Chapter X: Part 10

Though I had not been boarding very luxuriously for some time, I had been drinking heavily. There was always drink to be had at Dormer's house and when I went about with him, and lately I had drunk to drown my anxiety. I don't intend to ape the canting cry of the criminal who, when he's convicted of jumping upon his wife, tells the judge that "it's all the drink wot's done it." Drink of itself doesn't often make a criminal of a man, but it often enough robs him of all that sense of prudence which men mistake for conscience. If my brain had been clear of alcohol I think I should have refused Dormer's suggestion at once; as it was there was something in it that took my fancy. Instead of refusing, I began to question him as to how it could be done. His answer was that it would be easy enough. The mail-cart was to be stopped by a rope tied across the road; the guard and the driver were to be tied up--the latter would not be likely to make a very determined resistance, while the former would be our confederate. When we had secured the diamonds we had nothing to do but to get back to Kimberley. Our confederate would take care not to be able to identify us, and there would be, so Jim urged, very little risk of our getting into trouble or failing to secure the rich booty.

"It's our last chance of making a good pile in the country; every day I expect that some one else will try the trick, and then they will put on a strong guard. It's the one good thing left in the country," he said; and then he began to talk about the rich prize we should secure without any one except the banks and insurance people being one bit the worse.

"I don't know whom to go to if you won't go in for this; there are plenty of men in the camp who would jump at the chance, but they ain't the sort I'd like to trust, but you're good grit and I'd trust you any day," he said; "come, I know you will stick to a pal." For a second or two I hesitated, and then I said I would go in for it, and we shook hands over the agreement.

It was on a Monday that I had this conversation with him, and it was on the following Thursday that the cart was to be stopped. The next day the police sergeant came up to the house to finally arrange his plans. I didn't like the man's looks any better on that occasion. In his presence I began to feel ashamed of myself because I was going to become a thief. It seemed disgraceful to be mixed up in such a business with that shifty-looking scoundrel. Dormer's society, on the other hand, made me reckless and in good spirits, while he took care that I had drink enough to prevent my thinking too much.

The place we had chosen to make our attack upon the cart was about twenty miles from Kimberley, and the cart would pass there about ten o'clock in the evening. An hour before that time Jim Dormer and I were sitting behind some rocks near the road at that place where we had agreed to stop the cart. We had the rope ready to put across the road when it was time for the cart to pass, while we both had our revolvers, with which we intended to make a great display of a determined attack.

"It's no good being too soon with the rope, the cart won't be before its time, and something else might pass," Dormer said as he lit a match to look at his watch.

"How long have we to wait?" I asked, for I began to feel rather nervous and to wish the time for action had come.

"An hour or more before the cart is due here; take a drink," he said, handing me a whiskey-flask. I half emptied the flask and lit a pipe, and listened to my companion, who, to cheer me up, I fancy, began to talk about the time we would have when we cleared out of the country with the nice little pile we would make by that evening's work. Dormer's conversation and whiskey had its intended effect, and I got back my careless, reckless spirits.

It was not very pleasant work waiting, the night had clouded over an hour or so before, and the flashes of lightning seemed to be terribly near us, while soon after the first flash the storm broke and the rain came down in torrents, as it does on the South African veldt in a summer's thunderstorm.

"All the better for us, my lad, just the night for the job," he said as we tried to huddle behind the boulders to get out of the rain. Dormer talked away about the delights of Paris and London and the time we would have at home, while we both took several more pulls at the whiskey-bottle; for all that the time went slowly, and we began to feel wretchedly uncomfortable.

As we sat there waiting for the time to arrive for us to begin our work and to stretch the rope across the road which was to stop the cart, it certainly seemed that my fate was sealed, and that I was destined to become a successful scoundrel or a skulking jail-bird for the rest of my life. Looking back I cannot remember that I felt much shame or remorse. I was infected with Dormer's ideas of things. What we were going to do would not hurt any individual very much; it seemed to me then that it was a much more harmless thing than the financial robberies which were carried out by men who were considered most respectable persons; and as for the danger of being found out, I didn't see where it came in, I thought, as I took a drink from the bottle.

"Easy with that bottle, old chap, or you will be hitting some one when you let off your revolver; keep yourself cool, and mind you go straight for old Jacob, and see that he don't pull the crape off your face," Dormer said to me. Then he walked some yards off to take a look at the spot in the road he had chosen for tying the rope across.

As he left me a strange change seemed to come over me. The reckless devil-may-care spirits I had been in left me, and I felt a sense of awe as if I knew that something was going to happen. Then a feeling came over me that some one was present, and all at once the rocks in front of me seemed to fade away, and where they had been I saw an unearthly luminous mist, and through it I saw a figure dressed as an officer in a Highland regiment. I could see that his arms were thrown back, his sword was falling from his hand. There was a rent in the breast of his coat, and in his face was the look of death. I knew him; he was my brother Donald; he had grown from a lad into a man, and he was handsome and more soldierlike than when I had seen him last. I remembered our compact, and then I knew that my brother was dead. There was the proud look of one who had earned the respect of his fellow-men in his highbred face. For one instant our eyes seemed to meet, and then as I sprang forward calling to him by name the figure and the mist surrounding it seemed to fade away. "Heaven help me," I thought, "I am the last of our race." A flood of home memories, which for some time I had done my best to banish from my thoughts, came back to me. As I touched my face and felt the mask of crape I had on, I realised what I was going to do, and that I was about to become a common criminal.

"What on earth are you shouting for? what's the matter with you, man? we'd better be moving and fixing the rope," I heard Dormer say as he came back to where I was. I did not answer, but stood irresolute for a second or two. I felt half-ashamed to give up the adventure I had engaged in, but after what I had seen I was determined not to engage in it.

"Jim, I am going to cut it; I have had a warning not to go on with this--let's give it up."

"Give it up by--" and Dormer gave vent to his surprise and disgust in very strong language. "Well, I did think you were good grit; but you can't give it up now. What's come over you all at once?" He was thoroughly disgusted with me; such faith in human nature as remained to him had evidently received a shock. "Well, I'd have never thought it of you, you whom I always believed in. Come, pull yourself together and do what you said you'd do; it's too late to turn tail now." And then looking into my face and seeing how agitated I was, he asked me what on earth had happened to me. I think, like many a gambler and adventurer of his type, Jim had a strong vein of superstition in his nature. When I told him something of what I had seen he was somewhat impressed by it, and on my again expressing my determination to turn back and have no more to do with it he did not attempt to persuade me. Nor did he think of doing the thing by himself. He growled out a few sentences of disgust, and sulkily walked after me as I turned and made the best of my way towards Kimberley. We kept some way from the road; I hardly know why I did this, but I think it was because I did not wish to pass too close to the post-cart. After about half-an-hour we saw the post-cart driven along, and then Jim Dormer's feelings became too much for him again, and he burst out into a string of oaths and reproaches. I must say I quite saw how contemptible my conduct must seem to him, and to a certain extent I sympathised with him. Suddenly he came to a stop and clutched my arm, motioning me to dodge behind some bushes. I did so, and in a few seconds three horsemen rode almost by where we were.

"We are well out of that little trap. Did you see who they were? I will swear to two of them being Lamb and Stedman, the detectives. By George! but I will go back from all I've been saying; that was a straight tip you got wherever it came from to give up this job," Dormer whispered to me when they had ridden past. "That hound of a policeman has rounded on us and given information," he added. It turned out afterwards that this idea of his was right. It was pretty clear that we had just been in time in leaving the place where we had agreed to wait for the cart. Our plot had been betrayed and a very warm reception had been arranged for us. Even as it was we felt that there was some chance of our being arrested, and we were both glad enough when we were got back to Kimberley and were safe in our beds.

Tired though I was, I slept very little, but I lay awake and thought of my brother, whom I was convinced was no more, and of the old home days. I thought more seriously of my degraded life and made more good resolutions than I had done for many a long day. I think I kept them fairly well, though I had a hard time of it for some time to come. At last I got some work to do for a company on the Transvaal gold-fields, and since then I have made a living, though I don't know that I am likely to make the fortune I used to dream of. Dormer and I parted good friends. "Your second-sight seems as if it had been a warning to you to keep straight, and I'd do it if I were you; as for me, well, it's different," he said as we shook hands. He left South Africa shortly after this, and I don't know what happened to him.

The Kimberley newspaper a day or two after had a telegram in it telling of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and when I saw full particulars of it some weeks after I learnt that my brother had been shot when leading his company in that engagement.

Story 13.

A FATAL DIAMOND.

Chapter One.

It was a pure white stone of over two hundred carats, and since nature had somehow brewed it ages before it had rested peacefully in its native `blue' as innocent of harm as the meanest pebble near it. No sooner, however, was it unearthed by the pick of one Sixpence, a Kaffir in the employ of the Union Diamond Mining Company of the Kimberley Mine, than its evil influence began to work. Sixpence's eyes glittered as he saw it glisten in the South African sunshine, and then he gave one stealthy glance at an overseer, who was paid to watch over him and keep him from straying from the paths of honesty, and found that he had little to fear from that quarter. The overseer was indulging in a day-dream, and in his imagination was reacting the incident of the previous Saturday evening, when he had engaged in four fights, three of which he could quite remember. While he was thus occupied Sixpence clutched the diamond, and when he had got it up and hidden it away in the rag he wore round his waist, began to indulge in a delicious day-dream on his own account. He would sell the diamond to a canteen-keeper he knew of, and have one last drinking bout and then farewell to the white man and his troublesome ways. He knew, however, that on leaving the mine he would have to pass through the searching house, and that it would be dangerous to take his chance with the diamond. So he hides it somewhere near where he is working, and when he goes home he has the lump of blue ground, a few yards from which the diamond is buried, photographed in his mind with an instinct strange to any civilised man. That night, an hour after midnight, he steals away from the compound where the Union Company Kaffirs sleep and makes his way to the side of the mine.

At the far end of the mine a company was working by electric light, and the brilliant glare in its claims made the rest of the huge pit look weirdly gloomy, and seem bottomless and infernal. Sixpence, however, had not much imagination, cared little enough for the picturesque effect. He had no room in his mind for any other picture but that of the exact spot where he had concealed the big diamond. Glancing around to see that there was no one about, he turned down a track which led from the reef to the bottom of the mine. Without much difficulty he found the exact spot in the claims where he had hid the diamond. Then, as he held the stone in his hand and realised that the prize was his, he felt inclined to give vent to his joy in a wild Kaffir song of triumph. That bit of a pebble for which the big fools of white men would give so much money and undergo so much toil was his. His last day's work was done. No overseer would again awaken him in the morning and compel him to go to those hateful claims. His future would be made up of days of delicious loafing, watching his wives hoe in the mealie patch, and his cows feed round his kraal, while he would have an ever delightful story to tell to the young men of his tribe, of how he had fooled the white men, and carried off the biggest diamond that ever turned up in their claims.

Perhaps it was fate, or some wayward influence exercised by the big stone he had found, that made him choose another way to ascend by than that which he had followed when he went down the mine. This brought him up about fifty yards from where he had gone down. It was just as good a path to take as the other, or rather it would have been just as good a path for him to take but for one circumstance.

As Sixpence reached the top of the reef, and was just starting off at a run, he found himself tumbling over something which when he was on the ground he discovered to be a pair of long legs. Those legs happened to belong to one Jack Enderby, a searcher in the employ of the Kimberley Mining Board. Mr Sixpence, who did not read the local papers, was unaware of the fact that the Mining Board, in order to put a stop to exactly the course of proceeding which he was carrying out, had instituted the system of putting men on guard round the reef at night.

Though the idea was a good one, it was not being carried out in a very satisfactory and efficient manner by the owner of the legs. Going on night guard, particularly after one has spent a somewhat convivial evening, is tiresome work enough. Mr Jack Enderby had found it so, and after he had walked about for some time, and grumbled at his luck in having to earn his living in that way, he had settled himself down to smoke a quiet pipe and think over things. He had yawned, stretched himself, looked into the mine, and wished devoutly that the infernal place had never been found at all, or that he at all events had never seen it. And then his thoughts had begun to stray listlessly over his somewhat chequered career, which was perhaps all the easier to follow as it was all downhill. His history was one which he was willing enough to tell any one who would listen to it.

"Went from Eton to the --th Hussars; about as lively a lot as any in the service. Went the pace as strong as any of 'em for a time, but couldn't last. Found myself dead broke when the numbers went up after one Derby. Had to go after that, and for my sins managed to find my way out to this forsaken hole of a place," was his oft-told tale. At one time he had owned some claims in the mine, but he soon gambled them away. Then he lived by his wits for a period, but falling upon bad times had been glad to take the billet of a searcher upon the Mining Board, which some of the few friends who continued to stick to him were able to get for him.

The appointment was grumbled at by some men who cared more about the interests of the mine than about the welfare of Jack Enderby, and certainly they would have been able to justify their stricture if they could have seen him, for he had found his thoughts soothing, and having found a comfortable place had gone fast asleep.

His peculiar way of looking after the interest of the Kimberley claimholders, however, was destined to prove as disastrous to Mr Sixpence as if he had been performing his duty with the most exemplary zeal.

Sixpence did not know what he was there for, but he realised that all white men were dangerous to a black man who had a big diamond in his possession, and he sprung on to his feet and set off at his best pace.

Just then, however, Jack woke up, saw Sixpence making off, and in a second was on his legs and in pursuit of him. Sixpence had managed to get about twenty yards' start, and he took a path that led away from the mine to some ground given up to washing machines, depositing-floors, and _debris_ heaps. In that direction he would not be likely to meet with a policeman, and if he got a good start from his pursuer, there would be plenty of hiding-places where he could take cover and dodge behind. Unfortunately for him, however, Jack Enderby had once won the `quarter' at Sandhurst, and though he was not improved by the fifteen years that had passed since then, he could still go better than most men, so long as he could keep his wind. Mr Sixpence soon began to know that he had a good man behind him, and to believe he was outpaced. He would have to use his hands as well as his legs if he meant to keep the diamond, which he had in the pocket of the tattered soldier's coat he was wearing. Sixpence meant to keep that diamond, and he gave the heavy iron-bound knobkerri he had taken out with him a savage grip, and had a vision of a smashed white face as he slackened his pace. Then, as his pursuer came up, he stopped suddenly, and turning upon him before he realised that he was going to show fight, struck him one blow full on the face. Enderby staggered back dazed and half stunned, hardly able to avoid the second blow the Kaffir aimed at him. He had nothing in his hands, having left his stick at the spot where he was lying asleep, but it chanced on that particular evening that he had a revolver in the side-pocket of his coat. As a rule he never carried arms, few men on the Diamond Fields ever do, but as luck would have it, that evening before he went on duty he had encountered in a canteen an intoxicated young gentleman, who was possessed of a revolver, and not having been long on the Diamond Fields thought it the thing to make a flourish with it, to the great danger of the company present. Jack had considered that he would be safer without it, so he had taken it from him. The circumstance turned out to be rather an unfortunate one for Mr Sixpence.

"You blasted nigger! I'll stop that game," Jack said, as he felt some blood running down his cheek, and his hand went to his pocket. He fired without taking particular aim, but the Kaffir's hands went up, and he fell on his back. "Well, it's not your night out, my boy; there is a dead run of luck against you. First of all you must tumble over me as you come out of the mine, and it's long odds against that; then I have a revolver on me, and then when I do shoot I put a bullet through your brain instead of missing. Well, we will see what it was you were taking away with you," Jack said to himself, as he bent over the fallen man and put his hand into the pocket of the tattered soldier's coat he had on, and then as he touched the diamond he gave an exclamation of surprise.

"By the Lord, Harry, it was worth going to get," he said, as he pulled it out and looked at it in the moonlight.

Jack Enderby was a good-hearted fellow enough as men went, but it is no libel upon him to say that he was far more moved by the sight of the diamond than by the fate which had befallen the Kaffir. It was his duty to stop any one whom he found surreptitiously visiting the mine, and when he had a revolver he could hardly be expected not to use it in self-defence. Not much trouble would be made about the Kaffir's death. He would report it to the police, an inquiry would be held, but the state of his face would show the provocation he had received before he fired. No, there would be no fuss about the nigger, but the diamond-- that was a very different matter--that would be something to talk about, when people saw it; and then Jack Enderby thought to himself that for some time no one should see it. Hitherto in the matter of diamonds he had been straight; but he had never concealed from himself that if he got one good chance of getting hold of a big diamond he would make no bones about it. Well, the chance had come, and he was not going to be such a fool as not to avail himself of it, he thought, as he put the diamond into his pocket, and like poor Sixpence began to think of what he would do with it.

In his case, too, it meant farewell to the Kimberley mine, and work which he hated. It meant also, if it were as good a stone as he believed it to be, his having that good fling at home, which he had longed for without much hope.

As he grasped the diamond a vision of Newmarket Heath rose up, and he seemed to hear the thud of the horses as they passed the post, and hear the roar of the ring. He thought of the card-room of his club, and the pleasant excitement of _ecarte_; and then he thought of the Richmond dinners he would partake of again in congenial society, and realised that he would soon be enjoying all these pleasures again.

He remembered that for a wonder he happened to have a little store of ready money, which he had won a few days before on the Kimberley races, about twenty-five pounds, enough to get him home if he travelled steerage in the steamer; and what did a little discomfort matter if it were only rewarded by the good time he intended to have. Once he was home with the diamond he was safe. On the Fields he would only get a small price for it, because of the danger of buying a diamond from a man like himself who had no right to own one; but in England no troublesome questions would be asked. For the present, the sooner he got the diamond hidden away the better, he thought, so he made the best of his way to the little iron house near the mine where he slept, and found a hiding-place for it there. Then he went to the police-station.

The sergeant of police looked at his face, which was badly bruised from the blow he had received. "He gave you that, did he? no wonder you fired at him. What made him show fight though? Had he a big diamond on him?"

"No such luck. I disturbed him when he was going to fetch one he had hid," Jack answered, and when he looked into the other's face and saw that his story went down all right, he felt a good deal relieved. "Poor beggar, I don't know what put it into his head to go for me as he did." He added this as he left the place.

People would wonder whether the Kaffir had had a diamond on him, but they could never know that he had, he thought. The finest diamond in South Africa was now his, and he was the only man alive who had seen it.

The inquiry into the death of the luckless Sixpence resulted in the magistrate coming to the conclusion that it was a case of justifiable homicide. The crown prosecutor was of the same opinion, and Jack Enderby was generally considered not to be to blame in the matter. One circumstance was discussed with a good deal of interest: people asked why should the Kaffir have shown fight if he had no diamond? Some people argued that he was going to get one he had hidden away in the mine, but others, however, more cynically disposed, were inclined to take a different view. It wasn't likely that a diamond would be found on him after Jack Enderby had sorted him. No, Jack had his own notions of what a Searcher's perquisites were, so one or two of his friends suggested. Jack shrugged his shoulders when he was asked about it. It was just like his luck, he said; if the poor devil of a Kaffir had had a diamond on him he supposed he would have been allowed a percentage on it, which would have come in handy enough. As it was he had got a smashed face, and was thought a thief for his pains. There would soon be a searcher's billet open for any one who wanted one, for he was tired of the job and meant to leave Kimberley and go and try his luck up at the gold-fields. In a week or two he did clear from the Fields without leaving any great gap there or causing people to trouble themselves very much about his absence.

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Chapter Two.

Strangers, who find themselves for the first time in Hatton Garden, are probably somewhat surprised when they learn that they are in the principal diamond market of the world. If they turn into the street from Holborn they find it a common place enough at first, and towards the other end it becomes mean and shabby, and wears an expression suggestive of anything but riches. The houses seem to suffer from a premature age and mouldiness, and give one the idea of their being occupied by persons who are in anything but a large way of business. From the names on the doors, however, one learns that the majority of their occupiers profess to be dealers in diamonds and precious stones, and those who know about diamonds will inform you that they do deal therein to a very considerable extent, and will have strange tales to tell of the huge quantities of precious stones which the merchant of that dingy thoroughfare have in their safes, and will hold until some long-looked-for turn in the market comes.

Its population is much given to gather in knots on doorsteps and at the corners of streets. They are as a rule swarthy-visaged, hungry-eyed men, rejoicing in much jewellery, gorgeous raiment, and glossy hats. With very few exceptions--who do not often make fortunes--they belong to the chosen race.

The scraps of the conversation which one hears as one passes along the street generally relates to matters affecting the trade. That is a somewhat wide margin, for all public events, from a threatened European war to the death of some dusky potentate, more or less influence diamonds. But most of the talk is of the precious stones themselves and the mines in which they are found--of falls of reef in Kimberley, and of the price of glassy stones, cape whites, off-coloured stuff, and boart. Many of the men who gather together there are birds of passage who are constantly backwards and forwards between London and the Diamond Fields, and often enough there are one or two men who have just come back from the Cape with a budget of Diamond Field news which the others are not a little interested in.

One morning, about two months after the adventure which ended so badly for Sixpence, Jack Enderby turned into that thoroughfare from Holborn. As he did so he pushed a soft felt hat of a decidedly colonial shape well over his face, for he saw two men on the opposite side of the street whom he had known on the Fields, and did not wish the recognition to be mutual. Taking a quick look at the numbers on the doors, he made the best of his way along the street and disappeared through a doorway on which he saw a name he was looking for, namely, that of Mr Le Mert, diamond merchant.

Mr Le Mert was in his office. He was a man of about fifty, who still looked mentally and physically not far past his prime. Some people would have called him a good-looking man, and there was plenty of strength in his face. But as he scanned some figures he had scribbled on the back of an envelope, there was rather an ugly gleam in his eye, which became a little more pronounced when his clerk came into the room and said, that a gentleman wished to see him. It changed, however, into one of relief when he read the name which his visitor had written on a piece of paper.

"Well, Jack, my boy, how goes it? You have just turned up from the Fields, I should say, from your get up!" he said heartily enough, as he shook hands with his visitor. "Wonder what that fool wants of me?" was his inward comment. But though, as a matter of fact, he was not particularly pleased to see Jack, he had expected an unpleasant visit from a man who had obtained some very awkward information about a company he had promoted, and was threatening to make things very unpleasant. So it was a relief to him to find it was one with whom he had been pretty friendly in former days on the Diamond Fields.

"Well, Le Mert, so you have become a great swell--one of the great guns of the diamond trade. Things are altered a bit, are they not, since the old days?" Jack said, after they had talked together for some time.

"When I kept a roulette-table at Dutoitspan, and you used to punt away the price of yours and your partner's diamonds at it," the other answered, wondering to himself what Jack wanted. He had at first been half inclined to suspect that his visitor was in quest of a loan, but his manner struck him as being too independent for that.

"I suppose you go in for being quite the straight and upright merchant now?" Jack asked, evidently remembering some old Diamond Field transactions.

"Well, I don't suppose you have come all this way to inquire into my moral character, or bother me about old stories which nobody would believe, though I should not much care if they did," Le Mert answered, looking at Jack and wondering what his business could be.

"No, I came on business. I have a diamond I found, which I thought perhaps you might make me an offer for."

"Oh, one you found, eh? Yes, you were a policeman or something like that out there at the last, weren't you? still you managed to find a diamond which you wish to sell to me. Well, let's have a look at it."

"I didn't say I had it with me--it's a pretty big stone, just about the largest you have ever seen, and I mean to get a price for it."

"Well, bring it out; it's no good talking about the price of a diamond before one has seen it. You have it on you, I can see," Le Mert said, for he had noticed Jack's hand fidgeting at his waist, and guessed he had the diamond on him.

He was right. Jack Enderby undid a leather belt, which he seemed to wear next his skin, and he took the diamond out of it. The half-bantering, cynical expression which the diamond merchant's face generally wore left it as he looked at the stone. He was well able to judge how valuable it was, though he did not know the exact price it would fetch. It is not easy to say how much you can get any one to pay for a single stone, but Le Mert knew that the answer to that question represented the price of that diamond. He had never seen such a gem before, and did not believe such another existed above-ground. For some time he was silent, looking at the stone and thinking what he could do with it if it were his. It happened that just then his affairs were in a desperate condition. He had been a poor man, and had made a large fortune. Had over speculated--gone in for one or two rather doubtful transactions, and now he was being pushed very hard, and everything pointed to his having to begin the world again at fifty--a ruined man without money or character. He looked at the prize that fortune had thrown `that fool Jack Enderby,' whom he had always despised as a man never able to get or keep money. Then he thought for a second or two, for what he saw reminded him of something.

"That was a devilish lucky shot of yours that brought down the Union Company's nigger that night, Master Jack. You ought to put up a monument to that poor beggar's memory, for he did _you_ a good turn," he said at last.

Jack started and looked at the other as if he thought he was in league with the evil one.

"What on earth do you mean?" he said, snatching up the diamond.

"Don't be so startled, my friend; I read about the nigger in the Kimberley paper that came a mail or two back, and now I remember it I understand how you managed to find that diamond, it don't want a very sharp man to guess that much."

Enderby felt that it was useless to waste any time in trying to argue the other out of his opinion.

"Look here! the question is not how I got it, but what it's worth," he said rather sulkily.

"Yes, but the second turns on the first. You have got something worth a good bit of money, but it's something you can't go into the open market and sell. But don't cut up rough! Sit down again, and we will talk over the matter. I ain't afraid of buying the diamond from you; there is no cursed Diamond Trade Act in force in this country," Le Mert said, and there followed a good deal of talk about the price of the diamond, but it did not end in anything definite, for the good reason that Enderby did not mean to part with the stone until he was paid for it, and the other had not an available penny in the world beyond five hundred pounds in cash, which he had by him ready for an emergency. It was very aggravating to think of the lot of money he would have made if he had only possessed some thousands.

That diamond was to be bought on very good terms, but Enderby wanted ready money, and until he had got ready money he did not intend to let it go out of his possession. Of course something could be done. It was possible to find buyers for the diamond, who would be content if it were worth their while not to ask awkward questions, but they would want to make a very good bargain themselves, and the commission that would fall to his share would be a very paltry sum compared to what he considered he ought to make out of such a chance, knowing what he did about that stone.

"Well, it's rather a big thing for me to go in for just now, but we will see what can be done; maybe I will get some one to take a share in it," he said, after they had talked for some time. "By the by," he added, "what are you going to do with it? it's rather a valuable piece of property to carry on you."

"I can look after myself, I fancy," Jack answered. "I have the six-shooter on me that I had that night, and I mean going about with it and the diamond until I can sell."

"Why not let me keep it for you? and give you a memorandum--it would be better in that safe than in your belt."

"No fear, Mr Le Mert! maybe you're a very respectable diamond merchant, and are worth your thousands, but somehow, remembering old times, I think I would sooner have the diamond on me; you might be inclined to make things rather awkward for me if I wanted it back in a hurry."

Le Mert took this outwardly with great composure, but inwardly he cursed the other's pigheaded suspicion.

"By the by," Jack said, when the conversation about the diamond was concluded, "you must let me have something to go on with--a hundred or so won't inconvenience you, and will be the very making of me; for I came off the ship with about a pound in my pocket, and when I pay my hotel bill I sha'n't have a rap."

Le Mert thought that a hundred or so would inconvenience him a good deal more than the other imagined, but he intended to keep the state of his affairs a secret, so he produced ten ten-pound notes from his nest-egg, and handed them to the other. Jack crushed them up in his hand, and hurried away, eager to spend some of them, and begin to enjoy the good time he had been looking forward to ever since he had put his hand into the pocket of Sixpence's coat.

When his visitor had taken his departure, the diamond merchant looked at his diminished roll of notes. Four hundred pounds was all he had left, and not another penny did he see his way to raise, except what he hoped to make out of the diamond. Then he made a calculation or two on a piece of paper, and thought out the situation. Here was Jack Enderby with a diamond that he could not sell for one tenth of its value. He had no money to buy it, while the other would not let it go out of his possession, though so long as he kept it and appeared as the seller there would always be a clue to its real history.

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Chapter Three.

Twenty-four hours after Jack Enderby received the hundred pounds he was dressing in some furnished chambers he had taken in Jermyn Street. Those twenty-four hours had done a good deal for him. When he first landed he had felt by no means at his ease. A valuable diamond is all very well, but it is not ready money, and as Jack had fingered the few shillings he had left in the pocket of his old pea-coat, he felt anything but confident, and realised that there was something in the atmosphere of London which made want of money worse than it is elsewhere. Then it was not very pleasant for the once brilliant Jack Enderby of the --th to have no better clothes than the colonial rags he was wearing, and to have to walk about the street in them. But the touch of the crisp bank-notes had changed everything, and had acted as a powerful tonic on his system. They enabled him to get into comfortable quarters, and order suitable raiment; and as he dressed that morning he looked at himself in the glass, and felt satisfied that he was not so very unlike the Jack Enderby of a dozen or so years before. Shaved, and with the beard that he had been wearing cut off, his face did not look so very much the worse for wear. There were some streaks of grey in his moustache, and some lines about the eyes, and on his cheek he had the scar of the blow he had received from Sixpence's knobkerri, which he would carry to his grave, still it had been paid for pretty handsomely. The last years had been hard ones enough, and he had had a rough time of it, but he had come out all right, and there were not many of his old friends, he expected, who had made as much money off their own bats as he would have done when he sold his diamond.

As he ate his breakfast--enjoying his food wonderfully, the tea, toast, and even eggs, seeming better than they did in Africa--he glanced at a daily and saw that it was Ascot week. Why should he not go down? he asked himself. There was nothing to prevent him now, for though he might come across some of the men who were looking for him very anxiously one Monday some dozen years before, even if they remembered him they would be appeased when they learnt that he would soon be able to settle with them. He was soon dressed--how strange it seemed to be wearing a black coat and a tall hat again--and was in a hansom bound for the station.

As he was paying for his entrance to the enclosure he felt some one touch him on the shoulder, and somewhat to his surprise heard his name spoken by a shabby, horsey-looking man, whose gloomy countenance for a second was lit up with something like satisfaction as he seemed to recognise him.

"How are you, Captain?" he said; "why I haven't seen you a-racing for this ever so long. You've been letting it alone, and you're right--wish I had; but you must have just one more shy at it this time for the stakes. Do you remember how I put you on to the winner at Cambridgeshire at thirties to one. Well, I've got as good a thing as that for you."

Jack recognised the man who had kept a public-house in a Berkshire village, near where he had been at a tutor's, before he went into the army. There was a training-stable in the village, whose fortunes the publican used to follow very faithfully. He had had one wonderful tip, which he had imparted to Jack, and they had both backed it to their profit.

"Ah, Captain, things ain't what they used to be with me by a long chalk. I haven't got the `Horse and Jockey' no longer; and that bit o' land I had is gone; and now that I knows a good thing, blessed if I can raise enough to back it to win me a fiver; and mark my words, Captain, there never was a better thing than Revolver for the stakes. Now look 'ere, Captain, it's putting last year's Derby winner in at 7 stone 4--how'd that be, ay? I saw the trial, and I knows what I see, and you know that it's not from knowing too little but too much that I've hurt myself betting."

There was a note in the man's husky voice which convinced Enderby that he believed in his information. Revolver too, he rather liked the name. It was owing to a revolver that he was at Ascot and not in South Africa.

"What can I get about it?" he asked.

"They have got it at fifteens on the lists, but they are laying twenties in the ring--there is a price! Well, well, one don't know what's in store for one, but I'd lay against there being any worse torment than knowing a real good thing and not having a mag to back it with," the lout said, looking the picture of gloom, but his face lit up with pleasure when Jack promised to back the horse and put a sovereign on for him at the odds.

And then Enderby hurried away to back the horse, the other urging him to make haste and lose no time, as he believed that the horse would be backed for a good bit at the post, and its price was sure to shorten.

Going up to a ready-money bookmaker whom he remembered as a good man, Jack took twenty to one to twenty-five pounds. Then he saw another man back the horse for a little, and that made him feel more confident, so he doubled his bet. Then he went on to the top of the stand, and smoking a cigar as he looked over the grand stretch of Berkshire landscape one sees from it, he thought of the years that had passed since he drove over from Aldershot to Ascot, a cheery, happy-go-lucky young subaltern. Then some shouts from the ring caught his ear, and he learnt that Revolver was evidently being backed, for a hundred to eight against Revolver was taken by some one near him on the stand. Though he would not have much of Le Mert's hundred left if he lost, he felt curiously confident, and began to have a belief in his luck.

It was a capital start for the Ascot Stakes, and the horses were all together till they were about three furlongs from home, then the favourite looked like winning, but Jack, as he caught sight of the horse he had backed, felt pretty confident that he was not done for. Then there was a cry of "It's a race!" as Revolver came up with a rush. And a grand race it was, and even Jack Enderby was hardly certain, till the numbers went up, that Revolver had won the stakes by a head, and he had won a thousand pounds.

Yes, there was no doubt about his having got into a streak of luck, he thought, as he travelled back to town that day, having won a little more on the other races, and being altogether some twelve hundred pounds to the good.

That evening, Enderby and Le Mert had arranged to dine together, and have some more talk about the sale of the diamond. The latter, as he eat his dinner, began to feel anything but pleased at the turn matters had taken. When he lent the other the hundred pounds he thought the loan would help to make their relations more confidential, and to keep Enderby to some extent in his power, and that the latter would spend the money soon enough, and when it was gone be ready to sell the diamond and fill his pockets again. He had not taken into consideration the chances of his gambling and winning.

But Jack Enderby with his pockets full of notes was a very different person from the man who had dodged into the office in Hatton Garden a day or two before. When Le Mert mentioned a price he laughed, and asked him if he thought he was dealing with a baby.

"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 nigger. 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 wishing yourself back again at Kimberley searching niggers."

After dinner Jack announced his intention of going home, and asked the other to come with him and smoke a pipe and drink a glass 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 glass 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 flourishing 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.