Part 5 (1/2)
”Pshaw!--so am I; that comes of being thought a rich man when you're as poor as a parson. I'm quite a poor man, you know, Sutton.”
I listened to him patiently, and in the end persuaded him to buy Watts an exquisite set of jeweled links. These had a fine diamond in each of them, but their greatest ornament was the superb enameling, worthy of Jean Toutin or Pet.i.tot, with which all the gold was covered. I asked one hundred and fifty pounds for these remarkable ornaments; and the old man, struck, like the artist he was, with the perfection of the workmans.h.i.+p, fixed his greedy eyes upon them, and was persuaded. He protested that they were too good, far too good, for such a worthless ingrate as his nephew, and that he ought to keep them in his own collection; but at last he ordered me to send them, with his card, to Lord Varnley's town house, and went away chafing at his own generosity, and, as he avowed, at his stupidity.
I saw no more of him for a week. The wedding had been celebrated, and Master Bertie Watts had conveyed away quietly to Folkestone as pretty an English girl as ever flourished in the glare of the West. Lord and Lady Varnley shut up their house during the week after the marriage, having sent the very numerous wedding presents to their bankers; and society would have forgotten the whole business if it had not paused to discuss the important question--How were the young couple to exist in the future on the paltry income of four or five hundred pounds a year? One half of the world may not know how the other half lives, but that is not for lack of effort on its part to find out. It was a matter of club-room news that old Lord Harningham had not relented--and, beyond what his nephew called ”those twopenny-half-penny sleeve links,” had not given him a penny. How then, said this same charitable world, will these silly children keep up their position in town when they return from the second-rate hotel they are now staying in at Folkestone?
Curiously enough, I was able myself to answer that question in three days' time--though at the moment I was as ignorant as any of them. The matter came about in this way. On the very morning that Lord Varnley went to Paris, it was known through the daily papers that there had been a robbery at his house in Cork Street, of a green velvet case, containing a crescent of pearls, turquoises, and diamonds. This was a present from one of the Emba.s.sies to his daughter, and must, said the reports, have been abstracted from the house during the press and the confusion of the reception. Later in the afternoon I received an advice from Scotland Yard cautioning me against the purchase of such a gem, and inviting immediate communication if it were offered to me. The theft of wedding presents is so common that I gave little heed to the matter; and was already immersed in other business when Lord Harningham was announced. He seemed rather fidgety in his manner, I thought, and hummed and hawed considerably before he would explain his mission.
”It's about those links I gave my nephew,” he said at last. ”They're far too good for him, Sutton--and they're too pretty. I never saw better work in my life, and must have been a fool when I let them go out of my possession--d'ye see?”
”Well, but you can't get them back now?” I remarked with a smile.
He took snuff vigorously at my reply, and then said,--
”Man, you're wrong, I've got them in my pocket.”
I must have expressed my astonishment in my look, for he went on quickly,--
”Yes, here in the green case as you sold them. Do I surprise you, eh?
Well, I'm going to give Master Bertie a bit of a check and to keep these things; but one of the stones is off color--I noticed it at the wedding--and I must have a new one in, d'ye see?”
”I thought that you had already handed them over,” I interrupted, quite disregarding his last request.
”So I did, so I did; but a man can take his own back again, can't he?
Well, when I saw them at the house, I concluded it was ridiculous to give a boy like that such treasures, and so----”
”You spoke to him?”
”Hem--that is, of course, man. Pshaw! You're too inquisitive for a jeweler: you ought to have been a lady's maid.”
”Have you brought them with you now?”
”What should I be here for if I hadn't?”
He laid upon my table a green velvet case, of the exact size, color, and shape of that which had contained the links; but when I opened it I gave a start, and put it down quickly. The case held a crescent of pearls, turquoises, and diamonds, which answered exactly to the description of the one stolen from Lord Varnley's house on the day of his daughter's wedding.
”There's some mistake here,” said I, ”you've evidently left the links at home,” with which remark I put the jewels under his very nose for him to see. He looked at them for a moment, the whole of his flabby face wrinkling and reddening; then he seemed almost to choke, and the veins in his forehead swelled until they were as blue threads upon an ashen and colorless countenance.
”Good G.o.d!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, ”I've taken the wrong case.”
”Your nephew gave it you, no doubt, but he must have forgotten it, for he's advertised the loss of this crescent at Scotland Yard, and there are detectives now trying to find it. I am cautioned not to purchase it,” I said with a laugh.
The effect of these words upon him was so curious that for some moments I thought he had spasm of the heart. Starting up in the chair, with wild eyes, and hands clutching at the arms to rest upon them, he made several attempts to speak, but not a word came from his lips. I endeavored to help him with his difficulty, but it was to little purpose.
”It seems to me, Lord Harningham,” I suggested, ”that you have only to write a line of explanation to your nephew--and there's an end of the matter.”
”You think so?” he cried eagerly.
”Why not,” said I, ”since he returned the jewels to you?”