The Recipe for Diamonds Part 7

"Poor devil," said I. "What a state of mind he'll be in!"

"'Twon't kill anybody, and it'll do him good. Besides, he thoroughly deserved twice as much as he's got."

"That's a fact; and I must say you've paid the score cutely."

Haigh grinned. "I've Irish blood in me, old chappie," said he, "and that means a natural taste for amateur conspiracy and general devilment. But don't let's stay jawing here any longer. We're both due for a good jaunt ash.o.r.e, and there's a bran-new tick here to guarantee us every mortal thing (bar one) which we want. And for that one, which is almost always a ready-money commodity, it will do us good to wait till we've tapped the late blessed Raymond's bank."

CHAPTER VIII.

TWO EVENINGS.

For a rapid, short-lived acquaintances.h.i.+p, above all other animals upon this terrestrial sphere, commend me to the Continental drummer. To commence, he is always easy to chum with quickly, and always ready to make the first advances. He is a salted traveller. He knows what is the best of everything, how to get it, and, moreover, how to get it cheaply. He never plagues you with "shop," or secondhand guide-book extracts, or sentiment about scenery and sunsets. Cheeriness and _bons mots_ are part of his stock-in-trade; brazen good-fellows.h.i.+p is his strong specialty.

Haigh and I went up to our hotel, asked for a bedroom, and in Spanish style got a suite of apartments. We were just in time for dinner, and, having arrived _en prince_ in our own vessel, were going to be billeted amongst the _habitues_ of the place--garrison soldiers, petty "proprietors," and priests--who sat round the superior table in the big room. There we should have been in company that was vastly respectable and prodigiously slow. But nearer the street entrance was another smaller room, occupied chiefly by the commercial fraternity, and thither we went, the landlord fully comprehending our taste.

"Gentlemen do like to have a bit of a fling to rub away the salt, don't they, senores?" said he.

There is no shyness about the drummer. Before we had eaten our preliminary olive, the fat man at the end of the table had struck up conversation with Haigh; and before the _sopa_ was out of the room, my next-door neighbour, a dapper Ma.r.s.eillais in the ready-made clothing line, was calling me _amigo_. Whilst he helped himself from amongst the red sausages and beans and beef and pork and other trifles on the dish which held the next course, the fat Cuban sketched out a plan for the evening; and as he doused his salad with full-flavoured oil, my little Frenchman endorsed the proposal of the flaxen-haired timber agent opposite that they should stand treat. And while we munched our burnt almonds for dessert, some one ordered in a bottle of bad sherry (which, being imported, is naturally thought more of than the good country wine), and we agreed that we were all dear friends, and had known one another intimately for a matter of ten years. And then we rerolled fresh cigarettes, got our hats, and went to a _cafe_, six of us, where we crammed our _pet.i.ts verres_ with sugar-k.n.o.bs and lighted them, meanwhile drinking bitter black coffee till the blue demon of the brandy should have flickered away.

You know the style; it's the usual way of beginning.

After some half-hour's stay in the _cafe_ we seperated--Haigh and the Cuban going off to a dance, whilst the little Frenchman carried me off elsewhere. He had not defined our destination very clearly, and I had not made inquiries, caring little where I went; but I was a little put out at finding myself, after pa.s.sing a guard of soldiers who stared curiously, and going down many flights of steps, in an anarchist's club.

Perhaps the government of his most Catholic Majesty Alfonzo XIII. can hardly be termed paternal; but that was nothing to me. Politics I abhor, and anarchistic politics I particularly loathe. But as beating an abrupt retreat would have been rude, and as unnecessary rudeness is not one of my characteristics, I made the best of it, and stayed and looked about me.

One room of the place had been fitted up as a kind of chapel, with ecclesiastical candles and other properties on a table at the farther end, with portraits of Mazzini, Gambetta, Prim, and other worthies of the Red Kidney on the walls, and with orderly pews on either side of the central aisle. In this cellar temple a preacher was just winding up a fervid discourse on the comparative merits of melinite and blasting gelatine as we came up, and a minute later I was being introduced to him. I think he was the leanest man I ever came across. He stood good six feet high, and couldn't have weighed more than seven stone. You could almost see the bone of his face through the thin covering of skin; and if one might judge from the fact that his smart black frockcoat fitted like a stocking, it was fair to surmise that he was actually proud of his leanness. One got the idea that all the nourishment of his body had gone out into his long white beard.

We went out of the general hall into a smaller room, where we sat and smoked.

Taltavull, my new acquaintance, was simply charming. Till that night I had thought that an anarchist could only attain to his peculiar creed through the most comprehensive ignorance; but this man had arrived at the result through the diametrically opposite path. He spoke almost all European languages with fluency, and knew Lingua Franca, Arabic, and Sanscrit. I never met any one so widely read; nor was his reading superficial; and he possessed a memory that refused nothing. He could quote verbatim page after page of such writers as Schopenhauer, Voltaire, Mazzini. And far better than this, he had studied men of every grade in the living flesh. What his nationality was I couldn't say, though I should guess him as either a Pole or an Italian; but it is certain that he had had the constant _entree_ to places where a man of his opinions would presumably be looked upon with round-eyed horror. And yet he owned to never concealing his views from any man.

"The sublime importance of our end, Monsieur Cospatric," said he, "justifies any means taken to attain it. We are a.s.sociated with dynamite? Justly. Dynamite is a deplorable necessity."

If Taltavull had merely kept on in this strain, I should have put him down as one of those human paradoxes a man is bound to meet if he vagabondizes much, and should have forgotten him and his gruesome schemes and ideals by the next day. But he touched upon a theme which, in view of the purpose which had brought us to Minorca, made me c.o.c.k my ears with a new interest.

"It is this dynamite," he said, "that is at once our strongest weakness and our greatest weapon. Were it not for terrorism, the official upholders of old _regimes_ would crush us out of existence as venomous reptiles. For instance, you noticed a guard of soldiers at the door as you came in? At the least disturbance down here those men would fire mum-chance amongst the throng, and be delighted at the chance of doing so. You see our school of thought is recognized, and though hated it is respected. They, thanks to their dread of certain reprisals, recognize the truce so long as we are not engaged in active and open war against society. This is a great advance, monsieur, is it not?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"You are not in sympathy with us?"

"Not in the very least," I told him frankly. "Your principles are far too explosive for my taste."

Taltavull waved a bony hand deprecatingly. "The universal complaint, monsieur. It is the one great drawback to our Cause that we have as yet discovered no means of propagating it save only by the theory of devastation. It is only strong men and, I regret to say it, desperate men who can accept the gospel of dynamite. There are teeming millions of others ready enough to blow up society as it is at present const.i.tuted, but who shrink from the only means we have to propose."

"Then in your heart of hearts," said I, "you must know that you can never succeed."

The man smiled. "If even dynamite were taken away from us, I should not despair of success, monsieur. With it I am confident; the end is only a question of time. But I hope to hasten the consummation. There is another method, which if attained and properly applied, could, I most strongly believe, reduce society to one dead and happy level. And, monsieur, I believe the Fates have chosen me to be the prime instrument in this matter. I shall invent or refind the talisman, and then it will be in my own hands to sweep out the grades from all the people of the earth, and tear down all their laws. Think of it!"

"By Jove, senor," said I, "universal anarchy! That's a strong order."

"It is possible, though, and I believe probable. With my talisman it can be done. I have thought over every t.i.ttle of the means through patient years of waiting, and I am confident that I, and I alone, can uproot all existing inst.i.tutions when once I have this trivial lever."

Taltavull was stalking up and down the room like a long black spectre.

He had forgotten my presence. His fanatical schemes enwrapped his mind completely. There was a minute's silence, and then I said half jokingly,--

"They'd make you king of the anarchists."

I must have repeated his thoughts, for he replied instantly in a half-whisper, "They must;" but perhaps remembering that the admission was a damaging one, he stopped in his walk and addressed me with folded arms and lowered brow.

"I beg of you to spare me such jest, Monsieur Cospatric. This is the one subject I have at heart; it has occupied my life-work; to it I have surrendered fortune, station, everything. Whether or no I look for a recompense cannot interest you."

"Oh, all right," said I; "sorry I spoke. A comprehensive ignorance of all brands of politics must be my excuse."

He stared at me thoughtfully for a minute, and then: "I fear you think me a visionary, monsieur, or even worse, a trifler with men's lives. If you are illiberal, you may deem me no better than a common murderer.

Our need is misunderstood, misrepresented. But I will not attempt to defend it with you now--some other time perhaps. Let me tell you of my great hope, and then you will understand how little it has to do with the b.l.o.o.d.y holocausts we are so unfortunately a.s.sociated with." And then this strange creature began to unfold a scheme of policy which seemed to me the maddest my ears had ever listened to, and yet with cogent method in its madness. Briefly, he wanted to produce diamonds in huge quant.i.ties, and sow them broadcast over the globe. As gems they would then be no longer valuable. Castes would cease to exist. And then governments could be stamped out.

Viewed in the light of after recollection, the whole thing seems absurd, even paltry. But as I heard it then, declaimed with hot, earnest fluency by an enthusiast who had spent long, clever years over his case, it appeared to prove itself up to the hilt. Of course his arguments must have been warped, and his premises utterly false; but so cleverly were they compiled that I could not detect the flaws, and in spite of the outcry of common sense, which shouted "Wrong, wrong, wrong " at the close of each period, I felt myself agreeing implicitly to every clause. And when at length he stopped, exhausted with his own enthusiasm and vehemence, I nodded a tacit agreement, and questioned nothing.

"You must wonder," he went on, after a little pause, "what brings me to use this world-forgotten spot as a workplace; why I come to a town where there are eight women to one man, to an island whose whole energy is not equal to that of the smallest city on the Continent. Have you heard of Raymond Lully? Yes? Then you may remember that he was born at Miramar in Mallorca, and lived much of his life in these Balearic Islands. It was an old journal of his which I found in Rome that first gave me the embryo of my idea. I went round to Barcelona, and crossed to Palma. In the Conde de M----'s library I found in other ma.n.u.scripts mention of the same thing. Beyond doubt that queer mixture of a man--missionary, fanatic, quack, what you will--had made diamonds as far back as the year 1280. He owned to having stumbled across the Recipe accidentally. Like other alchemists of his time, the trans.m.u.tation of metals was his aim, and the crystallization of part of his graphite crucible was quite a matter of chance; but it occurred most surely; and he a.n.a.lyzed the why and wherefore, and wrote down the method of working in a place where he says it would last for all time unless he chose to divulge it."

"Great heavens!" said I, jumping up, "then you've got it?"

The anarchist smiled sadly. "I have searched and searched and searched, and have had others on the quest for me. But so far our efforts have been all unsuccessful. I can understand your excitement"--("Thank my several stars you can't," thought I, settling back into my chair)--"You think my great regeneration is already in commencement? You may even have had trivial qualms about your own relatives' trinkets? No, Monsieur Cospatric, the time has unfortunately not yet come."

"You cannot expect me to condole with you."

"You say you are a non-combatant, and that is better than I could have expected. You English as a rule are singularly averse to our propaganda. But wait and see how affairs order themselves."

"It will be a long time to wait. I'm afraid you'll never find the Recipe."

I had risen to my legs to say good-bye. Taltavull gripped my hand in his bony fingers. "You don't know me, Monsieur Cospatric. We anarchists never give in. I shall not cease searching for this Recipe till I find it, or until I learn for certain that it has been destroyed. Buenas noches."

"Good-night," said I, and went out into the moonlight. My little Frenchman had gone long ago, and so I strolled alone down the steep cobbled street, conning over many things. Verily this life is full of strange coincidences.

Haigh was at the hotel. I met him coming out of the room _vis-a-vis_ to ours across the pa.s.sage. We went in to our quarters, and sat in wicker-lined rocking-chairs (relic of the time when the Yankee had Port Mahon for a rendezvous), and he told me many things. "But," he concluded, "it was the music that drove me out. Those dark-eyed factory girls were just fine, and _la marguerita_ as a dance perfection. But the orchestra was an addition I couldn't stand at any price. It was something too ghastly for words. All the bra.s.s sharp and the strings screechy. So I just skipped, came back here, and forgathered with a lone, lorn Englishman on his first trans-Channel trip. He was a splendid find. Needless to say, he's going to write a book about his travels, and as he seemed eager for information, I gave him a lot. Honestly, he's the most stupendous Juggins it's ever been my fate to meet; and that's putting the matter strongly, for since I've been--er--on the wander, I've come across most brands of fool."

"What manner of man is he to look at?"

"Oh, middle height, tweeds and cap all to match and new for the trip, big brown eyes that look at you dreamily, and a rather Jewish face. Not a bad-looking chap by any means, but oh, such a particularly verdant sort of greenhorn. The only one point on which he showed a single grain of sense was in refusing to play poker with me. He didn't want to offend me; he hoped most sincerely that I should take no offence, but a friend had extracted a promise from him before he left home to play no card games with strangers. The fact was, he was really so unskilful with cards. I wasn't offended, was I? His candour was so refres.h.i.+ng that I could truthfully say I was not."

I tried to talk about my evening, but Haigh would not listen. Said he: "I'm not interested in that particular kind of nonsense. If you haven't embraced the glorious principles of anarchy, old chappie, that's enough to tell. You've met a wise man who's a d.a.m.ned fool, and I've met a fool who, in points, is a wise man; and I prefer my own find. If you'd heard him talking about his book that is to be, you'd have stood good chance of choking with suppressed emotion. It's going to turn out a great success. He will spend quite three weeks here and in Mallorca, so as to 'do' both islands thoroughly. And then he would like to go to Ivica, but didn't know whether it was advisable to risk it. Could I advise him? Were the people there very savage? Oh, my Juggins, my Juggins, you were something too delicious for words when you got on that tack, evidently wanting authentic adventures to be enlarged upon for the great work, and obviously fearing most tremendously to encounter the same. You won't go to Ivica, I can see that; but I'd bet all I'm worth that the chapter on 'My Adventure with the Brigands' will appear with full detail. I've a bit of imagination myself, and I guess I gave you enough subject-matter to fudge it from most thrillingly."

"Hard lines to stuff the poor wretch too much."

"Not a bit of it, dear boy. The great stay-at-home B.P. will swallow the yarn chapter and verse, and know for certain that poor harmless Ivica is a den of robbers; Juggins will believe it all, smoke, flash, and report, after he has retailed it twice, and will pose as a hero; and I, I've had my amus.e.m.e.nt. You should hear him talk about the ill.u.s.trations, too. He can't draw or paint; hasn't a notion of either.

And he's never taken a photograph. But a friend advised him to get a hand camera of the 'Absolutely Simple' pattern, and he's been exposing plates right and left. A pro.'s to develop them when he gets home if he can succeed in pa.s.sing them through the Customs, and if he doesn't get the thing confiscated for getting pictures of fortresses, both of which (he informs me) are mighty and great dangers. And, by the way, that reminds me. He got spilt off a donkey this afternoon, and damaged his nose and jolted up the camera. Being blissfully ignorant of the picture-machine's mechanisms he doesn't like to meddle with it, but 'I'm afraid something's gone inside, Mr. Haigh, because it rattles when I shake it.' So thinking I owed the chap something for the fun I'd had out of him, I said I'd get you to fix it up for him. You've been bottle-washer to a photographer for a bit, haven't you?"