This messenger of Hogarth, she next thought, was a criminal: he might betray...so she stole into an adjacent room, to peep by a side door of the study, and though a key projecting toward her barred her vision, the talkers were near this point, and she could hear.
"The diamond block", O"Hara said, "is the same which he rolled across the bridge this morning; to that I"ll swear".
"Then it must be the very same block he showed me", Frankl said in a whisper; "that thing was worth millions....!"
"Undoubtedly it was the same".
"Oh, but Lord", groaned the Jew in an anguish of self-deprecation, "where were my _eyes_? where were my _wits_? I must have been _dreaming_! No, that"s hard!"
"Well--_nil desperandum_! Let us be acting, sir!"
"My own land--!"
"They are still safe enough: come--"
"He may have lost one or two--in his excitement. Thousands gone! He may have hidden some!"
"Tut, he has hidden none", said O"Hara; "we may have all. Let us make a move".
"But he is a strong man, this Hogarth. Why do you object to the a.s.sistance of the police?"
"What have the police to do with such a matter? Hogarth would simply bribe. And there are three of us--"
"Who is this Harris?"
"He is a c.o.c.kney--a.s.sa.s.sin".
Frankl took snuff, with busy pats at alternate nostrils.
"What will you tell him is in the bag?"
"Anything--rings--something prized by you for sentimental reasons. We offer him a thousand--two thousand pounds. And he will not fail. He strikes like lightning".
"And we share--how?"
"Come--let us not talk of that again, sir. What could be more generous than my offer? You divide the diamonds into two heaps, and I choose one; or I divide, you choose; and, before I leave you, you give me a declaration that it was by your contrivance that I escaped prison, and that the gems which I have, once yours, are duly made over to me".
"And you collar half!" gibed the Jew with an ogle of guile; "that"s about as cool a stroke of business as I"ve come across. You don"t take into account that the whole is mine, if the concern fell, as you confess, on my own land! And just ask yourself the question: what is to prevent me handing you over this minute to the police, and grabbing the lot? Only I"m not that sort of man--"
O"Hara drew a revolver.
"You talk to me as though I was a schoolboy, sir", said he sternly. "Be good enough to learn to respect me. I am not less a man of the world than you are, and quite competent to safeguard my own interests.
Supposing I was weak enough to permit you to send for the police, the moment they had me I should tell of Hogarth in hiding; they would go for him, and he, after bribing, may be trusted to take wing with the stones, leaving you whistling. Or perhaps you would care to tackle him in person? He would wheel you by the beard round his arm like a Catherine-wheel, I do a.s.sure you. All this you see well, and pretend not to. Do let us be honest with each other!"
"Well, I don"t want to be hard", said Frankl, looking sideward and downward, plotting behind an unwrinkled brow, intending to have every one of the diamonds; so did O"Hara, who already had his plot.
"No, don"t be hard", said O"Hara: "_I_ am not. I give you an incalculable fortune; I take the same. Live and let live! Why should two shrewd old fellows like you and me be like the dog which, wanting two bones, lost the one he had? Come, now--give me your hand on it".
"Well, I"m hanged if you are not right!" cried Frankl, looking up with discovery: "Share and share alike, and shame the devil! That"s the kind of little man I am, frank, bluff, and stalwart--Ha! ha! Give me your hand on it, sir!"
"Ha! ha! you are very kind. That is the only way--absolute sincerity--"
and they shook hands, hob-n.o.bbing and fraternizing, with laughs and little nods, like cronies.
"Stop--I"ll just ring for a drop of brandy--" said Frankl.
"No! no ringing!--thanks, thanks, no brandy--"
"Well, you are as cautious as they make them. Oh, perfectly right, you know--perfectly right"--he touched O"Hara"s chest--"not a word to say against that. I am the same kind of man myself--"
"Come; are you for making a move?"
"Agreed. Where is my hat? I suppose a man may get his hat!--ha! ha!--I can"t very well go in this cap---"
"You use mine--with the greatest pleasure. I do not need--Ah? quite the fit, quite the fit".
"Why, so it is. Ha! ha! why, it"s a curate"s hat, and--_I"m a Jew_!"
"Excellent, excellent, ha! ha!"
So they made merry, and, with the bitter lip-corners of forced merriment, went out, while Rebekah, who had caught a great deal of that dialogue, crouched a long time there, agitated, uncertain what to do.
That her father should coolly look on at an a.s.sa.s.sination for a fortune was no revelation to her: she had long despised, yet, with an inconsistency due to the tenderness of Jewish family ties, still loved him; the notion of appealing to the police, therefore, who might ruin Hogarth, too, did not enter her head.
She ran and wrote: "Your life and bag of gems are _at this moment_ in danger"; and sent it by a mounted messenger addressed to "The Guest at the Paper Shop".
But in twenty minutes the messenger returned to her with it, Hogarth having gone to the _rendezvous_ at the elm--long before the appointed time.
When, accordingly, Frankl, O"Hara, and Harris arrived at the paper-shop back yard, and Harris had stolen up the back stairs, he presently, to the alarm and delight of the others, sent a whisper from the window: "No one "ere as I can see!"
And the search for the diamonds was short: for Hogarth had actually left the bag containing them on the trunk, and Frankl and O"Hara returned with it to Westring, holding it out at arm"s length, one with the right, one with the left hand, like standard-bearers.
Hogarth, meantime, was striding about the elm, and once fell to his knees, adoring a vision, and once, at a fancied step, his teeth-edges chattered.
Rebekah! He called, groaned, hissed that name, while his to-and-fro ranging quickened to a trot.
And now, fancying that he heard a call "_Come !_" he stood startled, struck into a twisting enquiry to the four winds; but could not locate the call, ran hither and thither, saw no one.
"Come to me, little sister", he wailed tenderly, while to swallow was a doubtful spasm for him, her name a mountain in his bosom.
When he was certain that it must be nearer ten than "nine", he set out in the sway of a turbulent impulse to spurt for the Hall: but as he reached the point of proximity between path and park, just there where her father had stood that morning he saw her patiently waiting--ever since that "_Come!_"
He flew, and was about to skip up the bank, when, with forbidding arm, she cried: "Don"t you approach me!"--and he stood checked and abject, one foot planted on the bank, looking up, ready to dart for her in her Oriental dress, flimsy, baggy at the girdle, her arms bare, her fingers clasped before her, making convex the two ta.s.sels of the girdle, from her ears depending circles of gold large enough to hoop with, a saffron headdress, stuck backward, showing her hair in front, falling upon a shawl which sheltered her frank rec.u.mbent shoulders. She did not see Hogarth at all, but stood averted, implacable, unapproachable, looking across the park, while Hogarth occupied a long silence in gazing up to where, like a show, she stood, illumined by the moon.
At last he sent to her the whisper, "Did you call just now? Did you say "_Come_"?"
"What is it you want with me, Hogarth? You have "_summoned_" me: but be very quick".
"I told you: I am wealthier than all the princes--"