Jewel Mysteries Part 4

I walked into the room with this message in my pocket; and when Brewer saw me he jumped up with delight, and introduced me to a well-dressed Frenchman who had the red rosette in the b.u.t.tonhole of his faultless frock-coat, and who showed a row of admirable teeth when he smiled to greet me.

"Here is Jules," said Brewer, "my friend I have spoken of, M. Jules Galimard; he has come to help us, as I said he would; there is no one whose advice I would sooner take in this horrible matter."

I bowed stiffly to the man, and seated myself on the opposite side of the table to him. As they seemed to wait for me to speak, I took up the question at once.

"Well," I said, speaking to Brewer; but turning round to look at his friend, as I uttered the words, "I have found out who sold the sham necklace to the man in the Rue de Stockholm; the rogue is a racing tout named Bob Williams!"

Galimard turned right round in his chair at this, and put his elbows on the table. Brewer said, "G.o.d bless me, what a scamp!"

"And," I continued, "the extraordinary part of the affair is that this scoundrel was put to the business by a man he met at Longchamps last month. It is obvious that this man stole the real necklace, and now desired all traces of his handiwork to be removed from Madame Brewer's coffin. I have his name," with which direct remark I looked hard at the fellow, and he rose straight up from his chair and clutched at the back of it with his hand. For a moment he seemed speechless; but when he found his tongue, he threw away, with dreadful maladroitness, the opening I had given him.

"Madame gave me the jewels," he blurted out, "that I will swear before any court."

The situation was truly terrible, the man standing gripping his chair, Brewer staring at both of us as at lunatics.

"What do you say? What's that?" he cried; and the a.s.sertion was repeated.

"I am no thief!" cried the man, drawing himself up in a way that was grotesquely proud, "she gave me the jewels, your wife, a week after you gave them to her. I had a false set made so that you should not miss them; here is her letter in which she acknowledges the receipt of them."

The old man--for he was an old man then in speech, in look, and in the fearful convulsions of his face--sprung from his chair, and struck the rascal who told him the tale full in the mouth with his clenched fist.

The fellow rolled backwards, striking his head against the iron of the fender; and lay insensible for many minutes. During that time I called a cab, and when he was capable of being moved, sent him away in it. I saw clearly that for Brewer's sake the matter must be hushed at once, blocked out as a page in a life which had been false in its every line.

Nor did I pay any attention to Galimard's raving threat that his friends should call upon me in half an hour; but went upstairs again to find the best soul that ever lived sitting over the fire which had been lighted for him, and chattering with the cackle of the insane. He had the letter, which Galimard had thrown down, in his hands, and he read it aloud with hysterical laughter and awful emphasis.

I tried to speak to him, to reason with him, to persuade him. He heard nothing I said, but continued to chuckle and to chatter in a way that made my blood run cold. Then suddenly he became very calm, sitting bolt upright in his chair, with the letter clutched tightly in his right hand; and I saw that tears were rolling down his cheeks.

An hour later the friends of M. Jules Galimard called. They entered the room noisily, but I hushed them, for the man was dead!

THE COMEDY OF THE JEWELED LINKS.

THE COMEDY OF THE JEWELED LINKS.

I do not know if there be any drug in the Pharmacopoeia, or any clearly defined medical treatment, which may ever hope to grapple effectively with the strange disease of jewel-hunger, but if there be not, I have much pleasure in recommending this most singular ill to the notice of a rising generation of physicians. That it is a branch of that mystery of mysteries, _la nevrose_, I have no manner of doubt, for I have seen it in all its forms--a malignant growth which makes night of the lives it plays upon; and flourishes to exceeding profit down in the very heart of tragedies. For the matter of that, the flunkies, who study in the kitchen--as the great master has told us--the characters of their governing acquaintances in the boudoir above over a quart pot and the _Police News_, get no little insight into the development of the social disaster which treads often upon the heels of jewel-hunger, as they read those extravagantly ornate reports of robbery and of mystery in which a highly moral people revels. These are but gleaners in the field--to them the inner life must remain hidden. No physician hoping to cope with the affection should turn either to gossips or to slanderers for his diagnosis. Let him get down into the caves of the trade, give his ear to the truer narrative which the jewel dealer alone can write for him, and he may hope for material and for success. And if he be wise, he will study both the comedy and the tragedy which such an investigation will bring before him, and will by this means alone set himself up as a specialist.

It is to such a one that I would recommend perusal of the following case which I record here as one of the comedies of my note-book--a story of meanness, cupidity, and stupid cunning; I doubt if there be any philosophy of medicine which could make pretense of solving it. There were but two princ.i.p.al actors mentioned in the argument, and, indeed, it might fairly be called a one-part play. The chief person concerned, Lord Harningham, I had known for many years. He was a man of whom a biographer wrote "that his long and unblemished career was a credit to his country," and to whom a book on the Decalogue was inscribed as to one _sans peur et sans reproche_. Yet they told you in the smoking-rooms that he had starved his first wife, and left his only son as the partner of a horse-coper in Melbourne, on the princely allowance of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum. His wealth, said common report, was anything from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand pounds per annum; and in his second childhood, for he was a septuagenarian when this comedy was played, he was suckled on the nourishing food of expiring leases and forfeited improvements until he seemed to exude sovereigns from every pore in his enormous body.

A meaner man never lived. All similes in converse were based upon his exploits. "As mean as old Harningham" was a phrase you heard every day at the "Bachelors." In the countless old stories they put upon him, telling how, at a tenants' lunch in Bedfordshire, he had cried, "Here's another quart of cider, and hang the expense!" how he had been seen in Farringdon Market buying his own fish; how he haggled with cabmen innumerable; how he had been stricken with a malignant fever on the day he gave away a sovereign for a shilling--there was but the echo of the general sentiment. The society prints were hilarious at the mere mention of his name. I recollect well his anger when a wag said in one of them, "It is rumored that Lord Harningham is shortly about to give something away." He was in my office next day--a week rarely pa.s.sed but what I saw him--and he laid the journal upon my table, beating it flat with a stick, and pointing at it with his ample finger as though his very touch would wither the writer.

"Please to read that," he said with forced calm but considerable emphasis, "and tell me if the scoundrel doesn't deserve to be hanged. He dares to mention my name, d'ye see! To mention _me_, and speak about my concerns. Ha! but I wish I had him under this stick!"

"Of course you don't know who wrote it," said I.

"How should I know?" he gabbled testily. "Do I go round to the taverns swilling gin-and-water with such gutter birds? Do I hobn.o.b with all the half-starved limners in Fleet Street? Pshaw, you talk like a fool!"

I suffered his temper, for he was worth a couple of thousand a year to me. Presently he became calmer, and the humor of the thing dawned upon his dull mind.

"Ha!" he said, snuffing ferociously from the great diamond-studded box he always carried, "I shouldn't wonder if that's Master Bertie Watts--you know my nephew, eh? he owes you something, eh?--well, that's like him, and his scoundrelly impudence--the vagabond!"

"Did not I read somewhere that he was going to be married?" I remarked at hazard; but the notion tickled him immensely, and he rolled about in his chair, shaking the snuff from his box over his fur coat, and even upon my papers.

"Yes, you read it," he gasped at last, "a fine tale too. Why, what's he got?--four hundred a year in Whitehall, and what he can draw out of me--not much, Mr. Sutton--not much."

I had no doubt of that, but I kept my face while he went on to mutter and to chortle; and I showed him a bracelet of rubies, which he desired instantly to purchase. I had put a price of four hundred and twenty pounds upon it, meaning to accept three hundred, so that we haggled for two hours by the clock and had then done business. He took the rubies away with him, while I caused the further sum to be set against him in the ledger, where already there were so many unpaid items under the name. He owed me eight thousand pounds at the least, but I could not press the account, or should have lost him; and while I was often sore troubled for lack of the money, I knew that I should get it at his death, and so aided his jewel-hunger. This was prodigious. All the gems that I sold--watches, necklaces, tiaras, brooches, and breastpins, were conveyed at once to the great safe in his bedroom and there immured. No one ever saw them but himself. His wives, both of whom were dead, had scarce enjoyed the possession of a barmaid's jewelry. The pa.s.sion of the collector, of the hungerer after stones, alone consumed him. Of all his meanness, this was the most contemptible--this hiding of fair treasure from the light it lived upon--this gross h.o.a.rding of beautiful things for one man's selfish enjoyment.

When he left Bond Street that day, crying at my door, "So I'm going to give something away, am I?--but I ain't, Sutton, I ain't"--and walking off as though he had found satisfaction in the negative thus conveyed to me, I picked up the paper, and read again that young Bertie Watts was at last engaged to the Hon. Eva Benley, and that the wedding was to be celebrated in a month's time. Every one in town said that old Harningham would do something for Watts when the time for the marriage actually came; and it was gossip in the clubs that her people had given their consent--for they were historically poor--only upon the sincere a.s.surance from their daughter's _fiance_ that his uncle really was very fond of him, and would present him with a handsome check on the wedding day. But here was the announcement of the wedding, and the old curmudgeon had just said--being readier in speech with me, perhaps, than with any one of his few acquaintances--that he did not mean to give the young people a halfpenny. It did occur to me that possibly he might have bought the ruby bracelet for the exceedingly pretty girl to whom his nephew was engaged; but in this I was mistaken, as you shall presently see; and the interest of the whole problem deepened when I learnt later on in the smoking-room of my club that the marriage was likely to be postponed, and something of a scandal to ensue. Bertie Watts, they said, was going about like a ravenous beast, seeking what financier he could devour. His opinion of his uncle was expressed in phrases of which the chief ornament was appalling curses and maledictions. He declared he would have the whip-hand of him yet, would make him pay handsomely for all the trouble he had put people to--in short, behaved like a man who was absurdly in love, regardless of that financial prudence which is so dear to the sight of parents and of guardians. Even he, however, could not foresee the strange thing about to happen to him, or the very curious opportunity which was shortly to be his.

A week pa.s.sed. There was no definite announcement of any postponement of the arrangements noted by _The Hyde Park Gazette_, nor did such part of society as is represented by the tonguesters, hear that Bertie had persuaded his uncle. The thing was a kind of deadlock in its financial aspect, until at last the world of Belgravia knew that the young lady's father, Lord Varnley, had consented to let the wedding be, and to trust to Harningham's better sense when the time of the accomplishment came. I saw Watts one day driving with his _fiancee_ near the Achilles Statue, and thought that he looked glum enough; but he came to me on the following morning for a diamond aigrette, and although he couldn't pay for it I let him have it.

"It'll be all right in a month, Sutton," said he; "you know the old chap's hard enough, but he can't let me marry on nothing a year, can he now?"

I said that the thing was possible; and for his own sake ventured to hint that it was even probable, an opinion which he took in no good part, sucking his stick silently for a while, and then laughing with a poor little chuckle that seemed to come from the very top of his head.

"Well," he exclaimed at last, "it's devilish rough on a fellow to have a relation of that sort, isn't it?--a positive disgrace to the family. I wonder what the old blackguard is going to give me for a wedding present. Did he ask you to show him any American tickers, by the way? I shouldn't wonder if he presented me with a bra.s.s clock, and Eva with a guinea set in jet--he's mean enough."

"He bought a ruby bracelet here some days ago," I remarked, as in parenthesis.

"Did he now?" he exclaimed in a tone of pleasure. "I wonder if it's for the girlie! but, of course, it couldn't be. He'd die to give away anything that once went into his old safe. Look here, Sutton, couldn't you charge him an extra hundred, and go halves? I feel like something desperate."

I told him that that was impossible, and he went away with the aigrette in his pocket, and a very thoughtful expression upon his face. Before he did so, however, he had uttered the pious wish that his uncle might die of some tormenting visitation; and that he might be alive to dance on the day of the funeral. I must say that I sympathized with him, for he was a good-looking and kindly-hearted young fellow, who for many years had been led to believe that his relations would do something for him; and who was about to be grievously disappointed. Nor could I forget that he was engaged to one of the prettiest girls in town--and for her sake enjoyed a kind of reflected sympathy which was sincere enough on the part of every man who knew him.

The date of the wedding was now fixed, being the 21st of January, to be well ahead of Lent. I saw Watts very frequently during the following ten days, he coming with expectant persistency to ask me if his uncle had yet bought him anything; and remaining disappointed almost to the very eve of his marriage. In fact, the wedding was to take place on the Wednesday, and it was only on the previous Monday that Lord Harningham ascended my stairs puffing and blowing, and in a shocking temper, to make his purchase of a present.

"Sutton," he said, "this is the greatest tomfoolery on earth--that young rascal is going to get married after all, and I suppose I'll have to give him something."

"You can scarce do less," I said with a smile.

"Of course I can do less," he replied garrulously. "I can give him nothing at all, d'ye see; not a bra.s.s halfpenny. Look at the a.s.s, maudling about the first pretty face he sees over a dinner table when he might marry money twenty times for the asking of it. Did I make such a fool of myself when I was his age?"

I a.s.sured him that he did nothing of the sort.

"Then what's he want to do it for? Thinks he's going to get something out of me, perhaps--out of _me_, but he ain't--not sixpence; not if they hadn't enough to get to the station with. Ha, ha! I'm not such a spendthrift as I look."

He talked in this strain for some while, and then fell to haggling over a gift. He told me that the custom of giving wedding presents was the insane fashion of an insane age; that he consented to follow it only in view of the fuss that society would make if his card did not lie on Lord Varnley's table when the other presents were shown. In this bargaining he displayed a meanness which was triumphant even for him. I must have shown him quite a hundred rings, pins, and watches, of all values, from fifty pounds to five hundred, before he could in any way make up his mind, and he did not cease to rebuke me for that which he called my preposterously extravagant insinuation. "Fifty sovereigns! a hundred sovereigns!" he kept exclaiming; "Why, man alive, do you think I'm made of money? Show me something cheap, something that five pounds will buy, d'ye see? any bit of stuff's good enough for a jackanapes like that."

"But not for your card on Lord Varnley's table."

"Why, what do you mean?"

"People who are uncharitable, you know, might say that it was a curiously insufficient present."

"D'ye think they'd say that?"

"I am sure they would."