Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector
Page 28
Chinnery seemed to make up his mind.
“You have the right of it,” he confessed, “’twas I tampered with the Italian’s Stradivarius.”
“Then satisfy us,” cried Betts eagerly, “how you contrived to introduce a lump of beeswax through the f-hole and that without the use of my ingenious instrument.”
“’Twas done by depression,” muttered Chinnery. Viotti ground his teeth. “I am indifferent deft, Sir, being a lapidary, and as to your instrument, I made shift to copy it, having in my pocket a sufficiency of silver wire which I designed braiding into a ring for Polly Tresilian.” His voice broke. “’Twas all for love of Polly, I could not bear he should make music with her, ’twas his playing bewitched her.”
“Good lack, Tom!” cried Polly, and ran to him.
Viotti uttered a round oath in Italian, but upon his threatening motion Tresilian pinioned him. Polly had her arms about Chinnery.
“Poor, poor Tom,” she murmured, “I love you best, indeed I do.”
“Then be satisfied, and be off with you,” said Johnson sharply. Viotti muttered curses, and wrenched against the restraining arms of Tresilian. “Take my counsel, lad, with an Englishman ’tis a word and a blow, or he takes you to law, and so an end; but a foreigner will have it out of your hide. Be off, and look to your skin.”
“I’ll go with you, Tom!” cried Miss Tresilian.
“Not so, Miss, you’ll bide. Now be off, young Sir, and repent in time.”
Quickly young Chinnery touched his lips to Polly’s hand, and was gone. Polly burst into tears.
“Unhand me, Sir,” said Viotti quietly to Tresilian. “You have my parole.”
“A pretty comedy, Dr. Johnson,” said Prince Orloff languidly. “Now for the after-piece. Where is my diamond?”
“Sir,” replied Dr. Johnson, “’tis in this room. Yet I do not choose to sniff about like a dog after truffles. I shall look in my head, and find your diamond. Pray, Dr. Burney, have you ever a bowl of poonch? Your downright English poonch is a great quickener of the intellects.”
“Now, Sir,” said I with resolution, “you shall not take me twice in the same springe. Trust me, gentlemen, in these exact words did my learned friend engage with Bonnie Prince Charlie that he would find his missing ruby in the bottom of Miss Flora MacDonald’s punch-bowl; and drown me therein if he did not know where the thing was all along!”
Dr. Johnson flashed me a look so imperious and full of meaning that my voice died in my throat.
“Nay, Dr. Burney, I do but jest,” I added in a small voice, “pray let the punch-bowl be brought.”
“With all my heart,” cried Dr. Burney. As the punch was brewed I reflected anxiously what my venerable friend could mean with his carousing. Could he intend the thief of the diamond should become befuddled, and so betray himself? My eye lit upon Orloff, and I saw it all plainly. As the glass went round I set myself assiduously to drink with Orloff, designing he should become liquored as my friend desired. As to myself, I had no care if I could be of service to his scheams.
The chimes of St. Martin’s told the hour round, an hour of toasts and pledges. I looked upon my princely charge. His countenance seemed to waver like a face under water. The moment is at hand! said I to myself.
I sought my learned friend where he stood by the punch-bowl with his back to the company, intending to impart this news to him. He held a fruit-knife in his hand, and seemed to be peeling a prune.
“The moment is unmanned,” said I.
“How?” said he, dropping the prune-pit into his cup.
“Unmanned,” said I.
“Alack, Bozzy, so are you,” said he.
He approached Prince Orloff where he sat wabbling by the fire. The next to the last thing I remember is the triumph in his voice as he cried:
“My inebrious friend Boswell was a true prophet, your Highness. I have found your diamond—in the bottom of the punch-bowl!”
The last thing I remember is the rough feel of the carpet under my cheek.
I opened my eyes with difficulty in the morning light. Dr. Johnson seemed to be sitting at my bedside.
“How now, Bozzy,” cried he with unwonted geniality, “still unmanned?”
“Yes, Sir,” I replied sheepishly. “And how do all friends in St. Martin’s Street—” memory began to return—“is Signor Viotti reconciled to lose his Miss and gain his Stradivarius? And has Prince Orloff indeed his Hindoo stone again?”
“He has, then,” replied Dr. Johnson, “and the thief is much beholden to you for an hour’s clear start.”
I rose to an elbow in excitement.
“Pray tell me the story, Dr. Johnson, how came it out of the punch-bowl so pat?”
Johnson: “Because I put it there.”
Boswell: “Where did you find it?”
Johnson: “Where the thief had hidden it to be carried away, in a lump of beeswax affixed to the sound-post of Viotti’s violin. This is an old trick of the professional jewel-thief. He’ll come into a shop, and snatch up a ring or a gem while the ’prentice’s back is turned, and quickly with a lump of softened beeswax he has brought with him he’ll affix it to the under side of the counter. The shopman may search him all day long, he’ll never find the ring; and tomorrow comes in his doxy, she knows where the beeswax is, and will quietly pick it off and carry it away.”
Boswell: “Yet which of Dr. Burney’s guests was a professional jewel-thief?”
Johnson: “Not one of them; but two were professional jewellers, to whom the trick is known. Neither do I think it a plot, whether against the diamond or the Stradivarius. But put yourself in the place of the young lapidary. He desires the girl, yet cannot have her without money. He sees her turning from him to a dangerous and charming new rival. He is deft and bold, and seems to himself to have lost all that makes life dear. Into his hands is passed a diamond of 50-odd carats, slightly held to a frame by a loop of soft gold. He examines it under a sconce set with prisms much the same size and shape. Now the theft of such an object, to any other man foolhardy and without profit, is to him exactly a source of pelf. He is himself a lapidary. He can cut the stone himself, thus destroying its identity, and providing himself with valuable gems that can be gradually in the course of his master’s business turned to profit. It is the work of a reckless moment to substitute a prism, and make the diamond his own. Fortune favoured him, in that Miss Burney and not Orloff restored it to its place about the neck of the Prince. Now the diamond is upon his person. He cannot keep it there; the risk is enormous. He must hide it. He remembers the jewel-thief’s trick, abstracts Miss Burney’s softened beeswax, and looks about for a place that cannot be searched, preferably one that he can later come at with ease. The violins! Can he affix the diamond to the inside of one of them, where short of taking it apart it cannot be come at? He is deft and desperate; he will try. He chooses Viotti’s. From this alone we might have concluded the Bettses were innocent; they would have pitched upon their own instrument. But Chinnery would choose Viotti’s, not only to throw the risk upon his rival, but also because Viotti frequents his master’s house; it will be easiest to come at. I do not think he would have blenched at shattering the precious thing to bits to come at the diamond again.”
I shuddered.
Johnson: “Leaving first, he could not know how his plans had gone awry when Viotti angrily repudiated the changed violin, and left it for Betts to carry away and open. And when he lay in wait for Viotti and saw him sans violin, what could he conclude but that the instrument was to seek at Burney’s?”
Boswell: “I made sure ’twas Betts who tampered with the violin that he might make it his own; and fobbed us off with a taradiddle when we found it in his possession.”
Johnson: “I thought otherwise when I saw ’twas beeswax had done the damage. The jewel-thief’s trick flashed into my mind, and I made sure that I had recovered the Orloff diamond.”
Boswell: “Yet how were you sure that Betts was not the thief?”
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sp; Johnson: “Because he yielded me the beeswax cheerfully and without a struggle, which he had not done had he hid therein a diamond worth a Mogul’s ransom. Yet I had not to guess, for the finger-mark with the double eddy promised to betray the thief with certainty.”
Boswell: “Having discovered the thief, why did you let him go?”
Johnson: “Because I never doubted but that Prince Orloff spoke no more than the truth when he said the thief should die—and I could not turn the boy over to death, once I had discovered the diamond. He took the warning and fled for it; though ’twas most obliging in Viotti to be in such a mighty passion with him, and so cover my meaning.”
Boswell: “You presumed on fortune, in letting him go before you had assured yourself that you had recovered the diamond indeed.”
Johnson: “Am I so foolish? I stripped back from the under side only enough beeswax to assure myself that it contained the Orloff diamond indeed, before ever I left the sign of the Golden Violin.”
Boswell: “Pray, Sir, tell me one more thing: how did you account to Prince Orloff, for having found his diamond at the bottom of a bowl of punch?”
Johnson fairly laughed aloud.
“Easily. I told him ’twas the will of God.”
[Everybody visited the Burneys—fiddlemakers and fiddlers, Viotti with his famous Strad, Orloff with his diamond—but not at the same time. Though the people are real, the events are fictitious.]
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lillian de la Torre (1902–1993) was born in New York City. She received a bachelor’s degree from the College of New Rochelle and master’s degrees from Columbia University and Radcliffe College, and she taught in the English department at Colorado College for twenty-seven years. De la Torre wrote numerous books; short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; reviews for the New York Times Book Review; poetry; and plays, including one produced for Alfred Hitchcock’s television series. In her first book, Elizabeth Is Missing (1945), she refuted twelve theories on the disappearance of a maidservant near the Tower of London in 1753, and then offered her own answer. Her series of historical detective stories about Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell comprise her most popular fiction. De la Torre served as the 1979 president of the Mystery Writers of America.
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Copyright © 1944 by Lillian de la Torre
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ISBN 978-1-5040-4453-0
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