Luck at the Diamond Fields Part 25

"Look here, I've been thinking over matters, and maybe it's better to wait a bit till people have forgotten that yarn about the n.i.g.g.e.r. I shall stick my diamond into a bank, and hold on till I get a good offer for it."

"And in the mean time how'll you live?" asked Le Mert.

"Live! why I have over a thou, and I've my luck."

"Luck!" snarled Le Mert.

"Well, luck! I believe in it, don't you?"

Le Mert did believe a good deal more in what gamblers call luck than he would have confessed. Enderby's luck, however, seemed likely to upset his last chance of getting out of his difficulties, and he felt savage enough, though he answered carelessly--

"I expect your luck will mean your getting to the bottom of that money in a week or two, and in a year that diamond will be sold, and you will be dead broke, and wis.h.i.+ng yourself back again at Kimberley searching n.i.g.g.e.rs."

After dinner Jack announced his intention of going home, and asked the other to come with him and smoke a pipe and drink a gla.s.s of grog. He did not feel easy with the diamond on him, he said, while he did not like leaving it at home, though no one except Le Mert knew that he had in his possession a stone worth fifty thousand pounds.

Le Mert said nothing, his thoughts were busy with his own affairs.

Things had begun to look as if he must make a bolt for it. What a convenient piece of portable property that diamond would be to take with him, he thought.

Enderby in his own rooms, with a gla.s.s or two of grog on board, did not become much more companionable; on the contrary, he began to indulge in some not very civil pleasantry on the subject of the diamond.

"You would like to fool me out of that stone and get your claws on it, wouldn't you? If you were a better plucked one than you are I shouldn't feel so comfortable smoking my pipe and watching you glare at me, though you are the respectable Mr Le Mert, the director of a dozen flouris.h.i.+ng companies, and the big diamond merchant; but you'd--soon follow that Union Company's boy if you tried that game on."

Le Mert growled out something about the diamond not being worth quite as much as Jack fancied, but the other paid very little attention to him, and taking another gulp of brandy-and-water, began to follow out a train of thought which something he said had suggested to him with sublime indifference to his guest's feelings.

"Le Mert the millionnaire! Hah, hah! you weren't a millionnaire in the old days down at Dutoitspan, were you? I can see you now. What a hatched-faced thief you used to look, grinning at one across that patent spring-fitted roulette-table--that was a profitable bit of furniture for you, that was."

"Yes, it was, or I would not have been able to pay you as good a commission as I did for introducing custom to it," answered Le Mert, getting up as if he were going away.

"Sit down, old chap; don't cut up rough because I talk about old times.

Take another cigar, they are up there, and mix for yourself," Enderby said.

If he had been able to read the expression on Le Mert's face he would not have been very anxious for his company. The latter, however, did not go, and took another cigar from the mantelshelf.

"Hullo! what's that? you don't drink that stuff, do you?" he said, as he touched a little bottle that was near the cigar-box.

"Drink it, no! I have had a bad tooth, and I have been rubbing my gums with it," Enderby answered, as he looked at the bottle the other was holding up. "Look here, Le Mert," he continued, when his guest had sat down again, "why don't you give me a fair price for that stone? you can afford to go in for a spec like that, and make a pot of money out of it."

"Perhaps I can afford it, but you want too much. I will treat you as well as any one, you will find; we are old friends, and none the worse friends because we know each other pretty well," Le Mert answered with a peculiar smile. It amused him to think how little the other knew about his real circ.u.mstances.

For some time the two sat smoking, Jack rambling away about the earlier days of their acquaintance, and Le Mert saying very little. After a little time Le Mert asked for some more water, and Jack left the room to get some from a tap in the pa.s.sage outside. As he left the room a look of triumph came into Le Mert's face, and he got up, took up the little bottle on the mantelshelf, and poured some of its contents into the gla.s.s of brandy-and-water Enderby had just mixed. He had just time to get back to his seat, when Enderby came into the room with the water.

It would have startled the latter if he could have read the meaning of the look with which Le Mert watched him as he sat down in his chair, glancing listlessly for a second or two at his brandy-and-water before he lifted his gla.s.s to his lips. Was he going to sip it, or would he gulp it down as he generally did? Le Mert was wondering. If he took the former course, then Le Mert knew that his chances of getting the diamond would vanish, for Enderby probably would detect the taste of the laudanum.

"You're infernally silent--what robbery are you hatching now?" Enderby said, as he sat with the gla.s.s provokingly held in his hand, while his visitor's nerves began to jump with excitement. He was not afraid of the consequences being found out, other than losing all chance of the diamond. Enderby, if he suspected him of having tried to drug his drink, would most likely treat him rather roughly, but he would do no more. At last the gla.s.s went up to the mouth and was tipped up and put down empty, Enderby saying that there was a queer taste in the brandy.

"Queer taste! I don't notice it; and I will take some more," Le Mert said. "Why you remind me of that story of Sam Gideon, of Dutoitspan,"

he continued, and he began to tell a story. It was rather a long and involved narrative, and required a good deal of harking back and explanations. Before he got to any point, Le Mert stopped. Enderby's head had fallen down over his chest and he was insensible.

"Ah! I thought that would do for you. You'd have sat up drinking brandy-and-water all night, and the only effect it would have had on you, would have been to make you more insolent; but that's done the trick," Le Mert said, as he looked at the other who was huddled up in a heap in his chair, and going up to him felt for the belt and undid it.

Then, as he looked at the diamond, and then at the heavy form of Enderby lying back in the chair, he laughed to himself. The revolver which Enderby had trusted in had not proved of much service to him. When he came to again he would know what the robbery was that he had been hatching. Then Le Mert went to the door.

"Good-bye, Mr Enderby. When you wake you will find Le Mert, the great diamond merchant, a rather more difficult man to come across than you think he is," he said, as he put on the belt and looked at the figure in the chair. A change seemed to have come over the face, and Le Mert started and went back and bent over it. Then he listened at the heart, and turned pale and shuddered; something told him that Enderby was not merely stupefied. He tried to think what he ought to do, but a panic came over him, and he was mastered by a longing to get out of the room and away. Then he left the room and went down-stairs and out into the streets.

The next morning the servant found Enderby in the chair, and could not wake him up. A doctor was sent for, and when he came his verdict was that he was dead. The bottle of laudanum on the table near him suggested that he had taken an overdose, and a _post-mortem_ examination bore out this theory.

Jack Enderby, though he looked tough enough, had a weak heart, so it seemed, and the dose, which would only have stupefied most men, had caused his death. The diamond had proved as fatal to him as it did to Sixpence, and his run of luck had suddenly come to an end.

One circ.u.mstance which was thought rather strange, was the absence at the inquest of the man who had been in his rooms the night before, and who must have been the last man to see him alive. This, perhaps, was the reason why the jury found an open verdict, though all the other circ.u.mstances pointed towards his having taken too much laudanum by accident.

The police, however, when they made inquiries, and found out from a waiter at the restaurant that Le Mert was the man who had dined with the deceased, thought that his absence was explained. That gentleman was wanted at other places as well as the inquest. He was not to be found at his office or anywhere else, and the accounts of some companies he had been connected with, and what came out about the state of his finances, fully explained his absence. Shareholders in his companies and men in Hatton Garden were vowing vengeance against him, without much hope of ever seeing or hearing of him again. People were asking themselves, as is so often the case after a smash, why they had put any trust in a man of whom they knew so very little which was at all to his credit?

At last the police, who were put on his track as a defaulting bankrupt, got a clue which enabled them to say that he had taken a pa.s.sage in a steamer bound for a South American port, where there was no extradition treaty.

His creditors, however, did not give up all hopes of bringing him to an account until they got some news which told them that he had gone further from their clutches than they supposed. The s.h.i.+p in which he had sailed had gone down, and though all the other pa.s.sengers were saved, he was missing. The s.h.i.+p had been run down by another vessel, and after the collision had begun to sink rapidly. Le Mert, with several of the pa.s.sengers, had been in the smoking cabin, and when he had seen that the boats were being lowered he had turned to go down below to fetch something from his cabin. One of the officers had warned him not to leave the deck, and told him that if he went below he would not get up again, but he would not listen, but had rushed down to his cabin. He was never seen again, for the boat had only time to put off and get clear of the s.h.i.+p, before she settled and sank. His creditors wondered what it was he went below to get, and some believed that he had a store of embezzled money. Others, however, who heard the particulars of Enderby's death, and rumours of the diamond that had been found by the Kaffir he had shot, put two and two together and formed a theory, which agreed with the history of the fatal diamond that Le Mert clutched as he went down in the sinking s.h.i.+p. It had claimed its last victim, and it lies at the bottom of the sea, and is as harmless as it was before it was unearthed.

The End.