George Griffith

“ It was this last suspicion that touched the puzzled and harassed inspector most keenly. As a practical man he had no belief in miraculous escapes or the possibility of people being in two different places at once, and gradually the conviction forced itself upon him that the immunity of the gang from capture, and its evasion of trap after trap that he had laid for it with all the skill and cunning at his command, could only be due to the connivance of some of his own men and the Free State police, which he knew to be anything but immaculate. ”

“ Lipinzki fairly gaped at the heap of glittering stones, but he lost neither his presence of mind nor his professional promptitude. Like lightning, a revolver jumped out of his coat pocket, and as he covered the Yankee's heart with the muzzle, he said sharply:
"That bluff won't work, Mr. Salter. I'll see your hand for a thousand now. If you don't want a sudden death in your family, come along to the office, and account for the possession of those diamonds." ”

“ Mr. Engstroem had a very good time in Paris and Berlin, while the cutters and polishers of Amsterdam were making his diamonds ready to adorn the ample charms of his expectant spouse. Then, when they were ready, he went and fetched them and took them to Paris to be set. And so at length it came to pass that he found himself on the outward-bound steamer at Southampton, with between twenty and thirty thousand pounds' worth of really magnificent jewellery stowed away in the depths of his portmanteau. ”

“ If he caught Salter with nothing but the schlenters on him, he would be the laughing-stock of the camp, and if he let him go through with something like a £15,000 packet of diamonds—which he felt perfectly certain he had planted somewhere—his reputation would be ruined and his dismissal certain. It was a desperate game, and Inspector Lipinzki was prepared to take desperate measures to win. ”

“ To the added amazement of everyone in the room, Seth Salter burst into a loud laugh, and said, without moving out of the line of fire:
"Waal, boss, I did think you had a better eye for klips than that. D'you fancy I'd be such an almighty sucker as to—good Lord, man, can't you see they're all schlenters? There's no law agin carrying them round, I reckon. Here, take 'em, and see for yourself. There's plenty of good judges in the room to help you."
A very brief examination satisfied the disgusted inspector that the astute Yankee had once more turned the laugh against him. ”

“ That was too much for the inspector, and his long bottled-up wrath suddenly flared out.
"Shortage, damn it, sir! You're a nice one to talk about shortage, Mr. Salter. You know as well as I do that there's about fifteen thousand short of a month's average on De Beers and Kimberley returns, and you know a big sight better than I do where the stones have gone to. But we'll have you yet. You're wide and you're deep, but you're not quite the cleverest man on earth, and when we do get you—"
"Well, why'n thunder don't you, boss?" ”

“ He was sitting, as usual, on the seat behind the driver, and just as the boy turned round and whispered in a frightened way: "P'lice, baas, better pull up, eh? might get shot," he pointed his revolver at him, and said in a low but very business-like tone:
"You yellow swine, you've sold me! Now you whip them horses up, and make 'em go for all they're worth. By thunder, you shall drive to Freetown or Glory to-night, for if I see you pull those reins, I'll blow the top of your ugly head off, just so sure as you'll never see the other side of Jordan. Whip up now! ”

“ If I had all the wealth of De Beers' now it wouldn't be any use to me; and to-night a new fear came to me—that if this goes on much longer I shall go mad, really mad, and in my delirium rob myself of my revenge on you by letting out where I hid it.
"'Now, listen, Lomas has gone. He is beyond your reach. He has changed his name—his very identity. I have sent him, by different posts and to different names and addresses, two letters. One is a plan and the other is a key to it. With those two pieces of paper he can find the diamond. Without them you can hunt for a century and never go near it. ”

“ At last we got to look upon her so much as the good angel of the camp that we decided to put the diamond safe in her hut, believing that neither man nor spirit would ever think of stealing it out of there. ”

“ If that happens, I shall not have served twelve months of my sentence before the markets of the world will be flooded with diamonds such as the mines of Kimberley never have produced and never will. They shall be so cheap that every servant girl shall be able to blaze with them if she likes, and when they are as cheap as, or cheaper than, their imitations, I fancy you will find the monopoly of De Beers as unsaleable a commodity as the diamonds which it then won't pay to produce. ”

“ I said, with a decided thrill of pleasurable anticipation, for I felt sure that now, if ever, I was going to get to the bottom of the great mystery. "Everybody in camp seems to have a different version of it, and, of course, everyone seems to think that if he had only had the management of the case, the mystery would have been solved long ago."
"It is invariably the case," said the inspector, with another of his quiet, pleasant smiles, "that everyone can do work better than those whose reputation depends upon the doing of it. ”

“ He happened to look at them before he threw them away, and as he did so a sound something like what the mule was making came from his throat. The pebbles were diamonds of all sizes and colours, and in his two hands there he probably held a 'hundred thousand pounds' worth. He flung them away with a cry that it would not have done anyone much good to hear. What were all the diamonds in the world worth in comparison to half a pint of water? ”

“ We'd agreed, after an uneasy sort of discussion, that Monkey Joe, as being the one to bring the news, should have the honour of handing her out and bidding her welcome in the name of the camp. Joe, for all his queer shape, was, or had been, a bit of a gentleman, and we'd made him cook up and repeat five or six times to us as neat a little how-d'ye-do as a duchess could have expected. It missed fire when the time came, and, if there hadn't been a lady present, Joe would have had to fight the crowd before he'd have been forgiven, supposing he'd survived. ”

“ He possessed nearly two hundred pounds, and, as he believed, a sweetheart who would be as faithful as she was good and pretty. All Africa was open to him, and there were even bigger prizes to be drawn in the fascinating lottery of diamond digging than there had been in the rosiest days of the Victorian and Californian gold-fields.
For all that, he didn't like the idea of being beaten, and still less did he like the idea of leaving Kimberley without taking his sweetheart with him, as he had hoped to do when they had plighted their troth some six months before. ”

“ Frank Ridley and Joshua Mosenstein watched the millionaire's changing face narrowly as he read. When they saw that he had finished, Ridley said quietly:
"I can find that kaffir if necessary, Mr. Mosenstein. Of course, the Diamond Law does not hold good in this country, but the laws as to conspiracy and dealing in stolen goods do. If De Beers prosecuted, they would find my evidence worth buying. Jossey here has done his time, and could make a clean breast of it without fear; and so the only one who could be touched would be—"
"Oh, that'll do!" ”

“ Day after day, week after week, and month after month the game went on in silence. We met almost every day. His credit had been completely restored at De Beers'. Lomas, his connection and, as I firmly believed, his confederate, had been, through his influence, sent on a mission to England, and when he went I confess to you that I thought the game was up—that Marsden had somehow managed to recover the diamond, and that Lomas had taken it beyond our reach. ”

“ At the same moment it flashed across Tom's half-clouded mind that water is often found beneath the dry beds of vanished African streams. He cut his hand loose, flung himself down on the sand, and began to dig with his knife feebly but desperately. The mule, meanwhile, began scraping with her fore-hoofs, and this encouraged him to go on. He broke the sand up with the knife-blade, and scooped it out with his hands. Presently the knife-blade began to rattle and clink against pebbles in the sand, and when the hole was about a foot deep there were more stones than sand. ”

“ There is no need of further explanation of the all too brief intimacy which followed our introduction than the statement of the fact that the greatest South African detective of his day was after all a man as well as a detective, and hence not only justifiably proud of the many brilliant achievements which illustrated his career, but also by no means loth that some day the story of them should, with all due and proper precautions and reservations, be told to a wider and possibly less prejudiced audience than the motley and migratory population of the camp as it was in his day. ”

“ Miss Colegate was a young lady of excellent preservation but somewhat uncertain age She might have been a girl of twenty-four with an indifferent complexion, or a woman of thirty-five with a good one for that age; but she was stylish, smart, well-informed, and of irreproachable manners. More than this the most exacting man could hardly expect for the purposes of a steamboat flirtation, and Herr Ulrich was amply satisfied. So, too, was the young lady, more so, in fact, than she would have been had she known of the existence of the hostess of the "Golden Star." ”

“ Going strong, eh?"
"Pretty well, Mr. Mosenstein," he replied, with a quick look up and down the street. "Returns are looking up again. We've had some very pretty finds the last day or two."
"Oh, glad to hear it, even from a man who wastes his opportunities as idiotically as you do. Anything particularly choice?"
"Well, yes. Are you doing anything in second-hand boots just now, Mr. Mosenstein?"
It may here be conveniently explained that the gentleman with whom young Ridley had thus fallen into conversation, was in those days known in camp as Mickey Mosenstein. ”

“ As Loo Chai imparted this apparently irrelevant piece of information, he slowly waved one hand towards the mongrel on the sheepskin, and smiled blandly as he added: "And velly good chop, too, I tink."
"What! five hundred pounds for a bloomin' tyke, and a mighty ugly one at that. What's the good of pulling my leg like that when we're supposed to be talking strict business; what the blathes do I want with your dog?"
Mr. Löwenfeldt asked the question with an air of disgusted indignation, of which the placid heathen took not the slightest notice. ”

“ Everyone's here to make it, and everyone, whether he's an honest man or a thief, is bound to uphold everything that protects it. If you have money you can do as you please, but if you haven't you might as well try to hold up the next rockslip on your back as try to work against it. If I was to take it out of either Macadam or Grünstein in the way you mean, there wouldn't be a man in camp to put his hand out to save me from being lynched the next minute, though there isn't a kaffir or a kopje-walloper on the Fields who doesn't see the swindle. ”

“ There were no other claims worth having within reach of his means, and he could only remain in camp by taking a berth as overseer or something of that sort, which, of course, would offer no prospect of that sudden rise to wealth which, in common with every other digger on the Fields, he had so confidently anticipated, and which alone could realise the hopes that he cherished on a certain subject which lay very near to his heart. ”

“ With slowly widening eyes and sinking heart, the man of many millions and more ambitions read the cutting. It ran thus:
"The King of the Belgians has just indulged his well-known taste for gems by the addition to his already priceless collection of a magnificent rose-coloured diamond, weighing nearly thirty carats in its cut state. His Majesty is rumoured to have paid the enormous price of a thousand pounds a carat to the Amsterdam merchant of whom he bought it. In colour and water it is the exact counterpart of the famous rose-diamond in the De Beers collection, but it is much larger. ”

“ To have taken the stones out one by one would only have multiplied the risk of discovery and ruin by the number of them, for the possession of a single illicit diamond would have meant disgrace and penal servitude just as certainly as would the discovery on his person of the whole twenty or thirty thousand pounds worth of gems—the very pick of the Kimberley mine output for nearly six months past. ”

“ There he was Augustus Löwenfeldt, licensed diamond broker, stock and share dealer, and all the rest of it, a man with a reputation to lose, as reputations went then in Kimberley, and with a future before him; but here in Loo Chai's back sitting-room he was just what the heathen was, neither better nor worse, an I.D.B., a "fence," as they would have called him in his native Whitechapel, and, like him, a potential felon, and so there was no need for any overstrained etiquette between them. ”

“ As week after week went by, the outrages committed by the mysterious Border Gang, as the unknown desperadoes, who had so suddenly invaded the hitherto comparatively peaceful frontiers of the Free State and Griqualand West, very soon came to be called, seemed to increase in number and daring. ”

“ He was himself getting to be a rich man now, and after Tom's departure he had succeeded in ingratiating himself with Miss Carnegie's father, even if he had not made much progress with the young lady herself. Still, granted that the more favoured suitor should vanish, a mere adventurer and a practically ruined man, into the wilderness never to return, there were no reasonable reasons why present wealth and respectability should not ultimately triumph over absent uncertainty, however romantic it might be. ”

“ Tom Burrows knew this, and that was why he had tied himself to the saddle. The mule was the better animal now, and her instinct had to take the place of the human reason that had failed. If she reached the water he would reach it, if not—well, it would do her no injury if he had to cut her throat to gain strength enough to struggle on a little farther. ”

“ Yes, it is a pitiless trade this of ours, and professional thief-catchers can't afford to have much to do with mercy, and yet I tell you that as I watched that man day after day, with the fever growing hotter in his blood and the unbearable anxiety tearing ever harder and harder at his nerves, I pitied him—yes, I pitied him so much that I even found myself growing impatient for the end to come. ”

“ A millionaire's wife should be above suspicion."
"And I want a million, too," chimed in Jossey, "same way as Frank wants his. And what's more, Mickey Mosenstein," he went on, shaking his finger in his face, "as you disgraced me by sending me to the Breakwater for your crime, you must restore my credit in the eyes of the society that I mean to go into now by making your wife let me marry that pretty little sister Rebecca of hers. I 'ave loved her all my life and she was always fond of me, and she'll have me when I'm a millionaire. I daresay you can spare her a decent marriage portion." ”