Yet he had accused himself of having acted ‘meanly.’ Margaret did not like the word, and threw up her head as a horse does when a beginner holds on by the curb.
‘You need not make yourself out worse than you are,’ she answered.
‘I want to start fair,’ said the millionaire, ‘and I’d rather your impression should improve than get worse. The only real trouble with Lucifer was he started too high up.’
This singular statement was made with perfect gravity, and without the slightest humorous intention, but Margaret laughed for the first time that day, in spite of the storm that was still raging in the near distance of her thoughts.
‘Why do you laugh?’ asked Van Torp. ‘It’s quite true. I don’t want to start too high up in your estimation and then be turned down as unfit for the position at the end of the first week. Put me where I belong and I won’t disappoint you. Say I was doing something that wasn’t exactly low-down, considering the object, but that mightn’t pass muster at an honour-parade, anyhow. And then say that I’ve admitted the fact, if you like, and that the better I know you the less I want to do anything mean. It won’t be hard for you to look at it in that light, will it? And it’ll give me the position of starting from the line. Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ Margaret answered, smiling. ‘Slang “right” and English “right”! You ask for a fair field and no favour, and you shall have it.’
‘I’ll go straight,’ Van Torp answered.
He was conscious that he was hourly improving his knowledge of women’s little ways, and that what he had said, and had purposely expressed in his most colloquial manner, had touched a chord which would not have responded to a fine speech. For though he often spoke a sort of picturesque dialect, and though he was very far from being highly educated, he could speak English well enough when he chose. It probably seemed to him that good grammar and well-selected words belonged to formal occasions and not to everyday life, and that it was priggish to be particular in avoiding slang and cowardly to sacrifice an hereditary freedom from the bonds of the subjunctive mood.
‘I suppose Lady Maud will come, won’t she?’ he asked suddenly, after a short silence.
‘I hope so,’ Margaret said. ‘If not, she will meet me in Paris, for she offers to do that in her letter.’
‘I’m staying on in this place because you said you didn’t mind,’ observed Van Torp. ‘Do you want me to go away if she arrives?’
‘Why should I? Why shouldn’t you stay?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I was only thinking. Much obliged anyway, and I’ll certainly stay if you don’t object. We shall be quite a party, shan’t we? What with us three, and Lady Maud and Kralinsky there — —’
‘Surely you don’t call him one of our “party”!’ objected Margaret. ‘He’s only just been introduced to us. I daresay Mrs. Rushmore will ask him to dinner or luncheon, but that will be all.’
‘Oh, yes! I suppose that will be all.’
But his tone roused her curiosity by its vagueness.
‘You knew him long ago,’ she said. ‘If he’s not a decent sort of person to have about, you ought to tell us — indeed you should not have introduced him at all if he’s a bad lot.’
Mr. Van Torp did not answer at once, and seemed to be consulting his recollections.
‘I don’t know anything against him,’ he said at last. ‘All foreigners who drift over to the States and go West haven’t left their country for the same reasons. I suppose most of them come because they’ve got no money at home and want some. I haven’t any right to take it for granted that a foreign gentleman who turns cow-boy for a year or two has cheated at cards, or anything of that sort, have I? There were all kinds of men on that ranch, as there are on every other and in every mining camp in the West, and most of ’em have no particular names. They get called something when they turn up, and they’re known as that while they stay, and if they die with their boots on, they get buried as that, and if not, they clear out when they’ve had enough of it; and some of ’em strike something and get rich, as I did, and some of ’em settle down to occupations, as I’ve known many do. But they all turn into themselves again, or turn themselves into somebody else after they go back. While they’re punching cattle they’re generally just “Dandy Jim” or “Levi Longlegs,” as that fellow was, or something of that sort.’
‘What were you called?’ asked Margaret.
‘I?’ Van Torp smiled faintly at the recollection of his nickname. ‘I was always Fanny Cook.’
Margaret laughed.
‘Of all the inappropriate names!’
‘Well,’ said the millionaire, still smiling, ‘I guess it must have been because I was always sort of gentle and confiding and sweet, you know. So they concluded to give me a girl’s name as soon as they saw me, and I turned out a better cook than the others, so they tacked that on, too. I didn’t mind.’
Margaret smiled too, as she glanced at his jaw and his flat, hard cheeks, and thought of his having been called ‘Fanny.’
‘Did you ever kill anybody, Miss Fanny?’ she asked, with a little laugh.
A great change came over his face at once.
‘Yes,’ he answered very gravely. ‘Twice, in fair self-defence. If I had hesitated, I should not be here.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Margaret said quietly. ‘I should not have asked you. I ought to have known.’
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘One gets that kind of question asked one now and then by people one doesn’t care to answer. But I’d rather have you know something about my life than not. Not that it’s much to be proud of,’ he added, rather sadly.
‘Some day you shall tell me all you will,’ Margaret answered. ‘I daresay you did much better than you think, when you look back.’
‘Lady Maud knows all about me now,’ he said, ‘and no one else alive does. Perhaps you’ll be the second that will, and that’ll be all for the present. They want us to come up with them, do you see?’
Mrs. Rushmore and Kralinsky had stopped in their walk and were waiting for them. They quickened their pace.
‘I thought perhaps this was far enough,’ said Mrs. Rushmore. ‘Of course I could go on further, and it’s not your usual walk, my dear, but unless you mind—’
Margaret did not mind, and said so readily; whereupon Mrs. Rushmore deliberately took Van Torp for her companion on the way back.
‘I’m sure you won’t object to walking slowly,’ she said to him, ‘and Miss Donne and the Count can go as fast as they like, for they are both good walkers. I am sure you must be a great walker,’ she added, turning to the Russian.
He smiled blandly and bent his head a little, as if he were acknowledging a compliment. Van Torp looked at him quietly.
‘I should have thought you were more used to riding,’ said the American.
‘Ah, yes!’ The indifferent answer came in a peculiarly oily tone, though the pronunciation was perfect. ‘I was in the cavalry before I began to travel. But I walked over two thousand miles in Central Asia, and was none the worst for it.’
Margaret was sure that she was not going to like him, as she moved on with him by her side; and Van Torp, walking with Mrs. Rushmore, was quite certain that he was Levi Longlegs, who had herded cattle with him for six months very long ago.
CHAPTER IX
LOGOTHETI REACHED HIS lodgings in St. James’s Place at six o’clock in the evening of the day on which he had promised to dine with Van Torp, and the latter’s note of excuse was given to him at once. He read it, looked out of the window, glanced at it again, and threw it into the waste-paper basket without another thought. He did not care in the least about dining with the American millionaire. In fact, he had looked forward to it rather as a bore than a pleasure. He saw on his table, with his letters, a flat and almost square parcel, which the addressed label told him contained the Archæological Report of the Egyptian Exploration Fund, and he had heard that the new number would contain an account of a papyrus recently discovered at Oxyrrhynch
us, on which some new fragments of Pindar had been found. No dinner that could be devised, and no company that could be asked to meet him at it, could be half as delightful as that to the man who so deeply loved the ancient literature of his country, and he made up his mind at once that he would not even take the trouble to go to a club, but would have a bird and a salad in his rooms.
Unhappily for his peace and his anticipated feast of poetry, he looked through his letters to see if there were one from Margaret, and there was only a coloured postcard from Bayreuth, with the word ‘greetings’ scrawled beside the address in her large hand. Next to the card, however, there was a thick letter addressed in a commercial writing he remembered but could not at once identify; and though it was apparently a business communication, and could therefore have waited till the next morning, when his secretary would come as usual, he opened it out of mere curiosity to know whence it came.
It was from Mr. Pinney the jeweller, and it contained a full and conscientious account of the whole affair of the theft, from the moment when Logotheti and Van Torp had gone out together until Mr. Pinney had locked up the stone in his safe again, and Baraka and Spiro had been lodged in Brixton Gaol. The envelope contained also a cutting from the newspaper similar to the one Margaret had received from Lady Maud.
Logotheti laid the letter on the table and looked at his watch. It was now a quarter-past six, and old-fashioned shops like Pinney’s close rather early in the dull season, when few customers are to be expected and the days are not so long as they have been. In the latter part of August, in London, the sun sets soon after seven o’clock, and Logotheti realised that he had no time to lose.
As he drove quickly up towards Bond Street, he ran over the circumstances in his mind, and came to the conclusion that Baraka had probably been the victim of a trick, though he did not exclude the bare possibility that she might be guilty. With all her cleverness and native sense, she might be little more than a savage who had picked up European manners in Constantinople, where you can pick up any manners you like, Eastern or Western. The merchant who had given her a letter for Logotheti only knew what she had chosen to tell him, and connived in her deception by speaking of her as a man; and she might have told him anything to account for having some valuable precious stones to dispose of. But, on the other hand, she might not be a Tartar at all. Any one, from the Bosphorus to the Amur, may speak Tartar, and pretend not to understand anything else. She might be nothing but a clever half-bred Levantine from Smyrna, who had fooled them all, and really knew French and even English. The merchant had not vouched for the bearer’s character beyond saying that ‘he’ had some good rubies to sell, called himself a Tartar, and was apparently an honest young fellow. All the rest was Baraka’s own story, and Logotheti really knew of nothing in her favour beyond his intimate conviction that she was innocent. Against that stood the fact that the stolen ruby had been found secreted on her person within little more than half an hour of her having had a chance to take it from Pinney’s shop.
From quite another point of view, Logotheti himself argued as Margaret had done. Baraka knew that he possessed the ruby, since she had sold it to him. She knew that he meant to have it cut in London. She might easily have been watching him and following him for several days in the hope of getting it back, carrying the bit of bottle glass of the same size about with her, carefully prepared and wrapped in tissue-paper, ready to be substituted for the gem at any moment. She had watched him go into Pinney’s, knowing very well what he was going for; she had waited till he came out, and had then entered and asked to see any rubies Mr. Pinney had, trusting to the chance that he might choose to show her Logotheti’s, as a curiosity. Chance had favoured her, that was all. She had doubtless recognised the twist on the counter, and the rest had been easy enough. Was not the affair of the Ascot Cup, a much more difficult and dangerous theft, still fresh in every one’s memory?
Logotheti found Mr. Pinney himself in the act of turning the discs of the safe before going home and leaving his shopman to shut up the place. He smiled with grave satisfaction when Logotheti entered.
‘I was hoping to see you, sir,’ he said. ‘I presume that you had my letter? I wrote out the account with great care, as you may imagine, but I shall be happy to go over the story with you if there is any point that is not clear.’
Logotheti did not care to hear it; he wished to see the ruby. Mr. Pinney turned the discs again to their places, stuck the little key into the secret keyhole which then revealed itself, turned it three times to the left and five times to the right, and opened the heavy iron door. The safe was an old-fashioned one that had belonged to his father before him. He got out the japanned tin box, opened that, and produced the stone, still in its paper, for it was too thick to be put into one of Mr. Pinney’s favourite pill-boxes.
Logotheti undid the paper, took out the big uncut ruby, laid it in the palm of his hand, and looked at it critically, turning it over with one finger from time to time. He took it to the door of the shop, where the evening light was stronger, and examined it with the greatest care. Still he did not seem satisfied.
‘Let me have your lens, Mr. Pinney,’ he said, ‘and some electric light and a sheet of white paper.’
Mr. Pinney turned up a strong drop light that stood on the counter, and produced the paper and a magnifier.
‘It’s a grand ruby,’ he said.
‘I see it is,’ Logotheti answered rather curtly.
‘Do you mean to say,’ asked the surprised jeweller, ‘that you had bought it without thoroughly examining it, sir — you who are an expert?’
‘No, that’s not what I mean,’ answered the Greek, bending over the ruby and scrutinising it through the strong magnifier.
Mr. Pinney felt himself snubbed, which had not happened to him for a long time, and he drew himself up with dignity. A minute passed, and Logotheti did not look up; another, and Mr. Pinney grew nervous; a few seconds more, and he received a shock that took away his breath.
‘This is not my ruby,’ said Logotheti, looking up, and speaking with perfect confidence.
‘Not — your — ruby!’ Mr. Pinney’s jaw dropped. ‘But — —’ He could get no further.
‘I’m sorry,’ Logotheti said calmly. ‘I’m very sorry, for several reasons. But it’s not the stone I brought you, though it’s just as large, and most extraordinarily like it.’
‘But how do you know, sir?’ gasped the jeweller.
‘Because I’m an expert, as you were good enough to say just now.’
‘Yes, sir. But I am an expert too, and to the best of my expert belief this is the stone you left with me to be cut, the day before yesterday. I’ve examined it most thoroughly.’
‘No doubt,’ answered the Greek. ‘But you hadn’t examined mine thoroughly before it was stolen, had you? You had only looked at it with me, on the counter here.’
‘That is correct, sir,’ said Mr. Pinney nervously. ‘That is quite true.’
‘Very well. But I did more than merely look at it through a lens or weigh it. I did not care so much about the weight, but I cared very much for the water, and I tried the ruby point on it in the usual way, but it was too hard, and then I scratched it in two places with the diamond, more out of curiosity than for any other reason.’
‘You marked it, sir? There’s not a single scratch on this one! Merciful Providence! Merciful Providence!’
‘Yes,’ Logotheti said gravely. ‘The girl spoke the truth. She had two stones much larger than the rest when she first came to me in Paris, this one and another. They were almost exactly alike, and she wanted me to buy both, but I did not want them, and I took the one I thought a little better in colour. This is the other, for she still had it; and, so far as I know, it is her legal property, and mine is gone. The thief was one of those two young fellows who came in just when Mr. Van Torp and I went out. I remember thinking what nice-looking boys they were!’
He laughed rather harshly, for he was more annoyed than his consideratio
n for Mr. Pinney made him care to show. He had looked forward to giving Margaret the ruby, mounted just as she wished it; and the ruby was gone, and he did not know where he was to find another, except the one that was now in Pinney’s hands, but really belonged to poor Baraka, who could certainly not sell it at present. A much larger sum of money was gone, too, than any financier could lose with equanimity by such a peculiarly disagreeable mishap as being robbed. There were several reasons why Logotheti was not pleased.
So far as the money went, he was not sure about the law in such a case, and he did not know whether he could claim it of Pinney, who had really been guilty of gross carelessness after a lifetime of scrupulous caution. Pinney was certainly very well off, and would not suffer nearly as much by the loss of a few thousand pounds as from the shame of having been robbed in such an impudent fashion of a gem that was not even his, but had been entrusted to his keeping.
‘I am deeply humiliated,’ said the worthy old jeweller. ‘I have not only been tricked and plundered, but I have been the means of sending innocent people to prison.’
‘You had better be the means of getting them out again as soon as possible,’ said Logotheti. ‘You know what to do here in England far better than I. In my country a stroke of the pen would free Baraka, and perhaps another would exile you to Bagdad, Mr. Pinney!’
He spoke lightly, to cheer the old man, but Mr. Pinney shook his head.
‘This is no jesting matter, sir,’ he said. ‘I feel deeply humiliated.’
He really did, and it was evidently a sort of relief to him to repeat the words.
‘I suppose,’ said Logotheti, ‘that we shall have to make some kind of sworn deposition, or whatever you call it, together, and we will go and do it at once, if you please. Lock up the ruby in the safe again, Mr. Pinney, and we will start directly. I shall not go back to my lodgings till we have done everything we can possibly do to-night.’
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