About noon on the following day Mr. Steinberg, seated in a small
inner chamber in Hatton Garden, leisurely answering his sole business
correspondent of that morning, was in no way surprised when the boy he
employed to open the door and receive visitors brought in a card bearing
the name of ‘Mr. John Barter, jun.’
‘Show him in,’ said Mr. Steinberg; and young Mr. Barter, hearing this
in the outer room, came in with a pale-faced and excited alacrity. The
diamond merchant dismissed the boy with a word.
‘Well,’ he said, turning the tip of his cigar upwards by a protrusion of
the under lip, ‘what is it?’
‘About that little matter,’ said young Barter nervously, ‘we were
talking of last night.’
‘The little matter we were talking of last night?’ asked Steinberg idly,
looking at him with half-shut eyes. ‘That hundred you owe me?’
‘Well, perhaps that afterwards,’ said Barter with a frightened
breathless laugh in his voice. ‘But about the other matter first.’
‘The other matter?’ Steinberg asked, in a lazier manner than before.
‘What other matter?’ He took up his pen, dipped it in the inkstand
before him, and tracing a line or two of his correspondent’s
communication with it, turned to his own unfinished letter.
Young Barter was already sufficiently agitated, and this curious
reception made him more embarrassed than ever.
‘About that affair of Bommaney’s,’ he said, feeling as if a rapid wheel
had been somehow started in his brain.
‘Ah!’ said Steinberg, writing rapidly, and speaking in a voice which
seemed to indicate that he neither understood nor cared to understand,
‘that affair of Bommaney’s, eh?’
This reception was nothing less than dreadful to the young criminal. He
had reckoned on having his way made easy for him. Steinberg had actually
offered to become his accomplice in crime, and had lured him to
disclosure. He could have wished that the floor would open and let
him through. He saw that he had already exposed his hand, and began to
imagine all manner of consequences resulting from the exposure. Not one
of the consequences he foresaw promised to be of a nature agreeable to
himself, and for the moment the hatred with which Steinberg inspired him
was of so mad a nature that there was nothing he would not have done to
him if he had had the courage and the power.
Steinberg wrote on, shaking his fist in what seemed to be an unusual
alert, and even threatening, manner. There was a great deal of
unnecessary motion in Steinberg’s hand, and Barter, looking at its swift
and resolute movements, got a blind sort of impression of strength out
of it, and nullified the feeling with which it inspired him. The letter
written, enveloped, addressed, and stamped, Steinberg tossed it on one
side, and leaning back in his arm-chair, turned an uninterested look
once more upon his visitor.
‘That affair of Bommaney’s,’ he said. ‘What was that?’
Mr. Barter thought this inquiry altogether too barefaced, and responded,
with a hectic flush of courage,
‘Come, Steinberg, don’t play the fool with a fellow. You know jolly well
what it was last night.’
Mr. Steinberg’s keen and impassive face underwent no change.
‘What did I know last night?’ he asked.
‘You know,’ Barter began angrily; and then the hectic flush of courage
died, and a dreadful chill of fear succeeded it. What had he known? He
had only guessed--till now. But now, young Mr. Barter felt, to employ
the expressive ideas of his set, that he had given himself away.
Steinberg capped the question in his mind. What did I know last night?
‘You haven’t come to waste your time or mine, I suppose? You’ve come to
say something. Why not say it?’
His guest, sitting in a terrible confusion, and feeling himself
altogether betrayed and lost, Steinberg marched to the door, and
addressing the boy in the outer room, bade him carry the letter to the
post and return no more that day. Then, having locked the outer door, he
returned and resumed his seat.
‘Now, what is it?’ he asked.
Barter, recognising the fact that his own purpose was already exposed,
made a desperate dash.
‘About those notes old Bommaney was supposed to have run away with. I
think--I think, mind you, that if there was any way of using them, I
could lay my hands upon them.’
‘I remember,’ said Steinberg, ‘you said something of the kind last
night. I shouldn’t advise you to touch ‘em. It’s a dangerous game.
They’re very worthless, and the game isn’t worth the candle.’
‘Worthless?’ echoed Barter. ‘They’re worth eight thousand pounds.’
‘They’re worth eight thousand pounds,’ responded Steinberg, ‘to the man
they belong to. They’re not worth eight hundred to anybody else.’
Young Mr. Barter’s whole soul seemed to rise in protest against this
abominable fallacy. When he had screwed up his courage so far as to
induce himself to accept this older and more experienced scoundrel’s
partnership, he had conceived the possibility of the partner crying out
for halves. But that he should want so enormous a share of the spoil was
quite intolerable.
‘Not worth eight hundred?’ He could only gasp the questioning protest.
‘If I had ‘em to sell,’ Steinberg answered calmly, flicking the waste
from his cigar by a movement of his little finger, ‘I should think eight
hundred an uncommon good price for ‘em. Later on and sold at second hand
they might fetch a thousand. Later on and sold at third hand they might
fetch fifteen hundred. One can hardly tell. Of course the value will go
on mounting with distance from the original source of danger and with
the lapse of time.’
He said all this very calmly and reflectively, and young Barter,
collecting his whirling wits as well as he could, tried a stroke of
diplomacy, which, as he fondly hoped, would answer a double purpose.
‘She’ll never let them go for that, or for anything like it.’
‘She won’t, won’t she?’ asked Steinberg, smiling brightly, as if the
statement amused him. ‘Then she’ll never let ‘em go at all, my friend.
How did you come to find she had ‘em?’
‘I made a little bit of a discovery,’ Barter answered.
‘Ah! That was it, was it,’ said the elder rascal, falling back into his
utter want of interest. ‘You’ll let me have that hundred.’
‘I will in a day or two,’ answered Barter, _arréanti_.
‘Well, as for a day or two,’ returned Steinberg, rubbing his forehead
with the tips of his fingers, and looking very careless and composed,
‘I’m really very much afraid I can’t let you have it. It’s been
outstanding a goodish time, and to tell you the truth, old man, I want
it very badly. If you’ll let me have it to-night I shall be obliged to
you. I’ve been hit rather hard this last day or two. Shall we make that
a bargain? To-night?’
‘I--I’m afraid,’ Barter stammered, ‘it’s no use talking about to-night.’
‘Well,’ said Steinberg, with a pitiless uninterested suavity, ‘you know
the rules.’
He drew a little book from his pocket, and tossed it over the table to
his guest.
‘You’ll find it on page five. Rule fourteen. It’s ticked in red ink, if
you’ll take the trouble to look at it.’
Barter opened the book and consulted its pages blindly for a while, and
then the mist which seemed to obstruct brain and eyesight clearing away,
he read the pages indicated. It set forth the principle that all moneys
lost at games of skill or chance, or upon bets made within the limits
of the club, were payable within four-and-twenty hours. It set forth
further that debts not paid within that time might be brought under the
notice of the Committee, who were empowered to act under Rule nine. Rule
nine ordained the public posting of the defaulter’s name, his suspension
in default of payment, and, in case of continued obduracy or poverty,
his expulsion.
‘First and last, Steinberg,’ said the wretched criminal, who began to
find the way of the transgressor unreasonably hard and thorny, ‘first
and last, you’ve had a pretty tidy handful of money out of me.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Steinberg tangibly. ‘Pretty fair.’
His very admission of this fact made Barter’s case seem hopeless to
himself. If he had brow-beaten, or blustered, if he had shown anger or
impatience, or had been querulous, there might have seemed to exist some
slenderest chance for him. But Steinberg was so unmoved that he seemed
immovable.
‘You’d better persuade her,’ he said, with a scarcely perceptible grin.
Looking at Barter, and observing that he sat with his eyes still bent
upon the book of rules, and head dejected, he allowed the grin to
broaden. Barter, suddenly looking up at him, saw him smiling like a
gargoyle, with a look of infinitely relishing cruelty and cunning.
‘You won’t find her hard to persuade, I’m sure,’ said Steinberg. ‘Come,
now, I’ll talk business to you. I’ll take ten of ‘em for it, and cry
quits, and I wouldn’t do that for anybody but a friend.’
The frank admission of the value of his own friendship was plainly
legible in that gargoyle smile, and the unhappy Barter read it clearly.
‘I’ll--I’ll see what I can do with her,’ he said, with a face and voice
of pure misery.
‘Do, my boy,’ said Steinberg, rising, and swinging the key of his
chambers upon his forefinger, ‘see what you can do with her. I shan’t
send any notification to the Committee before nine o’clock, old chap.
You can trust me for that. You go off at once, old fellow, and see what
you can do for her.’
The fraudulent possessor of the notes felt their burthen more than ever
insupportable. He rose, and went his way with remorse and rage and the
bitterness of baffled stratagem in his heart. His wounded mind soared to
so lofty a height of egotism in its struggles that he positively found
the impudence to curse Bom-maney for having dropped the notes in
his office. Then he cursed himself for having taken them, and cursed
Steinberg for robbing him, and so moved off in a condition quite
pitiable to one who could find the understanding and the heart to pity
him.
Steinberg stopped behind, and smoked smilingly. He was the successful
scoundrel, and found the transaction as sweet as the young Barter found
it bitter.
‘I don’t think hell have much trouble with her,’ he said to himself; and
he enjoyed that little jest so much that he caught himself smiling at it
a hundred times in the course of the afternoon and evening.