Jewel Mysteries Part 6

"And who else knows anything when he's settled with?" he asked angrily.

"Why," said I quite calmly, "you and I, perhaps."

He looked at me as though his glance was all-consuming and would wither me, but I met him with a placid smile and continued,--

"It seems to me that I want what Mr. Stevenson calls 'a good memory for forgetting.' Do you know, Lord Harningham, that if you paid my bill--gave me, say, eight thousand pounds on account, I believe my mind would be quite oblivious to the events of last night."

The shot struck home--in the very center of my target. He thought over it for some while, and spoke but once between Sevenoaks and Charing Cross. His remark was more forcible than convincing, for he exclaimed suddenly, and _a propos_ of nothing in particular, "Sutton to blazes with all jewels!" Then he subsided, and came with me quietly to my rooms, where he wrote a check for eight thousand pounds and signed it with considerable firmness. The ink was hardly dry, however, before he dropped heavily upon the carpet, and lay p.r.o.ne in a fit.

The shock of parting with so much money had been too much for him. He is now in Madeira seeking a climate.

TREASURE OF WHITE CREEK.

TREASURE OF WHITE CREEK.

She was the daughter of Colonel Kershaw Klein, and he was worth a million, as the society papers said. I had danced with her for the first time in the ball-room of the magnificent house her father had rented in Grosvenor Crescent, on the occasion of her coming of age; and I agreed with the men that she was beyond criticism, an exquisite vision of dark and matured girlhood, so incomparably fascinating that you forget in her company some of her bluntness in speech, and set down the voluptuousness of her glance and mien to the southern luxuriance amidst which she had been reared, and to those "other" notions which prevail in Chili, the land of fleeting republics.

Some part of this perhaps unnecessary adulation may have been due to the fact that I had helped in the production of her perfect picture on the night of which I am speaking. The commercial element will intrude at such times; and I could not help but see that she wore at least eight hundred pounds' worth of my jewels. Had the value of them been double, it would have been the same to me, for of her father's stability I had then no doubt. He had been received and made much of in the highest places, accorded the chief seats at the feasts; entrusted--as the old ladies told you--with the most important missions by Government; and a share in the Western Hill diamond mine at South Africa was not the least substantial factor in the sum of his income. Any and every gem to which he took a fancy I had let him have readily, being a.s.sured by an important personage at the Emba.s.sy that his credit was unquestionable; and it was a pretty pleasure to me when I first met his daughter to observe how well my diamonds sat upon her, and how shapely were her arms clasped in the ruby bracelets which had been amongst the treasures of Bond Street but three months before. She was, indeed, a sunny child of the South, radiating a warming light about her, tempting you to wait long for a single press of her hand, luring you to follow the sparkle of her eyes even when she looked at you over the shoulder of a dancer who for the moment had the privilege of holding her in the entrancement of the _deux temps_. There was keen contention for her programme, but somehow I found her disposed to favor me, and danced no less than four with her, to the infinite annoyance of the many youths who eyed me angrily from their watching-ground by the door. They said that they had never seen her brighter; and I was ready to believe them, for she kept her tongue going merrily through the waltzes, and leant upon my arm in a languorous way that was completely entrancing.

At the end of the dance--the next being some newfangled "Barn Dance"

wherein men scarce put their hands upon their partners--she said that she would sit in the conservatory and eat ices; and for the first time during the long evening I found myself able to talk easily with her.

"Well," she said, when we had composed ourselves behind a huge fern, and had made a successful attack upon the _meringues glaces_, "well, this is about splendid; don't you think so?"

I said that nothing could be more delightful.

"And to think that I've never danced with you before; why, you're just perfect," she went on. "I haven't enjoyed myself right along like this since I was in Valparaiso."

"Are the Chilians such wonderful dancers then?" I asked, as she looked up at me bewitchingly.

"They just make a profession of it between the shooting times," said she; and then changing the subject quickly, she asked, "What do you think of the crystals now I've got them on?"

It is not particularly consoling to hear your rubies spoken of as crystals, but her description was accompanied by such a pretty laugh, and she opened her great black eyes so widely, that I smiled when I answered,--

"Why, they're to be envied in such a setting."

"You're the fourth man that has said the same to-night," she exclaimed, putting her gla.s.s down and tugging at her glove. "I think that Britishers learn their compliments out of copy-books; they're all presents for good girls. Let's see if you're cleverer at getting a glove on than at making pretty speeches."

The arm that she held out was gloriously white; and as every man knows, the operation of pulling on the glove of a pretty girl is apt to be prolonged. There are fingers to fit, and a little thumb to stroke daintily; while the grip upon the more substantial part of the forearm will bear repet.i.tion so long as time serves. I must have occupied myself at least five minutes with her b.u.t.tons, she finding it necessary to press close to me when I did so; and the task was none the less pleasant when her rich brown hair touched my face, and her dress rustled with her long-drawn breathing. How long the process would have lasted, or what I should have said foolishly in the end, I do not know; but of a sudden she drew her arm away and exclaimed,--

"Oh, I'd quite forgotten; I wanted to ask you about the bull's-eye."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I wanted to ask you about the bull's-eye."

--_Page 82_]

This was her description, I may mention without anger, of the famous White Creek Diamond, which, as all London knows, I have had in my possession for the last two years. Her father, who was reputed to have some commission to buy it for a Persian, was then negotiating with me for its purchase for the sum of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds.

He waited only, he said, for the coming of his partner from Valparaiso, to complete the transaction; and it was owing to the intimacy which the _pour parlers_ brought about that I found myself then in his house. How much his daughter knew of the business, however, I could not tell, and I answered her question by another.

"What do you know about the bull's-eye?"

"That you're trying to sell it to my father," she replied, "and that he won't promise to give it to me."

"Have you asked him, then?"

"Have I asked him--why, look at him; isn't he ten years older since he met you in Bond-street?"

"He certainly seems to have something on his mind," said I.

"That's me; he's got me on his mind," she remarked flippantly; "but I wish he'd buy the bull's-eye, and give it to me for a wedding present."

"Oh, you're engaged," I ventured dolefully; "you never told me that----"

"Didn't I?" she answered, "well, of course I am, and here's my partner."

She went away on another man's arm; but she left to me a vision of dark eyes and ivory white flesh; and her breath still seemed to blow balmily upon my forehead. Her partner was a young man just down from Oxford, they told me; seemingly a simple youth, to whom the whole sentence in conversation was as much a mystery as the binomial theorem; but he danced rather well, and I doubt not that she suffered him for that. I watched her through the waltz, and then, after a few words with her father, who promised to call upon me the next day concerning White Creek treasure, I said "Good night" to her. She give me a glance which was more entrancing than any word; and although she had the habit of looking at a man as though she were dying for love of him, I carried it away with me foolishly into the street, when the dawn had broken with summer haze, and an exalting sweetness was in the air.

The invigorating breath of morning somewhat sobered my thoughts; but none the less left the impression of her beauty fermenting in my mind. I turned into Hyde Park, where the trees were alive with song-birds, and the glowing flowers sparkled with the silver freshness of the dew, and set out to walk to Bayswater. In these moments, I forgot the prosaic necessities of forms and customs; and bethought how pleasant it would be if some enchantment could place her at my side, a Phyllis of Mayfair, freed from the tie of conventionality, to look at me for all time with those eyes she had used so well but an hour ago. I forgot her manners of speech, her unpleasing idioms, even the discordant note that her usually melodious voice was sometimes guilty of; forgot all but her ripe beauty, the softness of her touch, the alluring fascination of her way, the insurpa.s.sable play of her mouth, the exquisite perfection of her figure.

Women's eyes make dreamers of us all; and though I have pride in the thought that I am not a susceptible man, I will confess without hesitation that I was as near to being in love on that summer morning in July as was ever a professor of the single state who has come within hail of his thirty-fifth year with the anti-feminine vow unweakened.

At Lancaster Gate I paused a moment, leaning upon the iron rail of the drive to look back at the London veldt fresh to luxuriance in the dew showers which gave many colors in the play of sunlight. There was stillness under the trees, and the hum of the still sleeping city was hushed, though day was seeking to enter the blind-hid windows, and workmen slouched heavily to their labor. The scene was fresh enough, beautiful as many of the city's scenes are beautiful; but I had scarce time to enjoy when I saw the Oxford youth who had last danced with Margaret Klein coming striding over the gra.s.s; a masterful pipe in his mouth; and a very rough ulster wrapped round his almost vanis.h.i.+ng shoulders. He gave me a cheery nod for greeting, and to my surprise he seated himself upon the seat beside me; and having offered me a cigar, which I took, he found his tongue so readily that I, who had heard his "haw-hawing" in the ball-room, concluded at once that it was a.s.sumed and not natural to him. And in this I was right, as the first exchange of speech with him proved.

"I've had a sharp run to catch you," said he, "for this infernal dancing takes it out of you when you're not used to it. I wanted a word with you particularly before this thing goes any further. Do you know anything of these people?"

"Why," said I, "I might ask you that question, since you made yourself so much at home there; don't you know them?"

"No, I'm hanged if I do," said he; "but, if I'm not mistaken, I shall be on very good terms with them before the season's out. You haven't sold them any jewels, have you?"

This was such an extraordinary question that I turned upon him with an angry reply upon my lips; but the word changed to one of amazement when I saw his face closely in the full sunlight. It was no longer the face of an Oxford boy, but of a man of my own age at the least.

"Whew!" I remarked, as I looked full at him, "you've made rather a quick change, haven't you?"

"It's the running," he replied, mopping himself with a handkerchief, and leaving his countenance like a half-washed chess-board, "we're in for another six hours' stew, and my phiz is plastic--I'd better be moving on, lest I meet any of my partners; I might break some hearts, you know; but what I wanted to say was, Don't go making a fool of yourself, Mr.

Sutton, over that little witch with the black eyes, and don't, if you love your life, put yourself for a moment in the power of her long-tongued father."

This utterly surprising rejoinder was given without a suspicion of concern or bombast. Many people would have resented it as an impertinence, and a dishonorable slander upon one whose hospitality we had just enjoyed; but I had not been a dealer in jewels for ten years without learning to recognize instantly the "professional" tongue; and I knew that I was talking to a man from Scotland Yard. Yet I must confess that I laughed inwardly at the absurdity of his fears. Few men had come to London with stronger recommendation than Kershaw Klein, and even the banks had trusted him implicitly.

"Are you sure that you are making no mistake?" I asked, as he b.u.t.toned up his coat and looked about for a hansom. "You gentlemen have been woefully out lately; I can't forget that one of you cautioned me against Count Hevilick three months ago, and if I'd listened to him I should be worth five thousand less than I am at this moment. If this man is what you think, he's managed to blind a good many big people--and his own Emba.s.sy into the bargain."

He thought for some minutes before he answered me, standing with his hands in his pockets and his cigar pointing upwards from the extreme corner of his mouth. His reply was given with a pitying smile, and was patronizing--as are the replies of men convinced but unable to convince.