THE SEVEN EMERALDS.
The man stood upon the weir-bridge watching me, a conspicuous man with strange clothes for river-work upon him, and a haunting activity which drove him from the lock to the inn, and again from the inn to the lock with a crazy restlessness which was maddening. I had been for some hours whipping the mill-stream, which lies over against the lockhouse at Pangbourne; but meeting with no success amongst the chub, which on this particular July evening were aggravatingly indifferent even to the succulent frog, I had punted to the bushes in the open river; and there lit my pipe and fell to speculation upon him who favored me with so close an attention. I have said that he was a conspicuous man, and to this I owed it that I had seen him. He wore the straw hat of Jesus College, Cambridge, and a velvet coat which shone brown and greasy in the falling sunlight; but his legs were encased in salmon-pink riding breeches, and he had brown boots reaching to his knees. Beyond this, he was singularly handsome, so far as I could judge with the river"s breadth between us; and his hair was fair with a ridiculous golden strain quite unlooked for in one who has grown to manhood. Why he watched me so closely I could not even conjecture, but the fact was not to be disputed. I had lain by the mill since the forenoon, and since the forenoon he had hugged to the weir-bridge or to the lockhouse, giving no attention to the score of small boats and launches which pa.s.sed up or down to Goring or Mapledurham; or even to the many pretty women who basked upon the cushions of punts or pair-oars. I alone was the object of his gaze, and for me he seemed to wait through the afternoon and until the twilight.
Now, had the man hailed me, I should have gone sh.o.r.ewards at once, for my curiosity had been petted by his attentions until it waxed warm and hara.s.sing, but this he did not do; keeping his eyes upon me even when I had rested from casting and sat idling in the punt. It would have been easy, I concede, to have gone up river toward Goring and so to have avoided him; but this would have cut short the chance of explanation, and have left ungratified my desire to know who he was, and wherefrom came his embarra.s.sing interest in my failure to ensnare the exasperating chub. So I sat there, in turn wondering if he were honest or a rogue, an adventurer or an idler, a river-man or a fop from Piccadilly. And as the problem was beyond me, I left it at last; and taking up my punt-pole I gave three or four vigorous thrusts which sent me immediately to the landing-stage of the Swan Inn, and thence to my room.
It may be urged that this was an indifferent way of dealing with the man in the velvet coat if I wished to know more of him; but I had taken that little parlor of the inn which juts out upon the hard of the boathouse; and I could see from my open windows both the panorama of the lock and that of the open reach away towards the islands. It was now close upon the hour of seven, and the most part of the river lay in cooling shadow.
I could hear by no means inharmonious music floating out over the water from a girl"s guitar; there were several launches waiting for the lock-gates; and I recall well the face of a very remarkable woman, who presently came to the landing-stage in a gig, the cushions of which were of an aggressive yellow, but one which was a striking contrast to her black hair and ivory-white skin. Quite apart, however, from her indisputable beauty, I had reason to watch this conspicuous oarswoman, for no sooner had she come to the landing-stage than the man in the velvet coat went to her a.s.sistance, and taking a number of bags and baskets from the boat, accompanied her up the village high street, and so carried her from my view.
Here then, thought I, is the end of my mystery. The man had been waiting for the return of his wife, when I, with preposterous conceit, plumed myself that he had been looking to speak with me. What creatures of ideas we are! And when I reflected upon it, certainly it was monstrous absurd to think that one man should wish to watch another failing to catch fish through a long summer"s afternoon. Indeed, I laughed heartily at myself as the maid set my dinner, and I put my creel and rod upon the piano (one puts everything upon the piano in a Thames village) before daring the very substantial, if rural, repast served to me.
One dines up river, as most people know, in semi-public state. Loafers, loiterers, fruit-sellers, boatmen--all these congregate near the open window, and discuss verbally the dishes which the diner discusses more substantially. Custom so stales us that this publicity in no way interferes with our pleasure. I have so long learned to tolerate the presence before my cas.e.m.e.nt of oarsman, pedlar, and even the less welcome bargee, that these now are almost as salt to my appet.i.te. And for the matter of that, on the evening of which I am writing, the crowd was less than usual, being composed of one vendor of fruit, three men in obviously Cheapside blazers, and an old woman who sold boot-laces and discussed the weather with me through the cas.e.m.e.nt at one and the same time. She was such a merry old soul, and gave me so much of her history and of that of her son, who was "fightin" for his quane and counthry" in a place which she could not mind herself of, that I forgot the ridiculous romance of the velvet-coated man, and even his existence, until of a sudden he presented himself, no longer watching me upon the bridge, but standing at the cas.e.m.e.nt, and asking to be admitted.
"I"m most horribly sorry," said he, "to intrude upon you at your dinner, but my train leaves for town in ten minutes, and I particularly want your opinion upon something which they tell me you know more about than any man in England."
"By all means," said I. "But your estimate of my opinion is hopelessly flattering; it concerns jewels, I suppose?"
"Exactly," said he; "and I shall be under very large obligations to you if you will tell me whether two emeralds I have in my pocket are of any value, and if so, where would be the best place to dispose of them?"
He took a little paper box from his coat, and laid it near to my plate.
I saw that it was a box which had contained tabloids of nitro-glycerine (a drug prescribed for diseases of the heart); and that it had been sold by a chemist of the name of Benjamin Wain, whose shop was in the High Street at Reading. These things I observed with my intuitive habit of grasping detail, learnt in long contention with rogues; and then forgot them as the man opened a screw of tissue paper, and I beheld two of the finest emeralds I have seen during my career. The stones were perfectly matched, of a rich velvety, but brilliant color, and came, I did not doubt after my first sight of them, from the Upper Orinoco or from Columbia. Their weight I judged to be about five carats each, and I knew that if they were without a flaw, which very few emeralds are, they would be worth fifteen hundred pounds at a very low estimate. All this pa.s.sed through my mind like a flash; but with admiration of the gems, which brought covetousness in its path, there came at once the other thought--what is this man doing here with these stones, and how comes it that he can carry them and yet be unconscious of their value? But this I endeavored to conceal, and waited for him to speak.
"Well," said he, after a pause, "do you find much the matter with them?"
"I should want my gla.s.s to see," said I with caution; "the light is failing, and my eyes are not as good as they were."
"You mean a magnifying gla.s.s, I suppose?" said he, producing a lens from his pocket. "Well, I happen to have one."
Why it was I cannot tell you, but this trifling circ.u.mstance I marked down in my mind as my first sound cause of suspicion against him.
Perhaps I coupled it with that spontaneous distrust which I felt when first he spoke, for the very softness of his voice was obviously a.s.sumed; and now that I saw him near to me, I did not fail to notice that the velvet coat was much worn, and the rowing club tie he wore frayed beyond respectability. But I took his lens, and, having examined the stones long and critically under it, I found them to be without flaw or blemish. Then I gave him my opinion.
"They are fine stuff," said I; "do you happen to know where they come from?"
I looked him full in the face when I spoke, and observed a slight drawing of the lines above his mouth. When he answered me I was sure that he had thought out a lie--and with effort.
"I believe they come from Salzburg," he stammered; "at least I have heard so."
"That could not possibly be," said I; "the worst emeralds we have are the best product of that mine. I fancy they are from Venezuela."
"Ah, that"s the place," said he, "I remember it now; but I"ve a wretched head for geography."
While he said this the train to London steamed out of the railway station, which is not a stone"s throw from the inn, and he, forgetful of his tale to me, sat watching it unconcernedly. I had discovered him in a second lie, and I waited to entrap him to a third with the practised pleasure of a cross-examiner.
"Do you sell these stones for yourself or as an agent?" I asked, a.s.suming some authority as I felt surer of him. His hesitation in answering was merely momentary, but it was enough for my purpose.
"For myself," said he; and then with clumsy maladroitness he added, "They were left to me by my father, and I have never had the heart to offer them to any one. I"ll tell you what, though; if you"ll give me a thousand pounds for the pair, you shall keep them."
"That"s a long price," said I; "and if you don"t mind the suggestion, my dinner"s getting cold."
I had spoken thus with the design of putting him off; but he was undisguisedly an ill-bred man, and I saw that I could have bought the emeralds from him for five hundred pounds. My hint--if such you could call it--fell upon deaf ears; and he, seeming not to hear it, continued to argle-bargle, but betraying himself in every word he said.
"Come, now," he cried, "you don"t want to be hard upon me; give me a check for five hundred, and send the balance to Brighton in a week if you find them as good as you think. That"s a fair offer, isn"t it?"
"The offer is fair enough," said I; "but you forget that I did not come here to buy emeralds. I am in Pangbourne to catch chub, as you saw this afternoon."
"I"m afraid I can"t agree to that," he replied with a laugh; "I did not see you catch chub this afternoon--I saw you miss three."
"The bait was poor," I said meaningly; "fish are as canny as men, and don"t take pretty things if they think there"s a hook in them."
This I gave him with such a stare that he rose up suddenly from his chair, and, having made a bungling parcel of his jewels, went off by himself. He had to pa.s.s my window as he left the inn, and as he crossed the road I called after him, saying--
"You"ll be losing your train to London."
"Be d----d to that!" said he; and with such a salute he turned the angle of the road, and I lost sight of him.
But I thought much of his emeralds through the night, both in my walk across the old wooden bridge to Whitchurch, when the river lay dark and gloomy with the sough of the breeze in the reeds and sedge-gra.s.s; and again as I lay in the old wooden "best-bed" of the inn, and contemplated the "sampler" which bore witness to the energy of one Jane Atkins, whose work it was. By what chance had the man found me out? Whence came his seedy clothes and his jewels? Who was the pretty woman who had gone up from the hard with him? He had come by the stones fraudulently, of course; had the case been different he would have sent them to London to a house of substance, and there got his price for them. At one time I felt that it lay upon me to advise the police in Reading of the offer I had received; at another, there came some regret for the stones, and at the manner of his departure. The season had been one of emeralds. I could have sold the pair he had for some profit, and, as my greed told me, I could have bought them cheap. At the end of it I fell asleep to dream that I rowed to Mapledurham in an emerald boat, and that a man with emerald eyes steered me abominably.
On the next day, quite early in the morning, I set out in a dog-cart for Reading, having a _rendezvous_ with Barisbroke at the Kennet"s mouth, whence we were to start for a day"s sport upon that fish-breeding river.
My drive took me by the old Bath-road, turning to the left midway up the village street; but I had not gone very far upon the Reading-road before I saw the handsome woman--the wife, as I a.s.sumed, of the velvet-coated man--now dressed with exceeding poorness, and carrying a heavy bag towards the biscuit town. At this point the sun beat early upon the sandy way with a shimmer of white and misty light, which promised great heat of the forenoon; there was scarce a quiver of wind in the woods to the left of me, and I did not doubt that walking was a great labor. Yet, when I reined in the cob, and asked the woman, if at least I might not carry her bag to Reading and leave it for her, she thanked me somewhat curtly, I thought, and evidently resented any notice of her difficulty.
It occurred to me, as I drove on, that the man, who had been with her on the previous day, had really left by the last train for London; but when I came into Reading, and was about to cross the High Street, to reach Earleigh, I saw the name Benjamin Wain superscribed above a little chemist"s shop, and I stopped at once. I know that a country tradesman will gossip like a fishwife; and I asked the man for some preparation which he could not possibly find in the pharmacopoeia, and so began to feel my ground.
"You"re well ahead of the times here," said I, looking at his show-case, which was wofully dest.i.tute of drugs. "I shouldn"t have thought that you"d be asked for tabloids in a place like Reading."
"Oh, but we are," said he, readily; "it"s a wonderfully advanced town is Reading--you won"t get much in Regent Street which is not here. I"ve lived in Reading all my life--and seen changes, sir, indeed I have!"
"You know most of the people then?" said I, with a purpose.
"Ay," said he, "I"ve born and buried a many, so to speak; seen children grow to men and women, and men and women grow to children--you wouldn"t think it perhaps!"
"No," said I, "you don"t show it; but your reputation, if I may say so, goes beyond this place. I was in Pangbourne yesterday, where a tall, yellow-haired man was speaking of you; who is he, I wonder?"
"A tall, yellow-haired man!" he exclaimed, putting his finger in the center of his forehead as if in aid of memory; "I didn"t know there were such in Reading. A tall, yellow--let me see, now----"
"You sold him some tabloids of nitro-glycerine; perhaps that will help to his identification?" said I.
"Ah, now I know you"re wrong," said he; "there"s only one man within five miles of here who uses that stuff, and he hasn"t got yellow hair--ha, ha, he hasn"t got any at all."
"Who is he?" I asked with growing curiosity.
"Why, old Jabez Ladd, the miser, out at Yore Park; he takes that stuff for his heart, sir. Wonderful weak heart he has, too; but he hasn"t got yellow hair--no, I may say with conviction that he has no hair at all."
I had learnt all I needed, for the mere mention of the name Jabez Ladd was sufficient for me. At the man"s words a whole freshet of ideas seemed to rush to my mind. I had known the miser for years as one of the hardest jewel buyers in the country; I had sold him thousands of pounds"
worth of stuff; I had heard the strangest traditions of his astounding meanness and self-denial. They even said that he forbade himself a candle after dusk, and that his fare was oatmeal and brown bread; while he lived in a house which would not have been a poor retreat for a millionaire. This I knew, but the words of the apothecary had made other things clear to me--one, that the yellow-haired man had got his emeralds in a box which must have come from Ladd"s house, since he alone in the neighborhood took tabloids of nitro-glycerine; another, that the man"s very shabbiness and obvious shuffling pointed very strongly to the conclusion that he should be watched.
Of these things was I sure as I met Barisbroke, and I turned them over in my mind often during the moderate sport of the forenoon, and after.