain
ostriches. A little off colour, too—owing to dietary. And there wasn’t
any particular restriction of the demand either. You’d have thought five
ostriches would have ruled cheap on an East Indiaman. But the point was,
one of ’em had swallowed a diamond.
“The chap it got it off was Sir Mohini Padishah, a tremendous swell, a
Piccadilly swell you might say up to the neck of him, and then an ugly
black head and a whopping turban, with this diamond in it. The blessed
bird pecked suddenly and had it, and when the chap made a fuss it
realised it had done wrong, I suppose, and went and mixed itself with
the others to preserve its _incog_. It all happened in a minute. I was
among the first to arrive, and there was this heathen going over his
gods, and two sailors and the man who had charge of the birds laughing
fit to split. It was a rummy way of losing a jewel, come to think of it.
The man in charge hadn’t been about just at the moment, so that he
didn’t know which bird it was. Clean lost, you see. I didn’t feel half
sorry, to tell you the truth. The beggar had been swaggering over his
blessed diamond ever since he came aboard.
“A thing like that goes from stem to stem of a ship in no time. Every
one was talking about it. Padishah went below to hide his feelings. At
dinner—he pigged at a table by himself, him and two other Hindoos—the
captain kind of jeered at him about it, and he got very excited. He
turned round and talked into my ear. He would not buy the birds; he
would have his diamond. He demanded his rights as a British subject. His
diamond must be found. He was firm upon that. He would appeal to the
House of Lords. The man in charge of the birds was one of those
wooden-headed chaps you can’t get a new idea into anyhow. He refused any
proposal to interfere with the birds by way of medicine. His
instructions were to feed them so-and-so and treat them so-and-so, and
it was as much as his place was worth not to feed them so-and-so, and
treat them so-and-so. Padishah had wanted a stomach-pump—though you
can’t do that to a bird, you know. This Padishah was full of bad law,
like most of these blessed Bengalis, and talked of having a lien on the
birds, and so forth. But an old boy, who said his son was a London
barrister, argued that what a bird swallowed became _ipso facto_ part of
the bird, and that Padishah’s only remedy lay in an action for damages,
and even then it might be possible to show contributory negligence. He
hadn’t any right of way about an ostrich that didn’t belong to him. That
upset Padishah extremely, the more so as most of us expressed an opinion
that that was the reasonable view. There wasn’t any lawyer aboard to
settle the matter, so we all talked pretty free. At last, after Aden, it
appears that he came round to the general opinion, and went privately to
the man in charge and made an offer for all five ostriches.
“The next morning there was a fine shindy at breakfast. The man hadn’t
any authority to deal with the birds, and nothing on earth would induce
him to sell; but it seems he told Padishah that a Eurasian named Potter
had already made him an offer, and on that Padishah denounced Potter
before us all. But I think the most of us thought it rather smart of
Potter, and I know that when Potter said that he’d wired at Aden to
London to buy the birds, and would have an answer at Suez, I cursed
pretty richly at a lost opportunity.
“At Suez, Padishah gave way to tears—actual wet tears—when Potter became
the owner of the birds, and offered him two hundred and fifty right off
for the five, being more than two hundred per cent. on what Potter had
given. Potter said he’d be hanged if he parted with a feather of
them—that he meant to kill them off one by one, and find the diamond;
but afterwards, thinking it over, he relented a little. He was a
gambling hound, was this Potter, a little queer at cards, and this kind
of prize-packet business must have suited him down to the ground.
Anyhow, he offered, for a lark, to sell the birds separately to separate
people by auction at a starting price of £80 for a bird. But one of
them, he said, he meant to keep for luck.
“You must understand this diamond was a valuable one—a little Jew chap,
a diamond merchant, who was with us, had put it at three or four
thousand when Padishah had shown it to him—and this idea of an ostrich
gamble caught on. Now it happened that I’d been having a few talks on
general subjects with the man who looked after these ostriches, and
quite incidentally he’d said one of the birds was ailing, and he fancied
it had indigestion. It had one feather in its tail almost all white, by
which I knew it, and so when, next day, the auction started with it, I
capped Padishah’s eighty-five by ninety. I fancy I was a bit too sure
and eager with my bid, and some of the others spotted the fact that I
was in the know. And Padishah went for that particular bird like an
irresponsible lunatic. At last the Jew diamond merchant got it for £175,
and Padishah said £180 just after the hammer came down—so Potter
declared. At any rate, the Jew merchant secured it, and there and then
he got a gun and shot it. Potter made a Hades of a fuss because he said
it would injure the sale of the other three, and Padishah, of course,
behaved like an idiot; but all of us were very much excited. I can tell
you I was precious glad when that dissection was over, and no diamond
had turned up—precious glad. I’d gone to one-forty on that particular
bird myself.
“The little Jew was like most Jews—he didn’t make any great fuss over
bad luck; but Potter declined to go on with the auction until it was
understood that the goods could not be delivered until the sale was
over. The little Jew wanted to argue that the case was exceptional, and
as the discussion ran pretty even, the thing was postponed until the
next morning. We had a lively dinner-table that evening, I can tell you,
but in the end Potter got his way, since it would stand to reason he
would be safer if he stuck to all the birds, and that we owed him some
consideration for his sportsman-like behaviour. And the old gentleman
whose son was a lawyer said he’d been thinking the thing over and that
it was very doubtful if, when a bird had been opened and the diamond
recovered, it ought not to be handed back to the proper owner. I
remember I suggested it came under the laws of treasure-trove—which was
really the truth of the matter. There was a hot argument, and we settled
it was certainly foolish to kill the bird on board the ship. Then the
old gentleman, going at large through his legal talk, tried to make out
the sale was a lottery and illegal, and appealed to the captain; but
Potter said he sold the birds _as_ ostriches. He didn’t want to sell any
diamonds, he said, and didn’t offer that as an inducement. The three
birds he put up, to the best of his knowledge and belief, did _not_
contain a diamond. It was in the one he kept—so he hoped.
“Prices ruled high next day all the same. The fact that now there were
four chances instead of five of course caused a rise. The blessed birds
averaged 227, and, oddly enough, this Padishah didn’t secure one of
’em—not one. He made too much shindy, and when he ought to have been
bidding he was talking about liens, and, besides, Potter was a bit down
on him. One fell to a quiet little officer chap, another to the little
Jew, and the third was syndicated by the engineers. And then Potter
seemed suddenly sorry for having sold them, and said he’d flung away a
clear thousand pounds, and that very likely he’d draw a blank, and that
he always had been a fool, but when I went and had a bit of a talk to
him, with the idea of getting him to hedge on his last chance, I found
he’d already sold the bird he’d reserved to a political chap that was on
board, a chap who’d been studying Indian morals and social questions in
his vacation. That last was the three hundred pounds bird. Well, they
landed three of the blessed creatures at Brindisi—though the old
gentleman said it was a breach of the Customs regulations—and Potter and
Padishah landed too. The Hindoo seemed half mad as he saw his blessed
diamond going this way and that, so to speak. He kept on saying he’d get
an injunction—he had injunction on the brain—and giving his name and
address to the chaps who’d bought the birds, so that they’d know where
to send the diamond. None of them wanted his name and address, and none
of them would give their own. It was a fine row I can tell you—on the
platform. They all went off by different trains. I came on to
Southampton, and there I saw the last of the birds, as I came ashore; it
was the one the engineers bought, and it was standing up near the
bridge, in a kind of crate, and looking as leggy and silly a setting for
a valuable diamond as ever you saw—if it _was_ a setting for a valuable
diamond.
“_How did it end?_ Oh! like that. Well—perhaps. Yes, there’s one more
thing that may throw light on it. A week or so after landing I was down
Regent Street doing a bit of shopping, and who should I see arm in arm
and having a purple time of it but Padishah and Potter. If you come to
think of it—
“Yes. _I’ve_ thought that. Only, you see, there’s no doubt the diamond
was real. And Padishah was an eminent Hindoo. I’ve seen his name in the
papers—often. But whether the bird swallowed the diamond certainly is
another matter, as you say.”