‘Pretty little place.’
Having thus set the seal of his approval upon Dartmouth harbour, he replaced the cigar and looked about him with the air of a man pleased with himself, his appearance, his surroundings and life generally.
As regards the first of these, Mr Isaac Pointz was a man of fifty-eight, in good health and condition, with perhaps a slight tendency to liver. He was not exactly stout, but comfortable looking, and yachting costume, which he wore at the moment, is not the most kindly of attires for a middle-aged man with a tendency to embonpoint. Mr Pointz was very well turned out—correct to every crease and button—his dark and slightly oriental face beaming out under the peak of his yachting cap. As regards his surroundings, these may be taken to mean his companions: his partner Mr Leo Stein, Sir George and Lady Marroway, an American business acquaintance—Mr Samuel Leathern—and his schoolgirl daughter, Eve, Mrs Rustington, and Evan Llewellyn.
The party had just come ashore from Mr Pointz’s yacht, the Merrimaid. In the morning they had watched the yacht racing and they had now come ashore to join for a while in the fun of the fair—Coconut Shies, Fat Ladies, the Human Spider and the Merry-go-rounds. It is hardly to be doubted that these delights were relished most by Eve Leathern. When Mr Pointz finally suggested that it was time to adjourn to the Royal George for dinner, hers was the only dissentient voice.
‘Oh, Mr Pointz, I did so want to have my fortune told by the Real Gipsy in the Caravan.’
Mr Pointz had doubts of the essential realness of the gipsy in question, but he gave indulgent assent.
‘Eve’s just crazy about the fair,’ said her father apologetically. ‘But don’t you pay any attention if you want to be getting along.’
‘Plenty of time,’ said Mr Pointz benignantly. ‘Let the little lady enjoy herself. I’ll take you on at darts, Leo.’
‘Twenty-five and over wins a prize,’ chanted the man in charge of the darts in a high nasal voice.
‘Bet you a fiver my total score beats yours,’ said Pointz.
‘Done,’ said Stein with alacrity.
The two men were soon whole-heartedly engaged in their battle.
Lady Marroway murmured to Evan Llewellyn:
‘Eve is not the only child in the party.’
Llewellyn smiled assent but somewhat absently. He had been absentminded all that day. Once or twice his answers had been wide of the point.
Pamela Marroway drew away from him and said to her husband:
‘That young man has something on his mind.’
Sir George murmured, ‘Or someone?’
And his glance swept quickly over Janet Rustington.
Lady Marroway frowned a little. She was a tall woman exquisitely groomed. The scarlet of her fingernails was matched by the dark red coral studs in her ears. Her eyes were dark and watchful. Sir George affected a careless ‘hearty English gentleman’ manner, but his bright blue eyes held the same watchful look as his wife’s.
Isaac Pointz and Leo Stein were Hatton Garden diamond merchants. Sir George and Lady Marroway came from a different world—the world of Antibes and Juan-les-Pins—of golf at St Jean-de-Luz—of bathing from the rocks at Madeira in the winter.
In outward seeming they were as the lilies that toiled not, neither did they spin. But perhaps this was not quite true. There are divers ways of toiling and also of spinning.
‘Here’s the kid back again,’ said Evan Llewellyn to Mrs Rustington.
He was a dark young man; there was a faintly hungry wolfish look about him which some women found attractive.
It was difficult to say whether Mrs Rustington found him so. She did not wear her heart on her sleeve. She had married young—and the marriage had ended in disaster in less than a year. Since that time it was difficult to know what Janet Rustington thought of anyone or anything; her manner was always the same, charming but completely aloof.
Eve Leathern came dancing up to them, her lank fair hair bobbing excitedly. She was fifteen, an awkward child, but full of vitality.
‘I’m going to be married by the time I’m seventeen,’ she exclaimed breathlessly. ‘To a very rich man, and we’re going to have six children, and Tuesdays and Thursdays are my lucky days, and I ought always to wear green or blue, and an emerald is my lucky stone, and—’
‘Why, pet, I think we ought to be getting along,’ said her father.
Mr Leathern was a tall, fair, dyspeptic-looking man with a somewhat mournful expression.
Mr Pointz and Mr Stein were turning away from the darts. Mr Pointz was chuckling and Mr Stein was looking somewhat rueful.
‘It’s all a matter of luck,’ he was saying.
Mr Pointz slapped his pocket cheerfully.
‘Took a tenner off you all right. Skill, my boy, skill. My old Dad was a first class darts player. Well, folks, let’s be getting along. Had your fortune told, Eve? Did they tell you to beware of a dark man?’
‘A dark woman,’ corrected Eve. ‘She’s got a cast in her eye and she’ll be real mean to me if I give her the chance. And I’m to be married by the time I’m seventeen …’
She ran on happily as the party steered its way to the Royal George.
Dinner had been ordered beforehand by the forethought of Mr Pointz, and a bowing waiter led them upstairs and into a private room on the first floor. Here a round table was ready laid. The big bulging bow-window gave on the harbour square and was open. The noise of the fair came up to them, and the raucous squeal of three roundabouts each blaring a different tune.
‘Best shut that if we’re to hear ourselves speak,’ observed Mr Pointz drily, and suited the action to the word.
They took their seats round the table and Mr Pointz beamed affectionately at his guests. He felt he was doing them well and he liked to do people well. His eyes rested on one after another. Lady Marroway—fine woman. Not quite the goods, of course, he knew that—he was perfectly well aware that what he had called all his life the crème de la crème would have very little to do with the Marroways—but then the crème de la crème was supremely unaware of his own existence. Anyway, Lady Marroway was a damned smart looking woman—and he didn’t mind if she did rook him a bit at Bridge. Didn’t enjoy it quite so much from Sir George. Fishy eye the fellow had. Brazenly on the make. But he wouldn’t make too much out of Isaac Pointz. He’d see to that all right.
Old Leathern wasn’t a bad fellow—long-winded, of course, like most Americans—fond of telling endless long stories. And he had that disconcerting habit of requiring precise information. What was the population of Dartmouth? In what year had the Naval College been built? And so on. Expected his host to be a kind of walking Baedeker. Eve was a nice cheery kid—he enjoyed chaffing her. Voice rather like a corncrake, but she had all her wits about her. A bright kid.
Young Llewellyn—he seemed a bit quiet. Looked as though he had something on his mind. Hard up probably. These writing fellows usually were. Looked as though he might be keen on Janet Rustington. A nice woman; attractive and clever, too. But she didn’t ram her writing down your throat. Highbrow sort of stuff she wrote, but you’d never think it to hear her talk.
And old Leo! He wasn’t getting younger or thinner. And, blissfully unaware that his partner was at that moment thinking precisely the same thing about him, Mr Pointz corrected Mr Leathern as to pilchards being connected with Devon and not Cornwall, and prepared to enjoy his dinner.
‘Mr Pointz?’ said Eve when plates of hot mackerel had been set before them and the waiters had left the room.
‘Yes, young lady?’
‘Have you got that big diamond with you right now? The one you showed us last night and said you always took about with you.’
Mr Pointz chuckled.
‘That’s right. My mascot, I call it. Yes, I’ve got it with me all right.’
‘I think that’s awfully dangerous. Somebody might get it away from you in the crowd at the fair.’
‘Not they,’ said Mr Pointz. ‘I’ll take good care of that.’
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‘But they might,’ insisted Eve. ‘You’ve got gangsters in England as well as we have, haven’t you?’
‘They won’t get the Morning Star,’ said Mr Pointz. ‘To begin with it’s in a special inner pocket. And anyway—old Pointz knows what he’s about. Nobody’s going to steal the Morning Star.’
Eve laughed. ‘Bet I could steal it!’
‘I bet you couldn’t,’ Mr Pointz twinkled back at her.
‘Well, I bet I could. I was thinking about it last night in bed—after you’d handed it round the table for us all to look at. I thought of a real cute way to steal it.’
‘And what’s that?’
Eve put her head on one side, her fair hair wagged excitedly.
‘I’m not telling you—now. What do you bet I couldn’t?’
Memories of Mr Pointz’s youth rose in his mind.
‘Half a dozen pairs of gloves,’ he said.
‘Gloves,’ cried Eve disgustedly. ‘Who wears gloves?’
‘Well, do you wear silk stockings?’
‘Do I not? My best pair laddered this morning.’
‘Very well then. Half a dozen pairs of the finest silk stockings—’
‘Oo-er,’ said Eve blissfully. ‘And what about you?’
‘Well, I need a new tobacco pouch.’
‘Right. That’s a deal. Not that you’ll get your tobacco pouch. Now I’ll tell you what you’ve got to do. You must hand it round like you did last night—’
She broke off as two waiters entered to remove the plates. When they were starting on the next course of chicken, Mr Pointz said:—
‘Remember this, young woman, if this is to represent a real theft, I should send for the police and you’d be searched.’
‘That’s quite O.K. by me. You needn’t be quite so lifelike as to bring the police into it. But Lady Marroway or Mrs Rustington can do all the searching you like.’
‘Well, that’s that, then,’ said Mr Pointz. ‘What are you setting up to be? A first-class jewel thief?’
‘I might take to it as a career—if it really paid.’
‘If you got away with the Morning Star it would pay you. Even after recutting, that stone would be worth over thirty thousand pounds.’
‘My!’ said Eve impressed. ‘What’s that in dollars?’
Lady Marroway uttered an exclamation.
‘And you carry such a stone about with you?’ she said reproachfully. ‘Thirty thousand pounds.’ Her darkened eyelashes quivered.
Mrs Rustington said softly, ‘It’s a lot of money … And then there’s the fascination of the stone itself … It’s beautiful.’
‘Just a piece of carbon,’ said Evan Llewellyn.
‘I’ve always understood it’s the “fence” that’s the difficulty in jewel robberies,’ said Sir George. ‘He takes the lion’s share—eh, what?’
‘Come on,’ said Eve excitedly. ‘Let’s start. Take the diamond out and say what you said last night.’
Mr Leathern said in his deep melancholy voice:
‘I do apologize for my offspring. She gets kinder worked up.’
‘That’ll do, Pops,’ said Eve. ‘Now then, Mr Pointz—’
Smiling, Mr Pointz fumbled in an inner pocket. He drew something out. It lay on the palm of his hand, blinking in the light.
A diamond …
Rather stiffly, Mr Pointz repeated as far as he could remember his speech of the previous evening on the Merrimaid.
‘Perhaps you ladies and gentlemen would like to have a look at this? It’s an unusually beautiful stone. I call it the Morning Star and it’s by way of being my mascot—goes about with me everywhere. Like to see it?’
He handed it to Lady Marroway, who took it, exclaimed at its beauty and passed it to Mr Leathern, who said, ‘Pretty good. Yes, pretty good,’ in a somewhat artificial manner, and in his turn passed it to Llewellyn.
The waiters coming in at that moment there was a slight hitch in the proceedings. When they had gone again, Evan said ‘Very fine stone’ and passed it to Leo Stein, who did not trouble to make any comment but handed it quickly on to Eve.
‘How perfectly lovely!’ cried Eve in a high affected voice.
‘Oh!’ she gave a cry of consternation as it slipped from her hand. ‘I’ve dropped it.’
She pushed her chair back and got down to grope under the table. Sir George at her right, bent also. A glass got swept off the table in the confusion. Stein, Llewellyn and Mrs Rustington all helped in the search. Finally, Lady Marroway joined in.
Only Mr Pointz took no part in the proceedings. He remained in his seat sipping his wine and smiling sardonically.
‘Oh dear,’ said Eve still in her artificial manner. ‘How dreadful! Where can it have rolled to? I can’t find it anywhere.’
One by one the assistant searchers rose to their feet.
‘It’s disappeared all right, Pointz,’ said Sir George smiling.
‘Very nicely done,’ said Mr Pointz, nodding approval. ‘You’d make a very good actress, Eve. Now the question is, have you hidden it somewhere or have you got it on you?’
‘Search me,’ said Eve dramatically.
Mr Pointz’s eye sought out a large screen in the corner of the room.
He nodded towards it, and then looked at Lady Marroway and Mrs Rustington.
‘If you ladies will be so good—’
‘Why, certainly,’ said Lady Marroway smiling.
The two women rose.
Lady Marroway said:—
‘Don’t be afraid, Mr Pointz. We’ll vet her properly.’
The three went behind the screen.
The room was hot. Evan Llewellyn hung open the window. A newsvendor was passing.
Evan threw down a coin and the man threw up a paper.
Llewellyn unfolded it.
‘Hungarian situation’s none too good,’ he said.
‘That the local rag?’ asked Sir George. ‘There’s a horse I’m interested in ought to have run at Haldon today—Natty Boy.’
‘Leo,’ said Mr Pointz. ‘Lock the door. We don’t want those damned waiters popping in and out till this business is over.’
‘Natty Boy won three to one,’ said Evan.
‘Rotten odds,’ said Sir George.
‘Mostly Regatta news,’ said Evan, glancing over the sheet.
The three young women came out from the screen.
‘Not a sign of it,’ said Mary Rustington.
‘You can take it from me she hasn’t got it on her,’ said Lady Marroway.
Mr Pointz thought he would be quite ready to take it from her. There was a grim tone in her voice and he felt no doubt that the search had been thorough.
‘Say, Eve, you haven’t swallowed it?’ asked Mr Leathern anxiously. ‘Because maybe that wouldn’t be too good for you.’
‘I’d have seen her do that,’ said Leo Stein quietly. ‘I was watching her. She didn’t put anything in her mouth.’
‘I couldn’t swallow a great thing all points like that,’ said Eve. She put her hands on her hips and looked at Mr Pointz. ‘What about it, big boy?’ she asked.
‘You stand over there where you are and don’t move,’ said that gentleman.
Between them, the men stripped the table and turned it upside down. Mr Pointz examined every inch of it. Then he transferred his attention to the chair on which Eve had been sitting and those on either side of her.
The thoroughness of the search left nothing to be desired. The other four men joined in and the women also. Eve Leathern stood by the wall near the screen and laughed with intense enjoyment.
Five minutes later Mr Pointz rose with a slight groan from his knees and dusted his trousers sadly. His pristine freshness was somewhat impaired.
‘Eve,’ he said, ‘I take off my hat to you. You’re the finest thing in jewel thieves I’ve ever come across. What you’ve done with that stone beats me. As far as I can see it must be in the room, as it isn’t on you. I give you best.’
‘Are the s
tockings mine?’ demanded Eve.
‘They’re yours, young lady.’
‘Eve, my child, where can you have hidden it?’ demanded Mrs Rustington curiously.
Eve pranced forward.
‘I’ll show you. You’ll all be just mad with yourselves.’
She went across to the side table where the things from the dinner table had been roughly stacked. She picked up her little black evening bag—
‘Right under your eyes. Right …’
Her voice, gay and triumphant, trailed off suddenly.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Oh …!’
‘What’s the matter, honey?’ said her father.
Eve whispered, ‘It’s gone! It’s gone …’
‘What’s all this?’ asked Pointz coming forward.
Eve turned to him impetuously.
‘It was like this. This bag of mine has a big paste stone in the middle of the clasp. It fell out last night and just when you were showing that diamond round I noticed that it was much the same size. And so I thought in the night what a good idea for a robbery it would be to wedge your diamond into the gap with a bit of plasticine. I felt sure nobody would ever spot it. That’s what I did tonight. First I dropped it—then went down after it with the bag in my hand, stuck it into the gap with a bit of plasticine which I had handy, put my bag on the table and went on pretending to look for the diamond. I thought it would be like the Purloined Letter—you know—lying there in full view under all your noses—and just looking like a common bit of rhinestone. And it was a good plan—none of you did notice.’
‘I wonder,’ said Mr Stein.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing,’ said Leo Stein.
Mr Pointz took the bag, looked at the empty hole with a fragment of plasticine still adhering to it and said slowly, ‘It may have fallen out. We’d better look again.’
The search was repeated, but this time it was a curiously silent business. An atmosphere of tension pervaded the room.
Finally everyone in turn gave it up. They stood looking at each other.
‘It’s not in this room,’ said Stein.
‘And nobody’s gone out,’ said Sir George significantly.
There was a moment’s pause. Eve burst into tears.