Observant men and women that know their Bond Street well will
appreciate my astonishment when in a jewellers' shop I perceived that
nobody was furtively watching me. Not only this but when I even picked
up a little carved crystal to examine it no shop-assistants crowded
round me. I walked the whole length of the shop, still no one politely
followed.
Seeing from this that some extraordinary revolution had occurred in
the jewelry business I went with my curiosity well aroused to a queer
old person half demon and half man who has an idol-shop in a byway of
the City and who keeps me informed of affairs at the Edge of the
World. And briefly over a pinch of heather incense that he takes by
way of snuff he gave me this tremendous information: that Mr. Neepy
Thang the son of Thangobrind had returned from the Edge of the World
and was even now in London.
The information may not appear tremendous to those unacquainted with
the source of jewelry; but when I say that the only thief employed by
any West-end jeweller since famous Thangobrind's distressing doom is
this same Neepy Thang, and that for lightness of fingers and swiftness
of stockinged foot they have none better in Paris, it will be
understood why the Bond Street jewellers no longer cared what became
of their old stock.
There were big diamonds in London that summer and a few considerable
sapphires. In certain astounding kingdoms behind the East strange
sovereigns missed from their turbans the heirlooms of ancient wars,
and here and there the keepers of crown jewels who had not heard the
stockinged feet of Thang, were questioned and died slowly.
And the jewellers gave a little dinner to Thang at the Hotel Great
Magnificent; the windows had not been opened for five years and there
was wine at a guinea a bottle that you could not tell from champagne
and cigars at half a crown with a Havana label. Altogether it was a
splendid evening for Thang.
But I have to tell of a far sadder thing than a dinner at a hotel. The
public require jewelry and jewelry must be obtained. I have to tell of
Neepy Thang's last journey.
That year the fashion was emeralds. A man named Green had recently
crossed the Channel on a bicycle and the jewellers said that a green
stone would be particularly appropriate to commemorate the event and
recommended emeralds.
Now a certain money-lender of Cheapside who had just been made a peer
had divided his gains into three equal parts; one for the purchase of
the peerage, country house and park, and the twenty thousand pheasants
that are absolutely essential, and one for the upkeep of the position,
while the third he banked abroad, partly to cheat the native
tax-gatherer and partly because it seemed to him that the days of the
Peerage were few and that he might at any moment be called upon to
start afresh elsewhere. In the upkeep of the position he included
jewelry for his wife and so it came about that Lord Castlenorman
placed an order with two well-known Bond-street jewellers named
Messrs. Grosvenor and Campbell to the extent of £100,000 for a few
reliable emeralds.
But the emeralds in stock were mostly small and shop-soiled and Neepy
Thang had to set out at once before he had had as much as a week in
London. I will briefly sketch his project. Not many knew it, for where
the form of business is blackmail the fewer creditors you have the
better (which of course in various degrees applies at all times).
On the shores of the risky seas of Shiroora Shan grows one tree only
so that upon its branches if anywhere in the world there must build
its nest the Bird of the Difficult Eye. Neepy Thang had come by this
information, which was indeed the truth, that if the bird migrated to
Fairyland before the three eggs hatched out they would undoubtedly all
turn into emeralds, while if they hatched out first it would be a bad
business.
When he had mentioned these eggs to Messrs. Grosvenor and Campbell
they had said, "The very thing": they were men of few words, in
English, for it was not their native tongue.
So Neepy Thang set out. He bought the purple ticket at Victoria
Station. He went by Herne Hill, Bromley and Bickley and passed St.
Mary Cray. At Eynsford he changed and taking a footpath along a
winding valley went wandering into the hills. And at the top of a hill
in a little wood, where all the anemones long since were over and the
perfume of mint and thyme from outside came drifting in with Thang, he
found once more the familiar path, age-old and fair as wonder, that
leads to the Edge of the World. Little to him were its sacred memories
that are one with the secret of earth, for he was on business, and
little would they be to me if I ever put them on paper. Let it suffice
that he went down that path going further and further from the fields
we know, and all the way he muttered to himself, "What if the eggs
hatch out and it be a bad business!" The glamour that is at all times
upon those lonely lands that lie at the back of the chalky hills of
Kent intensified as he went upon his journeys. Queerer and queerer
grew the things that he saw by little World-End Path. Many a twilight
descended upon that journey with all their mysteries, many a blaze of
stars; many a morning came flaming up to a tinkle of silvern horns;
till the outpost elves of Fairyland came in sight and the glittering
crests of Fairyland's three mountains betokened the journey's end. And
so with painful steps (for the shores of the world are covered with
huge crystals) he came to the risky seas of Shiroora Shan and saw them
pounding to gravel the wreckage of fallen stars, saw them and heard
their roar, those shipless seas that between earth and the fairies'
homes heave beneath some huge wind that is none of our four. And there
in the darkness on the grizzly coast, for darkness was swooping
slantwise down the sky as though with some evil purpose, there stood
that lonely, gnarled and deciduous tree. It was a bad place to be
found in after dark, and night descended with multitudes of stars,
beasts prowling in the blackness gluttered [See any dictionary, but in
vain.] at Neepy Thang. And there on a lower branch within easy reach
he clearly saw the Bird of the Difficult Eye sitting upon the nest for
which she is famous. Her face was towards those three inscrutable
mountains, far-off on the other side of the risky seas, whose hidden
valleys are Fairyland. Though not yet autumn in the fields we know, it
was close on midwinter here, the moment as Thang knew when those eggs
hatch out. Had he miscalculated and arrived a minute too late? Yet the
bird was even now about to migrate, her pinions fluttered and her gaze
was toward Fairyland. Thang hoped and muttered a prayer to those pagan
gods whose spite and vengeance he had most reason to fear. It seems
that it was too late or a prayer too small to placate them, for there
and then the stroke of midwinter came and the eggs hatched out in the
roar of Shiroora Shan or ever the bird was gone with her difficult eye
and it was a bad business indeed for Neepy Thang; I haven't the heart
to tell you any more.
"'Ere," said Lord Castlenorman some few weeks later to Messrs.
Grosvenor and Campbell, "you aren't 'arf taking your time about those
emeralds."