Young Mr. Barter's Repentance Part 6

VI

About noon on the following day Mr. Steinberg, seated in a small inner chamber in Hatton Garden, leisurely answering his sole business correspondent of that morning, was in no way surprised when the boy he employed to open the door and receive visitors brought in a card bearing the name of 'Mr. John Barter, jun.'

'Show him in,' said Mr. Steinberg; and young Mr. Barter, hearing this in the outer room, came in with a pale-faced and excited alacrity. The diamond merchant dismissed the boy with a word.

'Well,' he said, turning the tip of his cigar upwards by a protrusion of the under lip, 'what is it?'

'About that little matter,' said young Barter nervously, 'we were talking of last night.'

'The little matter we were talking of last night?' asked Steinberg idly, looking at him with half-shut eyes. 'That hundred you owe me?'

'Well, perhaps that afterwards,' said Barter with a frightened breathless laugh in his voice. 'But about the other matter first.'

'The other matter?' Steinberg asked, in a lazier manner than before.

'What other matter?' He took up his pen, dipped it in the inkstand before him, and tracing a line or two of his correspondent's communication with it, turned to his own unfinished letter.

Young Barter was already sufficiently agitated, and this curious reception made him more embarra.s.sed than ever.

'About that affair of Bommaney's,' he said, feeling as if a rapid wheel had been somehow started in his brain.

'Ah!' said Steinberg, writing rapidly, and speaking in a voice which seemed to indicate that he neither understood nor cared to understand, 'that affair of Bommaney's, eh?'

This reception was nothing less than dreadful to the young criminal. He had reckoned on having his way made easy for him. Steinberg had actually offered to become his accomplice in crime, and had lured him to disclosure. He could have wished that the floor would open and let him through. He saw that he had already exposed his hand, and began to imagine all manner of consequences resulting from the exposure. Not one of the consequences he foresaw promised to be of a nature agreeable to himself, and for the moment the hatred with which Steinberg inspired him was of so mad a nature that there was nothing he would not have done to him if he had had the courage and the power.

Steinberg wrote on, shaking his fist in what seemed to be an unusual alert, and even threatening, manner. There was a great deal of unnecessary motion in Steinberg's hand, and Barter, looking at its swift and resolute movements, got a blind sort of impression of strength out of it, and nullified the feeling with which it inspired him. The letter written, enveloped, addressed, and stamped, Steinberg tossed it on one side, and leaning back in his arm-chair, turned an uninterested look once more upon his visitor.

'That affair of Bommaney's,' he said. 'What was that?'

Mr. Barter thought this inquiry altogether too barefaced, and responded, with a hectic flush of courage,

'Come, Steinberg, don't play the fool with a fellow. You know jolly well what it was last night.'

Mr. Steinberg's keen and impa.s.sive face underwent no change.

'What did I know last night?' he asked.

'You know,' Barter began angrily; and then the hectic flush of courage died, and a dreadful chill of fear succeeded it. What had he known? He had only guessed--till now. But now, young Mr. Barter felt, to employ the expressive ideas of his set, that he had given himself away.

Steinberg capped the question in his mind. What did I know last night?

'You haven't come to waste your time or mine, I suppose? You've come to say something. Why not say it?'

His guest, sitting in a terrible confusion, and feeling himself altogether betrayed and lost, Steinberg marched to the door, and addressing the boy in the outer room, bade him carry the letter to the post and return no more that day. Then, having locked the outer door, he returned and resumed his seat.

'Now, what is it?' he asked.

Barter, recognising the fact that his own purpose was already exposed, made a desperate dash.

'About those notes old Bommaney was supposed to have run away with. I think--I think, mind you, that if there was any way of using them, I could lay my hands upon them.'

'I remember,' said Steinberg, 'you said something of the kind last night. I shouldn't advise you to touch 'em. It's a dangerous game.

They're very worthless, and the game isn't worth the candle.'

'Worthless?' echoed Barter. 'They're worth eight thousand pounds.'

'They're worth eight thousand pounds,' responded Steinberg, 'to the man they belong to. They're not worth eight hundred to anybody else.'

Young Mr. Barter's whole soul seemed to rise in protest against this abominable fallacy. When he had screwed up his courage so far as to induce himself to accept this older and more experienced scoundrel's partnership, he had conceived the possibility of the partner crying out for halves. But that he should want so enormous a share of the spoil was quite intolerable.

'Not worth eight hundred?' He could only gasp the questioning protest.

'If I had 'em to sell,' Steinberg answered calmly, flicking the waste from his cigar by a movement of his little finger, 'I should think eight hundred an uncommon good price for 'em. Later on and sold at second hand they might fetch a thousand. Later on and sold at third hand they might fetch fifteen hundred. One can hardly tell. Of course the value will go on mounting with distance from the original source of danger and with the lapse of time.'

He said all this very calmly and reflectively, and young Barter, collecting his whirling wits as well as he could, tried a stroke of diplomacy, which, as he fondly hoped, would answer a double purpose.

'She'll never let them go for that, or for anything like it.'

'She won't, won't she?' asked Steinberg, smiling brightly, as if the statement amused him. 'Then she'll never let 'em go at all, my friend.

How did you come to find she had 'em?'

'I made a little bit of a discovery,' Barter answered.

'Ah! That was it, was it,' said the elder rascal, falling back into his utter want of interest. 'You'll let me have that hundred.'

'I will in a day or two,' answered Barter, _arreanti_.

'Well, as for a day or two,' returned Steinberg, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers, and looking very careless and composed, 'I'm really very much afraid I can't let you have it. It's been outstanding a goodish time, and to tell you the truth, old man, I want it very badly. If you'll let me have it to-night I shall be obliged to you. I've been hit rather hard this last day or two. Shall we make that a bargain? To-night?'

'I--I'm afraid,' Barter stammered, 'it's no use talking about to-night.'

'Well,' said Steinberg, with a pitiless uninterested suavity, 'you know the rules.'

He drew a little book from his pocket, and tossed it over the table to his guest.

'You'll find it on page five. Rule fourteen. It's ticked in red ink, if you'll take the trouble to look at it.'

Barter opened the book and consulted its pages blindly for a while, and then the mist which seemed to obstruct brain and eyesight clearing away, he read the pages indicated. It set forth the principle that all moneys lost at games of skill or chance, or upon bets made within the limits of the club, were payable within four-and-twenty hours. It set forth further that debts not paid within that time might be brought under the notice of the Committee, who were empowered to act under Rule nine. Rule nine ordained the public posting of the defaulter's name, his suspension in default of payment, and, in case of continued obduracy or poverty, his expulsion.

'First and last, Steinberg,' said the wretched criminal, who began to find the way of the transgressor unreasonably hard and th.o.r.n.y, 'first and last, you've had a pretty tidy handful of money out of me.'

'Well, yes,' said Steinberg tangibly. 'Pretty fair.'

His very admission of this fact made Barter's case seem hopeless to himself. If he had brow-beaten, or bl.u.s.tered, if he had shown anger or impatience, or had been querulous, there might have seemed to exist some slenderest chance for him. But Steinberg was so unmoved that he seemed immovable.

'You'd better persuade her,' he said, with a scarcely perceptible grin.

Looking at Barter, and observing that he sat with his eyes still bent upon the book of rules, and head dejected, he allowed the grin to broaden. Barter, suddenly looking up at him, saw him smiling like a gargoyle, with a look of infinitely relishing cruelty and cunning.