My Strangest Case, Guy Newell Boothby [short books for teens .txt] 📗

a trustworthy subordinate; one who would be quite capable of undertaking the work, and who would give you every satisfaction."

"I fear that would not be the same thing," he said. "My firm have such implicit faith in you that they would not entertain the idea of any one else going. Now think, Mr. Fairfax, for a moment. If you are prepared to go, I, in my turn, on behalf of my Company, am prepared to offer you your expenses and a sum of five thousand pounds. You need not be away more than three months at longest, so that you see our offer is at the rate of twenty thousand pounds a year. It is princely remuneration."

I looked at him closely. It was plain that he was in earnest—in deadly earnest, so it seemed. Even a defaulting manager would scarcely seem to warrant so much zeal.

"I am very much flattered by your offer," I said; "and believe me, I most truly appreciate the generosity of your Company; but, as I said before, if it is necessary for me to go at once, that is to say, before I have completed my present case, then I have no option but to most reluctantly decline."

"Perhaps you will think it over," he continued, "and let me know, say to-morrow?"

"No amount of thinking it over will induce me to alter my decision," I replied. "You must see for yourself that I have no right to accept a retainer from one party and then throw them over in order to favour another. That would not only be a dishonourable action on my part, but would be bad from a business point of view. No, Mr. Bayley, I am exceedingly sorry, but I have no option but to act as I am doing."

"In that case I must wish you a very good-morning," he remarked, and took up his hat and umbrella. I could see, however, that he was still reluctant to go.

"Good-morning," I answered. "I hope your affairs in the Argentine may brighten before very long."

He shook his head gloomily, and then left the office without another word.

When he had gone I answered some letters, gave some instructions to my managing clerk, and then donned my hat and set off for the office of the Shipping Company that had brought Gideon Hayle to England.

Unfortunately it transpired that they were not in a position to do very much in the way of helping me. Mr. Bertram had certainly travelled home in one of their steamers, so the manager informed me, a boat that as a rule did not carry passengers. He had landed at the docks, and from that moment they had neither seen nor heard anything of him. I inquired for the steamer, only to learn that she was now somewhere on her way between Singapore and Hong Kong. This was decidedly disappointing, but as most of the cases in which I have been ultimately successful have had unpromising beginnings, I did not take it too seriously to heart. Leaving the Shipping Office, I next turned my attention to Hatton Garden, where I called upon Messrs. Jacob and Bulenthall, one of the largest firms in the gem trade. We had had many dealings together in the past, and as I had had the good fortune on one occasion to do them a signal service, I knew that they would now do all that they could for me in return.

"Good-day, Mr. Fairfax," said the chief partner, as I entered his snug little sanctum, which leads out of the main office. "What can I have the pleasure of doing for you?"

"I am in search of some information," I replied, "and I think you may be able to help me."

"I will do all that is in my power to render you assistance," he returned, as he wiped his glasses and placed them on his somewhat fleshy nose. "What is the information you require? Has there been another big robbery of stones, and you think it possible that some of them may have come into our hands?"

"There certainly has been a robbery," I replied, "and the stones may have been offered to you, but not in the way you mean. The fact of the matter is, I want to discover whether or not a large consignment of uncut rubies and sapphires of great value have been placed upon the market within the last two months."

"Uncut rubies and sapphires are being continually placed upon the market," he observed, leaning back in his chair and rattling his keys.

"But not such stones as those I am looking for," I said, and furnished him with the rough weights that had been supplied to me.

"This is interesting—decidedly interesting," he remarked. "Especially since it serves to offer an explanation on a certain matter in which we have been interested for some little time past. On the sixteenth of last month, a gentleman called upon us here, who stated that he had lately returned from the Far East. He had had, so he declared, the good fortune to discover a valuable mine, the locality of which he was most careful not to disclose. He thereupon showed my partner and myself ten stones, consisting of five rubies and five sapphires, each of which weighed between fifty-five and sixty carats."

"And you purchased them?"

"We did, and for a very heavy sum. I can assure you the vendor was very well aware of their value, as we soon discovered, and he was also a good hand at a bargain. Would you care to see the stones? I shall be pleased to show them to you if you would."

"I should like to see them immensely." I replied.

Thereupon he crossed the room to a safe in the corner, and, when he had unlocked it, took from it a wash-leather bag. Presently ten superb gems were lying before me on the table.

"There they are," he said, waving his hands towards them, "and as you can see for yourself, they are worthy of being set in the crown of an emperor. It is not often that we are enthusiastic in such matters, but in this case we have very good reason to be. When they are properly cut, they will be well nigh priceless."

"Do you happen to know whether he sold any more of a similar kind in London?" I asked, as he returned them to their place in the safe.

"I know that he sold fifteen smaller ones to Henderson and Soil, and three almost as large as those I have just shown you to a firm in Amsterdam."

"If he is the man I want to get hold of, that accounts for twenty-eight," I said, making a note of the fact as I spoke. "Originally he had ninety-three in his possession."

"Ninety-three?" the merchant replied, as if he could scarcely believe his ears. "Why, his mine must be a source of unlimited wealth. I wish I had known this before."

"So do I," I said. "And now perhaps you can go further and furnish me with a description of the man himself. I shall then be able to tell you whether my gentleman and your customer are one and the same person."

"I can describe him to you perfectly well. He was tall, but somewhat sparely built, very sunburnt—which would be accounted for by his long residence in the East—his hair was streaked with grey, he had dark eyes, and a singularly sharp nose."

"Did he wear a beard?"

"No, only a moustache. The latter was carefully trimmed, and, I think, waxed. Of this, however, I am not quite certain."

"And his name?"

"He would not tell us that. We pressed him to disclose it, but he obstinately refused to do so. He said that if his name became known it might lead to the discovery of his mine, and that he was naturally anxious that such an event should not occur."

"But what guarantee had you that the stones were not stolen?"

"None whatever—but it is most unlikely. In the first place, they are uncut; in the second, we have had them in our possession for some time, and you may be sure have made the closest inquiries. Besides, there are few such stones in Europe, and what there are, are safely in the possession of their owners. Surely you are not going to tell me that they were stolen?"

In the man's voice there was a perceptible note of alarm.

"I don't think you need be afraid," I said. "They were stolen by the man from his two partners, and all they want is to get hold of him in order to make him disgorge their share of what he got for them."

"I am glad indeed to hear that," was the reply. "I was beginning to grow uneasy. And now is there any other way in which I can serve you? If so, I shall be only too pleased to do it."

I informed him that, if I had anything else to ask him I would call upon him again, and then took my departure. While I was in a great measure satisfied with the information I had gained, I was not altogether easy in my mind. The question to be answered was, was the man I was after the same individual who had sold Jacob and Bulenthall the stones? The description given me varied in several particulars to that furnished me by Kitwater. My client declared him to possess black hair; the merchant had said grey; the one had declared that Hayle possessed a beard, the other that he had only a waxed moustache. The figure, however, was in both cases identically the same.

Having satisfied myself that he had no more to tell me, I thanked him for his courtesy and left the office. A fresh idea had occurred to me which I thought might lead to something, and I resolved to put it into practice without any further waste of time.

CHAPTER IV

It would be a truism to declare that human nature is about as complicated a piece of machinery as could be found in the human world. And yet I do not know why it should be considered so. All things and all men do not run in grooves. A man to be a criminal need not be hopelessly bad in every other sense. I have met murderers who did not possess sufficient nerve to kill a rabbit, burglars who would rob a poor man of all his possessions in the world, and yet would not despoil a little child of a halfpenny. The fact of the matter is we all have our better points, our own innate knowledge of good and evil. Hayle had betrayed Kitwater and Codd in the cruellest fashion possible, and by so doing had condemned them to the most fiendish torture the mind of man could conceive. Yet it was through his one good point, his weakness, if I might so describe it, that I was enabled to come to my first grip with him.

It was between the hours of two and three that I entered the gates of Brompton Cemetery and commenced my examination of the various graves therein contained. Up one path I wandered and down another in search of the resting-place of the poor crippled sister of whom Gideon Hayle had been so fond. It was a long time before I found it, but at last I was successful. To my astonishment the stone was plainly a new one, and the grave was tastefully decorated with flowers. As a matter of fact it was one of the prettiest in its neighbourhood, and to me this told its own tale. I went in search of the necessary official and put the case to him. He informed me that I was correct in my supposition, and that the stone had only lately been erected, and, what was more to the point, he informed me that the gentleman who had given the order for it, had only the week before paid the necessary sum for