of an oyster shell; the forward rush of a smartly attired throng
awaited their rolling back in the polished steel grooves. It was
to be a woman’s field day; the contents of a notable jewel casket
were to be dispersed under the hammer. And the _bonne-mouche_ of the
occasion--a superb blue diamond of sixty-five carats, a gem worthy to
rank among the historic stones of the world, fit to be counted among
the treasures of a Sultan or to blaze upon the bosom of an Empress--was
discussed by watering mouths. Some of them were old and some of them
were young, but all were tinted with the newest shade in lip bloom,
and all wore the same expression of almost sensual desire. Paradise
plumes fought together as wonderfully hatted heads bent and swayed
and nodded in animated discussion. The stone had brought a hundred
thousand louis and the Grand Monarque’s own patent of nobility to the
Portuguese adventurer who had stolen it from a Hindu temple midway
in the seventeenth century. It had gleamed between the wicked, white
breasts of the Duchesse de Berry, the shameless daughter of the Régent
d’Orleans, at that final supper on the Terrace of Meudon. It had been
seized by the Revolutionists in the stormy days of 1792, and had
mysteriously vanished from the Garde Meuble, to reappear in the taloned
clutches of a London money lender and gem dealer, notorious as a rogue
among the spendthrift fine gentlemen of White’s and Crockford’s. And
it had been bought by a big banker, and bid for by a Tsar, and sold to
a great Tory nobleman, and left as an heirloom, and given to an Italian
opera singer, and got back by arbitration and made a ward in Chancery,
and sold in Paris by sanction of the Court; and now the woman who had
bought and owned and worn it--sometimes as the swinging central stone
of a tiara, at other times as the pendant to a matchless collar of
black pearls--was dead, and Briscoe’s famous auction-room, which is the
chief clearing-place of the world, was about to witness a new record in
progressive bidding.
The live women who had known and envied the dead owner of the blue
diamond clustered thick about the iron doors, and loaded the atmosphere
of the crowded place with their perfumes, and chattered like the
inmates of the parrot house at the Zoological Gardens. Not one of them
but would have given her soul in exchange for even a lesser jewel if
Satan had appeared at her elbow and suggested the exchange. He did
come to one of them. She was a pretty woman, still almost young; she
was beautifully dressed in painted silken muslin, and wore a whole
king bird of Paradise in her Paris hat. The bronze-gold wires of
the wonderful tail, tipped with vivid emerald at the ends, curved
and sprang about the wearer’s well-waved and well-dressed head like
living snakes of incredible slenderness. The rich red plumage of the
dead creature’s head and throat gleamed like rubies; the delicate
feather tufts that sprang from beneath the wings quivered with her
every movement; the orange bill held a seed, cunningly placed; the
cobalt-blue legs were perched upon a rose stem. To insure such
beauty in the plumage the skin must be torn from the living bird.
Any woman might be happy in possessing such a hat; but this one was
miserable.... She wanted the big blue diamond.... And this urbane,
polished person, elegantly attired, had told her that, if she chose, it
might be hers in exchange for a possession only half believed in--to
wit, the woman’s soul--disposed of to a personage held, until that
psychological moment, to be non-existent.
This was not the devil of St. Dunstan, with horns and a tail, or
the cloaked and ribald wine seller of St. Anthony, or the lubberly
fiend of Luther, or the clawed and scaly tempter of Bunyan. Nor
did this personage bear the least resemblance to the swaggering,
scarlet-and-black, sinister Mephistopheles of Goethe, as represented
by the late Sir Henry Irving--upon whom be the Peace of Heaven!--but
the woman entertained no doubt that it was the very devil himself. In
this urbane and polished gentleman in the light gray, tight-waisted
frock-coat and trousers of Bond Street cut, from beneath whose snowy,
polished double collar flowed a voluminous cascade of pearl-colored
cravat pinned with a small but perfect pigeon’s-blood ruby; whose lapel
bore a mauve orchid, whose immaculate white spats, perfectly polished
patent boots, slender watch-chain, jade-headed walking stick, and pale
buff gloves, betokened the most studied refinement and the most elegant
taste, the daughter of Eve recognized the hereditary enemy of the Human
Race.
She did not scream or turn ghastly with mortal fear; her Crême Magnolia
and Rose Ninon were quite too thick for that. But her heart gave a
sickening jolt, and fear immeasurable paralyzed her faculties, and her
veins ran liquid ice--or was it liquid fire?--and for one swooning
instant, under the regard of those intolerably mocking, unspeakably
hateful eyes, the life in her seemed to dwindle to a mere pin’s point
of consciousness. But she revived and rallied, and the terror passed.
“Come!” he said, “you do not fear me--we have been friends too long;
and to me, who know the world so well, and to you, who know it and are
of it, there is nothing so undesirable as to create a scene.” His voice
was polished, gracious. It caressed like the touch of velvet, even if
it crisped the nerves as velvet does. “You know me.... I know you, and
how your heart is set upon this jewel that is to be sold to-day. Rest
easy! Though you have with you in that gold chain purse-bag notes for
fifteen thousand pounds, ten thousand of it raised by what rigorous
moralists ... those unpleasant persons! ... might call unlawful
means....”
“Hush!” she cried, trembling, unable to remove her eyes from that
face--long, oval, benevolent--with wide, arched brows and features
exquisitely regular, framed in long waving hair--dark auburn mingled
with gray--which fell nearly to his collar and mingled with a curling
beard of natural growth. She trembled as the thought shot through her
that it caricatured a Face that hung, pictured with a Crown of Thorns,
above the cot in her child-daughter’s nursery; and her thought was
mirrored in those intolerable eyes, and the sculpturesque lips smiled
in impious mockery.
“Ah, yes! It seems to you I bear some likeness to--shall I say a
distant--or an estranged Friend of yours.... But I have many other
faces, and you have ... other friends. Do not be afraid, or waste time
in denying, the money is only borrowed; you are your young daughter’s
mother, as well as trustee and executor under her father’s will....
And, surely, you may borrow the ten thousand pounds at a pinch for
an investment? Besides, you will put it back before any unpleasant
inquiries are made by your fellow-guardian and co-trustee. The manager
of the Bank was quite deceived by the second signature upon the deed of
withdrawal, so admirably counterfeited, so.... No, no, I do not wish
to alarm you! Be quite at ease upon this matter, really so innocent
and easily explained away. But with regard to your project of buying
the Blue Diamond--you have no chance of carrying out your plan, not
the faintest. Between those sedate persons already assembled by high
privilege behind these shut iron doors an understanding has already
been arrived at. The Diamond will be put up to public auction and
actively bid for, it is true; but the Diamond is already bought and
sold.” His tone was of the gentlest sympathy, but the mockery in his
glance and the gibing irony of his dreadful smile were to the baffled
woman like white-hot irons laid upon a bleeding wound. “Mr. Ulysses
Wanklyn, whose great duel with Mr. Cupid Bose at the De Lirecourt sale
over that Régence commode of marqueterie thrilled all London, will be
the winner of the treasure at ninety-four thousand guineas. Paragraphs
in the afternoon papers--most excellent publications I find them, and
supremely useful--will refer to the coup as ‘the climax of screeching
finance,’ and ‘the hall-mark on an enhanced standard of jewel-values.’
And Messrs. Moreen and Blant, who will retire, ostensibly beaten, from
the field after a bid of eighty-eight thousand, will be condoled with
by writers who are quite aware that Wanklyn, Bose, Moreen, Blant, and
half a dozen others constitute the Blue Diamond Purchasing Syndicate,
capital ninety-four thousand guineas.”
The wearer of the king bird of Paradise caught a sharp breath, and
bit her sensuous, scarlet-dyed underlip fiercely. Stung to desperate
courage by baffled desire and the thwarted jewel-lust that had robbed
even her child and made of her a forger, she even dared to question....
“If that is so,” she said, with angry, dark eyes and a
rebelliously-heaving bosom, “why did you whisper to me just now that I
could have the Diamond for my own if I gave you ... as the people do in
the old German legends ... my Soul in exchange for it?”
He smiled, and caressed the strange, orchidaceous flower he wore with
perfectly-gloved fingers.
“Have you not heard me called the Father of Lies ... the Arch-Deceiver?”
Rage intolerable possessed and rent her. She said hoarsely, and in
tones unlike her own:
“You can give me the Blue Diamond, and I will have it--_at your price_!”
“You are really a woman of excellent sense,” he said--and she was
afraid to look because she knew how he was smiling. “Present good
for future gain!... Doubtless you will recall the quotation, but so
uncertain a futurity is well bartered for such a jewel as they have
in there. Think--you will snatch it from the great dealers--from the
private connoisseurs. You will hold and display and flaunt it in the
face of society. You will be beautiful--wearing it! You should be
envied, wearing it! You may be happy--doubtless you will be so! And
now, just as a mere form, prick your left wrist slightly with this
diamond-pointed pencil and inscribe your name upon a leaf of these
ebony tablets. First, though, be pleased to remove that ... ahem!...
miniature religious symbol from your golden chain. The Crucifix means
nothing to you--you do not even remove it when you draw your wedded
lover to your embrace--but I am an old-fashioned personage, and my
prejudice extends back over nineteen hundred years--to the reign of
Herod Antipas, and is practically unalterable. So ... thanks! That will
serve me excellently!”
From the woman’s hand something fell with a golden tinkle to the
parqueted floor. A surge of the crowd drove her forward, her French
heel crushed what she had dropped. The diamond pencil pricked the
white wrist between the buttons of her dainty glove; she withdrew it,
a little scarlet bead glistening on the shining point, and hesitated,
only an instant, looking at the offered tablets of ebony and gold.
“Come, sign!... It will be over in an instant, and, believe me, you
will feel far more comfortable afterward!” She remembered that her
dentist had employed the same phrases only a day or two before in
persuading her to consent to the removal of a decayed incisor. That
tooth’s successor--a perfect, polished example of human ivory--gleamed
as her lips drew back in a nervous laugh provoked by the absurdity of
the analogy. She scrawled her signature, and the promise was fulfilled.
She was calm--at ease--had no more worrying doubts and silly scruples.
He wore no indiscreet expression of proprietorship; his lips did
not even smile. And if there was mocking triumph in his eyes, his
discreetly dropped lids concealed it.... He bowed profoundly as he took
the ebony tablets, and then he lifted his gloved left hand and laid a
finger on the iron doors. And they rolled apart, revealing the great
safe with many patent locks, and the auctioneer at his desk, and the
clerk at his; and the chosen already in their seats, and the elaborate
preparations for the elaborate farce that was to be played, all ready.
A savage rage boiled up in her as she looked at the smug faces of the
secret Syndicate, actors well-versed in their separate parts. But the
pressure of the chattering, screaming, perfumed crowd behind her
carried her over the threshold, and her companion too. Packed tightly
as sardines in the confined space about the rostrum, Society waited
the great event. And a bunch of master-keys was produced by the senior
partner of Briscoe’s, and with much juggling of patent locks the
great safe gave up the big, square jewel-case containing the famous
collection, and a sibilant “_Ss’s!_” of indrawn breaths greeted the
lifting of its lid.
“Do not look at me! Listen--and look at the jewels,” whispered the
smooth, caressing voice in the ear of the woman who had just signed
away her soul in exchange for the sensation of the day. And as a giant
commissionaire bearing pearl ropes and tiaras, bracelets and rings and
necklaces, nervously paraded up and down the central aisle left for his
convenience, and the chattering and screaming of the society cockatoos
redoubled, in envious admiration of each swaggering, glittering,
covetable gewgaw, the devil told the woman very plainly how the thing
was to be done.
“The stone that I shall give you is an exact replica in a
newly-invented paste of the stone that is the price of what I have
bought from you. When the commissionaire brings round the Blue Diamond,
touch the jewel boldly--take it in your hand, as it is permissible to
do--and substitute the paste. Have no fear! I will undertake that the
act is undetected. Thenceforth wear your prize undismayed; boast of
it as you will. The one--the only--drawback to your perfect happiness
must be that society will believe your jewel to be false, while you
have the exquisite joy of knowing it to be genuine. So take _this_,
and act as I have counseled. Two hours to wait before you can dare to
escape with it, for the Blue Diamond will be the last lot of the day.
But what are two hours, even spent in a vitiated atmosphere, with
such a prize your own, hidden in your glove or in your hand? A mere
nothing! And here comes the commissionaire with the Diamond.... Only
an alumina in hexagonal arrangement crystallized in the cooling of
this planet you call ‘the World’ as arrogantly as though there were no
others, and yet how unique, how exquisite! See how the violet rays leap
from the facets, even the noblest sapphire looks cold and pale beside
the glorious gem. Murder has been committed for its shining sake over
and over again in ages of which your history has no cognizance. It has
purchased the faith of Emperors and the oaths of Kings. Rivers of blood
have flowed because of it. Peerless women have laid down their honor to
gain it. And it will be yours ... yours! Quick, the commissionaire is
coming. School your hand to steadiness; no need to hide your lust, for
all faces wear the same look here. Only be quick, and have no fear!”
The eyes of the commissionaire were fastened upon the woman’s white,
ringed, well-manicured hand, as in its turn it lifted the Blue
Diamond--slightly set in platinum as a pendant--from its pale green
velvet bed. But yet she effected the exchange. The substituted paste
jewel was borne on--the paroquets and cockatoos chattered and screamed
as loudly over the false stone as they had over the real, which lay
snugly hidden in the thief’s fair bosom. The syndicate of dealers
played out their farce to its end, and Mr. Ulysses Wanklyn, to the
infinite chagrin of Mr. Cupid Bose, and the gnashing discomfiture of
Messrs. Moreen and Blant, secured the paste diamond at ninety-four
thousand pounds. And amidst cries and congratulations the day ended.
And the woman, with her price in her bosom, escaped into the open
air, and signaled to the chauffeur waiting with her motor-brougham
and drove home. Fear and triumph filled her. When would the theft be
discovered? How soon would voices in the streets begin to clamor of the
stolen gem? How should she who had stolen it ever dare to wear or to
vaunt it, with Scotland Yard--with the detective eyes of all the world
upon her? She had been befooled, duped, defrauded; she moaned as she
bit her lace handkerchief through.... She reached her dainty boudoir
just in time to have hysterics behind its locked and bolted doors. And
when she had quieted herself with ether and red lavender, she drew the
Blue Diamond from its hiding-place, and it gleamed in her palm with a
diabolical splendor, as though the stone were sentient, and knew what
it had cost. Could the great dealers be deceived--a probability quite
impossible--she would be at liberty to wear this joy, this glory, to
see its myriad splendors reflected in envious eyes. She kissed it as
she had never kissed her child or any of her lovers--with passion,
until its sharp facets cut her lips. And, as she kissed it, her quick
ears were alert to catch the shoutings of the newsmen in the streets.
But there were none. She dined in her boudoir, and slept, with the aid
of veronal; and in the morning’s newspaper there was not a wail, not a
word! She gave the king bird of Paradise hat to her maid--she was so
pleased, so thankful! The afternoon papers, and those of the next day
and the next, were dumb upon the subject of the daring theft of the big
Blue Diamond from Briscoe’s famous auction-room. She grew more and more
secure. And one never-to-be-forgotten night she put on a Paquin gown
and went to a great reception at a ducal house with the Blue Diamond as
pendant to her pearl-and-brilliant collar. She counted on the cockatoos
screeching, but they did not screech. The eyes that dwelt on the Blue
Diamond were astonished, surprised, covertly amused, contemptuous.
“That is for luck, I suppose, dear?” cooed one of her intimate friends.
“I mean that large blue crystal you are wearing.... I bought some last
winter at a jeweler’s in the bazaar at Rangoon--they find them with
moonstones and olivines and those other things in the _débris_ at
the Ruby Mines, I understood. I must have mine mounted. By the way,
do you know that----” (she mentioned the name of a great financier
of cosmopolitan habits and international fame) “has bought the Blue
Diamond from Ulysses Wanklyn for a hundred and ten thousand pounds:
_She_”--her voice dropped a little as she referred to a lady upon
whom the great financier was reputed to have bestowed his plutocratic
affections--“will be here to-night. Probably she will wear it! They say
she was absolutely determined on his getting it for her, and so.... _À
porte basse, passant courbé_, especially when the circumstances are
pretty. _What_ do you say? You heard it had been discovered by the
dealers that the Blue Diamond had been found to be false ... a paste
imitation, or a cut crystal like that thing you are wearing? Oh, my
dear, how quite too frightfully absurd a _canard_! As though Ulysses
Wanklyn and Cupid Bose and Blant, and all the other connoisseurs,
could be deceived! What a very remarkable-looking man that is who is
bowing to you!... The graceful person with the Apostolic profile and
the beautiful silky beard”--and the intimate friend gave a little
shudder. “And the extraordinary eyes that give one a crispation of the
nerves?...”
It was he--her Purchaser--moving suddenly toward her through the throng
of naked backs and bare bosoms.
“I hope,” he said, and bowed and smiled, “that you are satisfied
with the result of our ... negotiations the other day?” Then, as the
fashionable crowd parted and the Great Financier walked through the
rooms, his imperious mistress upon his arm, her husband looking amiable
behind them, he added, indicating the swinging central pendant of the
lady’s superb diamond tiara, with a wave of a slender white-gloved
hand, “My substitute was convincing, you think; you suppose it has
deceived even the experts? Not in the least--the substitution of the
paste stone for the Blue Diamond was discovered as soon as the public
had quitted the auction-room. But Messrs. Wanklyn and Bose and my other
very good friends who lay down the law in jewels as in other things, to
Society, agreed not to lose by the fraud. The paste has the _cachet_ of
their approval, and has been sold for a great sum. ‘What water!’ the
world is crying. ‘What luster!’ ‘How superb a gem!’ While you, my poor
friend, who display upon your bosom the real stone, have merely been
credited with a meretricious taste for wearing Palais Royal jewelry.
Pardon! I have not deceived you--or not in the way you imagine.... I
said the Blue Diamond should be yours.... It is! I said you should be
envied; you should, certainly. It is a thousand pities you are only
sneered at. I said you might be happy.... It is most regrettable that
you do not find the happiness you looked for. _Au revoir_, dear lady,
_au revoir_!”
She felt indisposed, and went home....
THE NIGHT OF POWER
IN TWO PARTS
I
The Doctor, stepping softly forth from the sick-room, paused for a
brief confidential parley with the print-gowned, white-capped hospital
nurse, who had followed him. That functionary, gliding from his side,
evanished, with the falling of a curtain-sheet soaked in disinfectant
and the closing of a door, into the Blue-Beard chamber beyond, leaving
the man of medicine free to pursue his portly way downstairs.
At the bottom of the second flight one of the hotel servants stopped
him with a respectful murmur and a salver with a card upon it; and the
Doctor, reading the name thereon by the help of a pair of gold-rimmed
glasses, inclined his neatly-shaved, gray-blue chin toward the mourning
diamond discreetly twinkling amid the billows of black satin that
rolled into the bosom of his capacious waistcoat, saying:
“The wife of my patient upstairs? Certainly; I will see the lady at
once. Which way?”
His responsible, square-toed, patent-leather boots had not much farther
to carry him. The lady and her maid were waiting in a sitting-room
upon the next landing. Under the fashionable physician’s heavy yellow
eyelids--livery eyelids, if one might dare to hint so--lay the faculty
of keen observation. He noticed, in the moment of recovery from a
justly-celebrated bow, that the maid was in tears, and the mistress was
not.
He presupposed that he had the pleasure of addressing Mrs. Rosval.
Mrs. Rosval answered that he had. Then the maid uttered a sob like the
popping of a soda-water cork, and Mrs. Rosval said:
“Matilda, be quiet!”
She was a woman of supple figure and of medium height. She appeared
to be elegantly dressed, though no one garment that she wore asserted
itself as having been expensive. The eyes that looked at the Doctor
through her thick black veil struck him as being unnaturally brilliant.
This fact, together with the composure of her voice and manner,
confirmed him in the belief that the woman was in a highly-strung
condition of emotional excitement. He was mentally evolving a little
prescription--with bromide in it, to be taken every three hours--when
she lifted her hands and unpinned the veil. Then the Doctor looked in
the face of a woman who was as perfectly calm, cool, and composed as he
was himself. Even more so because the revelation rather surprised him.
She addressed him in clear, quiet tones:
“A telegraphic message was delivered to me this morning----”
“At Mirkwood Park, near Bradford,” the Doctor unconsciously quoted
aloud from the card he still held between his plump white thumb and
forefinger.
“It purported to come from the proprietor of this hotel. It said that
Mr.--that my husband was dangerously ill--that my presence was urgently
needed.” Mrs. Rosval’s lips--delicately chiseled lips, but totally
devoid of color--shaped themselves into something that might have been
a smile. And as the maid, who nursed a dressing-bag in the background,
at this juncture emitted a sniff, the mistress glanced again over her
shoulder, and said, with a slight accent of weariness or contempt, or
both together: “Really, Matilda, there is no need for that!”
The irrefragable Doctor had gauged the shallow depths of the woman’s
nature by this time. She was merely a polished and singularly
adamantine specimen of the unfeeling wife. He allowed a tinge of rebuke
to color the tone of his explanation.
“The proprietor acted upon my--ah--advice. The condition of my patient
may be truthfully described as--er--dangerous. The illness is--in
fact--typhoid fever. And your husband has it in a bad form. There are
complications which----”
The Doctor stopped short. For Mrs. Rosval was not listening. She was
crumpling a piece of pinkish paper into a ball--probably the telegram
to which she had alluded--and pondering. Then she leveled those
strangely brilliant, narrow-lidded eyes of hers point-blank at the
Doctor, and asked: “Am I to understand that Mr. Rosval has nothing to
do with--my being sent for?”