H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ He was a jeweler in a large way of business, but to-day is temporarily serving as cook somewhere in the Argonne until such time as he can be a jeweler again.
I met him first in Biarritz seven or eight years ago, and we at once became friends, for our tastes were sympathetic, and it was often a wonder to me that a man who loved an out-of-door life and all that goes with it in the form of movement and adventures could live cooped up in the Rue de la Paix, year in, year out, with little relaxation and no change to speak of. ”

“ I took passage up it in a Royal Mail steamer, a great white boat that seemed built for deep-sea service, but none too big for the Amazon where the Mauretania herself might navigate even a thousand miles from the mouth.
“And the forests forever and forever lining the banks, and the birds flying above the forests—birds that yelped like dogs and birds of all colors from snow to flame. It seemed a strange place for a man to come in search of a lost necklace! ”

“ We were seated in the office at the back of his shop and there in the midst of ledgers and papers and an atmosphere prosaic as the atmosphere of a bank he told me this story.
“Well,” said he, “it may seem a trifle dull, this life of mine, but I assure you there are moments in the life of a jeweler when he gets all the excitement and action he requires, especially when life stock is worth a couple of million francs, with a couple of thousand jewel thieves in Paris; men, more over, who have made a fine art of their business. ”

“ He had treated me as an equal, and I did not see myself standing before him as the figure of a prosecuting tradesman.
“Secondly, he had robbed me not of a necklace, but of an object in view. He had gained his object, I had lost, for a time, mine. No, it was a question of man to man, not of jeweler and thief. ”

“ I felt that I was doing the right thing—and then, again, beyond that, I felt that if I allowed this old man’s will the victory I would start in life handicapped by the sense of defeat and the knowledge that another man’s will was stronger than mine. ”

“ There civilization holds sway and the old laws of the different countries, Being the products of centuries of experience and practice, work of their own accord, so to speak, smoothly and meeting every requirement that may turn up. ”

“ He was not a scoundrel, simply a man who could not refuse; one of those genial southern souls, all sunlight, and to whom a promise signifies nothing.
“Well, I put up at an hotel in Biarritz and I saw. her majesty often at a great distance, but I did not see the promised letter from my deputy.
“There were some pleasant people in the hotel and among them there was an old gentleman, Don Pedro Gommera, with whom I struck up a close acquaintanceship. He was, as it afterward turned out, the owner of a rubber estate on the Amazon, a man very wealthy, but of the type of the old buccaneers. ”

“ There is nothing more curious than the fashions that come and go in precious stones, diamonds always excepted. Opals are, as you know, considered unlucky, and just then there had been a murder case or a divorce case or something of that nature in which opals had figured, so I suppose the grande dames of Paris and London were not buying ”