BUYING DIAMONDS.
Mr. Dunbar did not waste much time before he began the grand business
which had brought him to London—that is to say, the purchase of such a
collection of diamonds as compose a necklace second only to that which
brought poor hoodwinked Cardinal de Rohan and the unlucky daughter of
the Caesars into such a morass of trouble and slander.
Early upon the morning after his visit to the bank, Mr. Dunbar went out
very plainly dressed, and hailed the first empty cab that he saw in
Piccadilly.
He ordered the cabman to drive straight to a street leading out of
Holborn, a very quiet-looking street, where you could buy diamonds
enough to set up all the jewellers in the Palais Royale and the Rue de
la Paix, and where, if you were so whimsical as to wish to transform a
service of plate into "white soup" at a moment's notice, you might
indulge your fancy in establishments of unblemished respectability.
The gold and silver refiners, the diamond-merchants and wholesale
jewellers, in this quiet street, were a very superior class of people,
and you might dispose of a handful of gold chains and bangles without
any fear that one or two of them would find their way into the
operator's sleeve during the process of weighing. The great Mr.
Krusible, who thrust the last inch of an Eastern potentate's sceptre
into the melting-pot with the sole of his foot, as the detectives
entered his establishment in search of the missing bauble, and walked
lame for six months afterwards, lived somewhere in the depths of the
city, and far away from this dull-looking Holborn street; and would
have despised the even tenor of life, and the moderate profits of a
business in this neighbourhood.
Mr. Dunbar left his cab at the Holborn end of the street, and walked
slowly along the pavement till he came to a very dingy-looking
parlour-window, which might have belonged to a lawyer's office but for
some gilded letters on the wire blind, which, in a very pale and faded
inscription, gave notice that the parlour belonged to Mr. Isaac
Hartgold, diamond-merchant. A grimy brass plate on the door of the
house bore another inscription to the same effect; and it was at this
door that Mr. Dunbar stopped.
He rang a bell, and was admitted immediately by a very sharp-looking
boy, who ushered him into the parlour, where he saw a mahogany counter,
a pair of small brass scales, a horse-hair-cushioned office-stool
considerably the worse for wear, and a couple of very
formidable-looking iron safes deeply imbedded in the wall behind the
counter. There was a desk near the window, at which a gentleman, with
very black hair and whiskers was seated, busily engaged in some
abstruse calculations between a pair of open ledgers.
He got off his high seat as Mr. Dunbar entered, and looked rather
suspiciously at the banker. I suppose the habit of selling diamonds had
made him rather suspicious of every one. Henry Dunbar wore a
fashionable greatcoat with loose open cuffs, and it was towards these
loose cuffs that Mr. Hartgold's eyes wandered with rapid and rather
uneasy glances. He was apt to look doubtfully at gentlemen with roomy
coat-sleeves, or ladies with long-haired muffs or fringed parasols.
Unset diamonds are an eminently portable species of property, and you
might carry a tolerably valuable collection of them in the folds of the
smallest parasol that ever faded under the summer sunshine in the
Lady's Mile.
"I want to buy a collection of diamonds for a necklace," Mr. Dunbar
said, as coolly as if he had been talking of a set of silver spoons;
"and I want the necklace to be something out of the common. I should
order it of Garrard or Emanuel; but I have a fancy for buying the
diamonds upon paper, and having them made up after a design of my own.
Can you supply me with what I want?"
"How much do you want? You may have what some people would call a
necklace for a thousand pounds, or you may have one that'll cost you
twenty thousand. How far do you mean to go?"
"I am prepared to spend something between fifty and eighty thousand
pounds."
The diamond merchant pursed up his lips reflectively. "You are aware
that in these sort of transactions ready money is indispensable?" he
said.
"Oh, yes, I am quite aware of that," Mr. Dunbar answered, coolly.
He took out his card-case as he spoke, and handed one of his cards to
Mr. Isaac Hartgold. "Any cheques signed by that name," he said, "will
be duly honoured in St. Gundolph Lane."
Mr. Hartgold bent his head reverentially to the representative of a
million of money. He, in common with every business man in London, was
thoroughly familiar with the names of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby.
"I don't know that I can supply you with fifty thousand pounds' worth
of such diamonds as you may require at a moment's notice," he said;
"but I can procure them for you in a day or two, if that will do?"
"That will do very well. This is Tuesday; suppose I give you till
Thursday?"
"The stones shall be ready for you by Thursday, sir."
"Very good. I will call for them on Thursday morning. In the meantime,
in order that you may understand that the transaction is a _bonâ fide_
one, I'll write a cheque for ten thousand, payable to your order, on
account of diamonds to be purchased by me. I have my cheque-book in my
pocket. Oblige me with pen and ink."
Mr. Hartgold murmured something to the effect that such a proceeding
was altogether unnecessary; but he brought Mr. Dunbar his office
inkstand, and looked on with an approving twinkle of his eyes while the
banker wrote the cheque, in that slow, formal hand peculiar to him. It
made things very smooth and comfortable, Mr. Hartgold thought, to say
the least of it.
"And now, sir, with regard to the design of the necklace," said the
merchant, when he had folded the cheque and put it into his
waistcoat-pocket. "I suppose you've some idea that you'd like to carry
out; and you'd wish, perhaps, to see a few specimens."
He unlocked one of the iron safes as he spoke, and brought out a lot of
little paper packets, which were folded in a peculiar fashion, and
which he opened with very gingerly fingers.
"I suppose you'd like some tallow-drops, sir?" he said. "Tallow-drops
work-in better than anything for a necklace."
"What, in Heaven's name, are tallow-drops?"
Mr. Hartgold took up a diamond with a pair of pincers, and exhibited it
to the banker.
"That's a tallow-drop, sir," he said. "It's something of a heart-shaped
stone, you see; but we call it a tallow-drop, because it's very much
the shape of a drop of tallow. You'd like large stones, of course,
though they eat into a great deal of money? There are diamonds that are
known all over Europe; diamonds that have been in the possession of
royalty, and are as well known as the family they've belonged to. The
Duke of Brunswick has pretty well cleared the market of that sort of
stuff; but still they are to be had, if you've a fancy for anything of
that kind?"
Mr. Dunbar shook his head.
"I don't want anything of that sort," he said; "the day may come when
my daughter, or my daughter's descendants, may be obliged to realize
the jewels. I'm a commercial man, and I want eighty thousand pounds'
worth of diamonds that shall be worth the money I give for them to
break up and sell again. I should wish you to choose diamonds of
moderate size, but not small; worth, on an average, forty or fifty
pounds apiece, we'll say."
"I shall have to be very particular about matching them in colour,"
said Mr. Hartgold, "as they're for a necklace." The banker shrugged his
shoulders.
"Don't trouble yourself about the necklace," he said, rather
impatiently. "I tell you again I'm a commercial man, and what I want is
good value for my money."
"And you shall have it, sir," answered the diamond-merchant, briskly.
"Very well, then; in that case I think we understand each other, and
there's no occasion for me to stop here any longer. You'll have eighty
thousand pounds' worth of diamonds, at thereabouts, ready for me when I
call here on Thursday morning. You can cash that cheque in the
meantime, and ascertain with whom you have to deal. Good morning."
He left the diamond-merchant wondering at his sang froid, and returned
to the cab, which had been waiting for him all this time.
He was just going to step into it, when a hand touched him lightly on
the shoulder, and turning sharply and angrily round, he recognized the
gentleman who called himself Major Vernon. But the Major was by no
means the shabby stranger who had watched the marriage of Philip
Jocelyn and Laura Dunbar in Lisford Church. Major Vernon had risen,
resplendent as the phoenix, from the ashes of his old clothes.
The poodle collar was gone: the dilapidated boots had been exchanged
for stout water-tight Wellingtons: the napless dirty white hat had
given place to a magnificent beaver, with a broad trim curled at the
sides. Major Vernon was positively splendid. He was as much wrapped up
as ever; but his wrappings now were of a gorgeous, not to say gaudy,
description. His thick greatcoat was of a dark olive-green, and the
collar turned up over his ears was of a shiny-looking brown fur, which,
to the confiding mind of the populace, is known as imitation sable.
Inside this fur collar the Major wore a shawl-patterned scarf of all
the colours in the prismatic scale, across which his nose lacked its
usual brilliancy of hue by force of contrast. Major Vernon had a very
big cigar in his mouth, and a very big cane in his hand, and the quiet
City men turned to look at him as he stood upon the pavement talking to
Henry Dunbar.
The banker writhed under the touch of his Indian acquaintance.
"What do you want with me?" he asked, in low angry tones; "why do you
follow me about to play the spy upon me, and stop me in the public
street? Haven't I done enough for you? Ain't you satisfied with what I
have done?"
"Yes, dear boy," answered the Major, "perfectly satisfied, more than
satisfied—for the present. But your future favours—as those low
fellows, the butchers and bakers, have it—are respectfully requested
for yours truly. Let me get into the cab with you, Mr. H.D., and take
me back to the _casa_, and give me a comfortable little bit of perrogg.
I haven't lost my aristocratic taste for seven courses, and an elegant
succession of still fine sparkling wines, though during the last few
years I've been rather frequently constrained to accept the shadowy
hospitality of his grace of Humphrey. '_Nante dinari, nante manjare_,'
as we say in the Classics, which I translate, 'No credit at the
butcher's or the baker's.'"
"For Heaven's sake, stop that abominable slang!" said Henry Dunbar,
impatiently.
"It annoys you, dear friend, eh? Well, I've known the time when——But no
matter, 'let what is broken, so remain,' as the poet observes; which is
only an elegant way of saying, 'Let bygones be bygones.' And so you've
been buying diamonds, dear boy?"
"Who told you so?"
"You did, when you came out of Mr. Isaac Hartgold's establishment. I
happened to be passing the door as you went in, and I happened to be
passing the door again as you came out."
"And playing the spy upon me."
"Not at all, dear boy. It was merely a coincidence, I assure you. I
called at the bank yesterday, cashed my cheques, ascertained your
address; called at the Clarendon this morning, was told you'd that
minute gone out; looked down Albemarle Street; there you were, sure
enough; saw you get into a cab; got into another—a Hansom, and faster
than yours—came behind you to the corner of this street."
"You followed me," said Henry Dunbar, bitterly.
"Don't call it _following_, dear friend, because that's low. Accident
brought me into this neighbourhood at the very hour you were coming
into this neighbourhood. If you want to quarrel with anything, quarrel
with the doctrine of chances, not with me."
Henry Dunbar turned away with a sulky gesture. His friend watched him
with very much the same malicious grin that had distorted his face
under the lamp-lit porch at Maudesley. The Major looked like a
vulgar-minded Mephistopheles: there was not even the "divinity of hell"
about him.
"And so you've been buying diamonds?" he repeated presently, after a
considerable pause.
"Yes, I have. I am buying them for a necklace for my daughter."
"You are so dotingly fond of your daughter!" said the Major with a
leer.
"It is necessary that I should give her a present."
"Precisely, and you won't even trust the business to a jeweller; you
insist on doing it all yourself."
"I shall do it for less money than a jeweller."
"Oh, of course," answered Major Vernon; "the motive's as clear as
daylight."
He was silent for a few minutes, then he laid his hand heavily upon his
companion's shoulder, put his lips close to the banker's ear, and said,
in a loud voice, for it was not easy for him to make himself heard
above the jolting of the cab,—
"Henry Dunbar, you're a very clever fellow, and I dare say you think
yourself a great deal sharper than I am; but, by Heaven, if you try any
tricks with me, you'll find yourself mistaken! You must buy me an
annuity. Do you understand? Before you move right or left, or say your
soul's your own, you must buy me an annuity!"
The banker shook off his companion's hand, and turned round upon him,
pale, stern, and defiant.
"Take care, Stephen Vallance," he said; "take care how you threaten me.
I should have thought you knew me of old, and would be wise enough to
keep a civil tongue in your head, with _me_. As for what you ask, I
shall do it, or I shall let it alone—as I think fit. If I do it, I
shall take my own time about it, not yours."
"You're not afraid of me, then?" asked the other, recoiling a little,
and much more subdued in his tone.
"No!"
"You are very bold."
"Perhaps I am. Do you remember the old story of some people who had a
goose that laid golden eggs? They were greedy, and, in their besotted
avarice, they killed the goose. But they have not gone down to
posterity as examples of wisdom. No, Vallance, I'm not afraid of you."
Mr. Vallance leaned back in the cab, biting his nails savagely, and
thinking. It seemed as if he was trying to find an answer for Mr.
Dunbar's speech: but, if so, he must have failed, for he was silent for
the rest of the drive: and when he got out of the vehicle, by-and-by,
before the door of the Clarendon, his manner bore an undignified
resemblance to that of a half-bred cur who carries his tail between his
legs.
"Good afternoon, Major Vernon," the banker said, carelessly, as a
liveried servant opened the door of the hotel: "I shall be very much
engaged during the few days I am likely to remain in town, and shall be
unable to afford myself the pleasure of your society."
The Major stared aghast at this cool dismissal.
"Oh," he murmured, vaguely, "that's it, is it? Well, of course, you
know what's best for yourself—so, good afternoon!"
The door closed upon Major Vernon, alias Mr. Stephen Vallance, while he
was still staring straight before him, in utter inability to realize
his position. But he drew his cashmere shawl still higher up about his
ears, took out a gaudy scarlet-morocco cigar-case, lighted another big
cigar, and then strolled slowly down the quiet West-end street, with
his bushy eyebrows contracted into a thoughtful frown.
"Cool," he muttered between his closed lips; "very cool, to say the
least of it. Some people would call it audacious. But the story of the
goose with the golden eggs is one of childhood's simple lessons that
we're obliged to remember in after-life. And to think that the
Government of this country should have the audacity to offer a measly
hundred pounds or so for the discovery of a great crime! The shabbiness
of the legislature must answer for it, if criminals remain at large. My
friend's a deep one, a cursedly deep one; but I shall keep my eye upon
him 'My faith is strong in time,' as the poet observes. My friend
carries it with a high hand at present; but the day may come when he
may want me; and if ever he does want me, egad, he shall pay me my own
price, and it shall be rather a stiff one into the bargain."