Luck at the Diamond Fields Part 5

Every one in the county agreed with the old General, and Jack was made much of and looked upon as a hero. His uncle gave him some horses, and he had plenty of hunting and shooting, and generally had a good time of it. Of course he sometimes thought about Kitty, but when he did he half confessed to himself that not for her or any one else would he give up the life he was enjoying so much, and go back to South Africa. Besides, he did not know where she was. He might have found out, however, for she was at Kimberley, and was still the proprietress of 'The Frozen Bar.' She had never gone farther than Capetown; something told her that she would not have much difficulty in defeating any attempt Jack might make to find out where she had gone to. A list of pa.s.sengers of a steamer bound for home told her that she need not take any more trouble on that score. He had taken her at her word, and had wasted very little time in making up his mind to do so. Then she went back to 'The Frozen Bar,' for the treaty she was making for its sale was not concluded--and she is there still. She has made a good deal of money, and lost the greater part of it speculating in shares. And it is to her bad luck that some people on the Diamond Fields attribute her being a little more hard and bitter than she was. Still, she is good-natured and kind-hearted, and ready to help people who are in trouble, though she is not likely to have a more tender feeling than pity for any one. The other day she saw Jack's wedding in an English paper. He married a lady of good family and some property, who was fascinated by his good looks and his reputation as a hero. He is prosperous and respected, and he has almost forgotten all about the days when he seemed to be such a hopeless ne'er-do-well.

Story 3.

DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND.

It was a delightfully cool evening, after a hot dusty day on the Diamond Fields, and Mr Moses Moss, attorney-at-law of Kimberley, South Africa, was sitting under the verandah of his house, smoking a cigar, and sipping a cool drink as it was his custom to do before turning in for the night. As he smoked his thoughts turned to his prospects and his position, and on the whole they were of a somewhat cheerful and self-satisfied character. It was only a few years since he had hurried away from England a broken man. He had found the temptations to overstep the boundary which separates sharp from malpractice too much for him, and his conduct had attracted the meddlesome attentions of the Incorporated Law Society, who had made itself very disagreeable indeed to him. The time he had spent on the Diamond Fields, however, had done wonders. He was worth a nice little sum of money; and as an attorney and money-lender he had got together a very lucrative connection.

On the Diamond Fields he had remembered his English experiences. They had taught him the good old maxim, that honesty was the best policy, and this had been the golden rule of his life, which he had always acted upon so far as compatible with the practice of an attorney whose clients happen, as a matter of fact, to be men of somewhat shady characters.

However, he kept always on the windy side of the law, although the temptations to go just a little crooked were very strong. There were at that time many diamonds to be bought, for very reasonable prices, by persons who were content to buy under circ.u.mstances which the law punished with great severity. Mr Moss had come to the conclusion, however, that dealing in stolen diamonds was too risky a business to follow. He used to make it his boast that he hardly knew a rough diamond when he saw one, and he said that he never wished to have any dealings in them. Indirectly, of course, he--like every one else on the Diamond Fields--lived by diamonds. His clients as a rule were in what was called the illicit. But he could not help that, he said. Of course he was happy enough to defend any one who had got into trouble for buying stolen diamonds. Then if any one came to him to borrow money it was not his business to ask questions as to what the money was wanted for. The money was generally wanted at once, and gold rather than notes or cheques was in request. But those circ.u.mstances did not suggest anything to Mr Moss, or if they did, he kept his thoughts to himself.

He was too busy in considering the large percentage he could charge and the security he could get to bother himself about matters that did not concern him. He did not wish to be told anything about what his clients thought of doing with the money they came to him hurriedly to borrow.

When on one occasion a man who wanted a hundred pounds in gold at once was indiscreet enough to blurt out something about having a chance to get hold of a 'big un' for that sum which was worth ten times the money, Mr Moss was very much hurt at being asked to share any such guilty knowledge. He certainly did not go so far as to refuse to entertain the loan, but he took care to ease his conscience by charging an extra twenty per cent.

Some people said that Mr Moss in a way avenged the claimholders who suffered from the depredations of the illicit diamond-buyers, and that he preyed upon them as they preyed on the mining interest, and there is no doubt a good share of the price of many a stolen diamond got into his clutches. It was characteristic of the sources from which he acquired his money, that the very house in which he lived should have once belonged to one Ike Hart, who in his day had been a very notorious buyer of stolen diamonds, and had flourished wonderfully until he bought one diamond too many, which happened to have been sent him by the police.

He had had the advantage of Mr Moss's professional a.s.sistance at his trial and advice about his private affairs. Mr Hart had been convicted, and had been sent to do a sentence of hard labour on the Capetown Breakwater, and Mr Moss had become possessed of his house.

Ike Hart was said to have sworn that he would be even with Moss, and to have declared that he had been robbed. However, Mr Moss felt satisfied, as he reviewed his career, that he had never done anything that the law could take hold of. If in one or two cases he had grabbed somewhat greedily at his clients' property, those clients were out of the way of harming him, and there was not the slightest chance of his being made to disgorge any of the plunder he had got together.

Mr Moss's house stood back from the road in a good-sized garden--if you could call a place a garden in which nothing grew but a few cacti and a ma.s.s of straggling tobacco-trees--which was separated from the road by a high, corrugated-iron fence.

As Mr Moss smoked in his verandah, he began to think that amongst the bushes at the end of the garden he could distinguish a form of a man stooping over the ground. At first he felt nervous; then he became curious, as he made the figure out more clearly. It certainly was the figure of a man, and he seemed to be digging for something. "What was he after? What could he hope to find?" Mr Moss asked himself.

He would find out that for himself, he determined. So he got up, and slinking along very quietly in the shade of the fence, he crept up close to the man who, for reasons best known to himself, had visited his compound at night. The man went on working without noticing him. He was digging into the ground with a broken bit of spade, and seemed to be very intent upon what he was about.

Close to where the man was digging there was a water-barrel, and Mr Moss got behind it, and watched his visitor with considerable interest.

When Mr Moss called to mind who the former owner of the premises was, he began to have a suspicion of what his visitor was looking for. He remembered that there had been some talk of Ike Hart's having several big diamonds hidden away when he was arrested. The man dug for some time, then scratched about with his hands in the hole, then measured from the wall with a tape-measure, and then set to work again. All of a sudden he threw down the spade and picked something up.

Mr Moss's heart gave a jump when he saw this. The man had picked up a bundle of rag in which something seemed to be wrapped. The stranger unfolded it, and as he did so Mr Moss sprang from behind the water-barrel, and placed his hand on his shoulder.

"Who are you? and what's that you have found in my garden? Come, drop it, or I will call the police," Mr Moss said, for the other was an undersized, slight man, and he did not feel very much afraid of him.

"Leave me alone! keep your hands off, or I will make a hole in yer!" the man answered. As he spoke the attorney saw that he had something in his hand which glistened rather nastily in the moonlight.

"Put up that knife, or I will shout out; there is a policeman at the corner of the road, most likely, and they can hear me at the house across the road," he said.

"Leave me alone, then, and I will clear out. I don't want to have nothing to do with you," the man said; and he gave a wriggle away.

"Give me what you have just taken from my garden, then," said Mr Moss; "it belongs to me--I saw you pick up the--"

"Hush! you fool!" the man said, interrupting him. "Maybe there is a peeler outside in the road, and they would hear that word if they were within half a mile of us."

"Look here, my man, you don't think I'm going to let you take away what you have just found--you haven't got a prospecting licence to look for diamonds in my garden, so just give it up, and I will say nothing about what I caught you at."

"You bet you won't, but it happens the diamond is mine. The party who planted it there left it me; that party was poor Ike Hart, who died the other day in Capetown jail, that's where I've just come from. When poor old Ike saw he weren't going to live to get out, he manages to tell me about this. He was a pal of mine, was Ike, and he thought he'd do me a good turn. I've tramped up here from Capetown to get this big 'un."

"See here, my man," said Mr Moss, "I don't want to be hard on you. You say you have a right to the diamond because Ike Hart gave it you--I say it's mine because it's in my garden. Suppose we compromise the matter; come into my house, and we will talk it quietly over."

"I don't mind going into your house, gov'ner, but keep your hands off me, or you'll have more than you like," the little man said, emphasising his remarks with a gesture with the knife, which made the attorney feel uncomfortable.

"Now, gov'ner, what's yer game? If you won't speak first, I will.

Come, you've got into this by seeing what you have seen, and I don't mind speaking out fair. What do you say to halves?" the man said, after he had sat down in a chair in Mr Moss's sitting-room. "There's enough for us both, seems to me. Ike Hart told me he could easily have got eight thou, for it, and he intended to have taken it home if he hadn't been run in."

"Eight thousand! You're talking nonsense. Hart was not such a fool as to think that; but let's have a look at it," Mr Moss said, as he got a glance at the stone which the other held in his hand.

"No, you don't, gov'ner," the man said, as Mr Moss stretched out his hand for the diamond.

The attorney thought for a minute or two. For a second the idea flashed across his mind that it might be a police trap. He had never bought a diamond illegally before, and the laws against having rough diamonds in your possession unless you could account for them, and were either a licensed dealer or buyer, were very strict. If he kept the diamond in his possession, instead of giving it up to the Crown, he would be committing a criminal offence, for which he would be liable to a severe punishment. He did not believe that the police would try to trap him.

Besides, he was impressed with his visitor's manner, and thought that he seemed to be anxious to keep the diamond. Moss looked at the diamond, and thought that it was the biggest stone he had ever seen, and he began to long to get it into his possession. He did not, as he said, know much about diamonds, but no one could have lived a few months on the Diamond Fields without knowing that such a stone as the one he saw was worth a great deal of money. Ike Hart was probably right; it was likely enough that he could have got eight thousand for it, and that it was really worth much more. As Mr Moss looked at it, a reckless greed came over him, and he determined that he would have it.

"Well, I suppose we needn't quarrel; your offer is a fair one, we will go halves; and as you know me and I don't know you, I will have the diamond and will give you your share when I sell it; I dare say I can dispose of it more advantageously than you can," he said, smiling blandly at his visitor.

"Dare say you can, gov'ner; but I sticks to it till I get the pieces for it," was the answer. And nothing that the attorney could urge would shake his determination.

Mr Moss generally had in a safe in his house a large sum of money in notes and gold. The people who came to borrow from him often preferred money to cheques on bankers, and they would often pay well for change.

At that time it happened that he had a thousand sovereigns tied up in canvas bags in his safe, which he had procured for a customer whom he had reason to believe would come to him the next day. So after he had in vain tried to persuade the other to trust him with the diamond, he determined that he would then and there buy him out; and he hoped that the sight of the gold would be more than the other could stand, and that he would be induced to sell very cheap.

Mr Moss opened the safe, eyeing his visitor somewhat mistrustfully as he did so.

"Well, it happens I can buy the stone from you at once. I happen to have a hundred pounds--it's a good bit of money to pay for one's own property, for that diamond is my property; but there, it's your luck.

Now hand it over, and let's have a look," Moss said, as he held out his hand for the stone.

The little man put the stone down on a piece of white paper on the table. "Hands off, gov'ner," he said, emphasising his words with a motion with the knife; "put down the pieces alongside, and we will say if it's a deal."

Moss got out a bag containing a hundred sovereigns, and opening it he put it down on the table.

"It ain't a deal, gov'ner, it wants a lot more than that lot to buy my diamond. Bless yer, Ike Hart told me what it was worth. It's worth twenty times that to me, and a lot more to a gent like you," the little man said, but Moss noticed that his eyes glistened at the sight of the gold, and he looked at it hungrily. However, when Moss declared he had no more money, the man put the diamond back in his pocket and made as if he intended to go away. Moss determined that he would get hold of the diamond. What did a hundred pounds more or less matter? that stone was worth a fortune. He determined he would not miss it. If he could only summon up courage to s.n.a.t.c.h up a revolver that was on the top of his safe, he might get hold of the diamond without paying for it.

The little man's eyes followed his. "Look 'ere, gov'ner, don't yer try that game on. If yer was to reach, I shall have to stick this into yer, and may be we would be both sorry when it was too late," he said.

Moss knew that he daren't carry out the little idea that had come into his mind. If he got the diamond he would have to pay for it, so he took down another bag; then he shut up the safe to show that no more money was forthcoming. But it was no good.

"Four thousand sovereigns Ike said any of the big illicit buyers would give me for it," the little man said.

Moss began to think that they probably would, and he began to feel afraid that the prize was going to slip away from him. Then he took down another bag, and after that another, and another, until he had offered all the money he had. Then at last the man seemed to be unable to stand the sight of so much money.

"Well, it's cruel to let a stone like this go for that lot; but there, if you've no more pieces, and 'olds to your claim to the diamond, anythink for a quiet life. It's a bargain--lend me something to put the stuff in." There was a black travelling-bag in the room, and into this the contents of the canvas bags were poured. The cheerful clinking of the sovereigns was anything but grateful music to Mr Moss; it seemed like giving away the money, for if he had only chanced to find the diamond first it would have been his for nothing. His visitor, however, listened as if the sound was a pleasing novelty to him. For all that, as he slouched out with the bag in his hand, he grumbled out something about having thrown away a fortune, and it was enough to make Ike Hart turn in his grave for him to have let the stone go so cheap.

When he was left alone Mr Moss thought that under the circ.u.mstances he might indulge in the luxury of another cigar, and another gla.s.s of Hollands. As he smoked he thought of the wonderful diamond he had bought, and what he could do with it. It was a wonderful stone indeed, he had never seen a bigger, and the colour seemed good enough. A thousand pounds was a good lot of money to venture in a business a man knew so little about as Mess did about diamonds; still he felt very confident that there was a good deal more to be made out of it. The worst of it was that the law would prove a terrible stumbling-block to him. He began to feel quite nervous when he thought that if the police only knew of his having the diamond in his possession, they could seize it, and haul him off to the jail. For the first time he had gone wrong about a diamond, and laid himself open to the very stringent penalties which are imposed upon the unlawful possession of diamonds. He knew that by the ordinance he would be bound to give up to the police the diamond that had been found in his garden. However, he thought he knew a trick worth two of that. After he had smoked for some time a plan came into his head, which, as he thought over it, seemed to be excellent. He invented a history for the diamond that had come into his possession, which would enable him to deal with it boldly and openly.

It should make him famous as the man who found the great Moss Diamond.

The newspapers should all write about him, and he would show his wonderful gem at Windsor Castle.

Then the money that he would sell it for--that was the pleasantest thought of all, and Mr Moss wove all sorts of blissful visions of the future as he looked into the smoke of his cigar.

Jobling's Sell is a not over prosperous digging on the banks of the Vaal River. Who Jobling was, and what his Sell might have been, are now rather matters of legend than history, so long ago do the days seem when the place was first rushed, though, as a matter of fact, it is considerably less than twenty years ago. The story goes that Jobling was a wily speculator in strong drinks, and other necessaries, who, having laid in a stock of brandy and groceries, repaired to the spot afterwards named after him, and managed to promote a rush to it by spreading false news of many diamonds having been found there. It is said that Jobling got into rather hot water for this, and was sentenced by a jury of diggers to be dragged through the river as a punishment for having created a bogus rush. But just at the critical moment when the sentence was going to be executed some one found a diamond. Then several other good diamonds were found, and it turned out that Jobling, whatever his intentions might have been, really had been a great benefactor. It is certainly a matter of history that Jobling's Sell was a wonderfully paying place in its palmy day, before it was more or less worked out. Old Hawkins, who had wandered all over the world as a gold-digger, but had for some reason or other taken root at Jobling's, was the only digger who remained on there from the old days.

The rest of its population were men who went there for a spell, after having tried other digging on the river, and soon gave it up. Hawkins liked to talk of the big diamonds he had seen found there. Or he would walk along the banks and point out where the big hotel used to be, and where the gambling saloons stood in the days when Jobling's Sell boasted of all the properties of a prosperous mining camp. Those days were over, and the thirty or so diggers who formed the camp only made enough to live on. One Sat.u.r.day afternoon a knot of them were collected at the solitary canteen which supplied the wants of Jobling's Sell. They were not drinking more than was good for them, for money was scarce, and the host, though he swaggered to strangers much about the future in store for 'Jobling's,' did not back up his faith by showing any willingness to score up drinks to its present population.

"Say, boys, have you heard about old Mick Hawkins's luck?" said a big man with a black beard, Jack Austin by name, who was lounging at the bar.

"No,--what? Has he found anything big?" asked another man.