So he was silently ushered upstairs, and soon he caught the thick-voiced order of Isaacstein:
"Show him in."
The Jew, however, dived into his private sanctum before Philip entered the general office. The boy found him there, seated at his table.
The duel began with questions:
"How did you get out so soon? You were remanded for a week."
"Are you going to send for a policeman?"
"Don"t be rude, boy, but answer me."
"I am not here to satisfy your curiosity, Mr. Isaacstein. I have called simply on a matter of business. It is sufficient for you to know that Mr. Abingdon has set me at liberty and restored my property to me. Do you wish to deal with me or not?"
The diamond merchant tingled with anger. He was not accustomed to being browbeaten even by the representatives of the De Beers Company, yet here was a callow youngster addressing him in this outrageous fashion, betraying, too, an insufferable air of contempt in voice and manner. He glared at Philip in silent wrath for an instant.
The boy smiled. He took from his pocket the paper of diamonds and began to count them. The action said plainly:
"You know you cannot send me away. If I go to your trade rivals you will lose a magnificent opportunity. You are in my hands. No matter how rude I am to you, you must put up with it."
Nevertheless, the Jew made an effort to preserve his tottering dignity.
"Do you think," he said, "that you are behaving properly in treating a man of my position in such a way in his own office?"
In his own office--that was the sting of it.
The head of the firm of Isaacstein & Co., of London, Amsterdam and Kimberley, to be bearded in such fashion in his own particular shrine!
Why, the thing was monstrous!
Philip looked him squarely in the eyes.
"Mr. Isaacstein," he said, calmly, "have you forgotten that you caused me to be arrested as a thief and dragged, handcuffed, through the open streets by a policeman? I have spent five days in jail because of you.
At the moment when I was praising your honesty you were conveying secret signals to your clerks in the belief that I was something worse than a pickpocket. Was your treatment of me so free from blame at our first meeting as to serve as a model at the second?"
The chair was creaking now continuously; the Jew swung from side to side during this lecture. He strove hard to restrain himself, but the feverish excitement of Sat.u.r.day returned with greater intensity than ever. He jumped up, and Philip imagined for a second that robbery with violence was imminent.
"Confound it all, boy!" yelled the merchant, "what was I to do when a ragged loafer like you came in and showed me a diamond worth a thousand pounds and told me he had dozens, hundreds, more like it? Did you expect me to risk standing in the dock by your side? Who could have given fairer evidence in your behalf than I did? Who proved that you could not have stolen the stones? Whom have you to thank for being at liberty now, but the expert who swore that no such diamonds had been seen before in this world?"
Philip waited until the man"s pa.s.sion had exhausted itself. Then he went on coolly:
"That is your point of view, I suppose. Mine is that you could have satisfied yourself concerning all those points without sending me to prison. However, this discussion is beside the present question. Will you buy my diamonds?"
Isaacstein recovered his seat. He wiped his face vigorously, but the trading instinct conquered his fury.
"Yes," he snapped. "How much do you want for them?"
"I notice that their value steadily increases. The first time you saw this diamond"--and he held up the stone originally exhibited to the Jew--"you said it was worth six or seven hundred pounds. To-day you name a thousand. However, I will take your own valuation for this unimportant collection, and accept fifty thousand pounds."
"Oh, you will, will you! And how will you have it, in notes or gold?"
He could not help this display of cheap sarcasm. The situation was losing its annoyance; the humor of it was beginning to dawn on him. When his glance rested more critically on Philip, the boy"s age, the poverty of his circ.u.mstances, the whole fantastic incongruity of the affair, forced his recognition.
Not unprepared for such a retort, Philip gathered the stones together, and twisted the ends of the paper. Evidently the parcel was going back into his pocket. He glanced at a clock, too, which ticked solemnly over the office door.
"Here, what are you doing?" cried Isaacstein.
"Going to some one who will deal with me in a reasonable manner. It is not very late yet. I suppose there are plenty of firms like yours in Hatton Garden, or I can go back to Mr. Wilson----"
"Sit down. Sit down," growled the Jew, vainly striving to cloak his nervousness by a show of grim jocosity. "I never saw such a boy in my life. You are touchy as gunpowder. I was only joking."
"I am not joking, Mr. Isaacstein. Your price is my price--fifty thousand pounds."
"Do you think I carry that amount of money in my purse?" demanded Isaacstein, striving desperately to think out some means whereby he could get Philip into more amiable mood, when, perchance, the true story of the gems might be revealed.
"No," was the answer. "Even if you gave it to me I should not take it away. I want you to advance, say fifty pounds, to-day. I require clothes--and other things. Then, to-morrow, you can bring me to a bank, and pay a portion of the purchase price to my credit, giving me at the same time a written promise to pay the remainder within a week, or a month--any reasonable period, in fact."
The diamond merchant was quickly becoming serious, methodical, as he listened. This business-like proposal was the one thing needed to restore his bewildered faculties.
"Tell me, boy," he said, "who has been advising you?"
"No one."
"Do you mean to say you came here to-day to trade with me without consulting any other person?"
"I certainly told Mr. Abingdon I was coming, and I feel that I can always return to him for any advice if I am in a difficulty, but the offer I have just made is my own."
Watching Isaacstein"s face was an interesting operation to Philip. Under ordinary conditions he might as well expect to find emotion depicted in a pound of b.u.t.ter as in that oily countenance, with its set expression molded by years of sharp dealings. But to-day the man was startled out of all the accustomed grooves of business. He was confronted with a problem so novel that his experience was not wide enough to embrace it.
So Philip caught a gleam of resentment at the introduction of the magistrate"s name, and he instantly resolved to see Mr. Abingdon again at the earliest opportunity.
"Oh, he treated you kindly to-day, did he?" snarled Isaacstein.
"Yes, most kindly."
"You don"t drink, I suppose?" broke in the other, abruptly.
"No. I am only a boy of fifteen, and do not need stimulants."
He was favored with a sharp glance at this remark, but he bent over his diamonds again and began to examine them, one by one. He knew that the action was tantalizing to his companion, and that is why he did it.
Isaacstein went to a sideboard and poured out a stiff gla.s.s of brandy.
He swallowed it as an ordinary person takes an oyster.
"That"s better," he said, returning to his desk. "Now we can get to close quarters. Hand over the stones."
Philip did nothing of the sort.