But they were exasperatingly faint, for Dawkins simply did not know what he wanted to happen. He could not picture himself with a hundred thousand pounds in the bank and nothing to do all day. His method of converting jewels into cash had been sufficiently worked out, to his mind, and the execution of it lay immediately before him. But after that, what? Mr. Dawkins did not know. Imprisonment, as penologists discover and announce daily, unfits one for liberty. Mr. Dawkins swore softly to himself and climbed back into bed again, to lie awake until the first daylight began to leak in through the window and the early factory whistles made themselves heard. The life of the lodging-house began to stir again, at last, and Mr. Dawkins sighed with relief and started to put on his trousers. A night he would long remember was finished, and a day, every detail of which he had thought out beforehand, was about to begin.
Mr. Dawkins paid his little bill, ignoring the landlady’s start of surprise at sight of his haggled hair and missing beard, and came out into the chill morning. A bus, crammed with early workers, took him through the City to the Strand, where he breakfasted at leisure and with some comfort. Next he called at a barber’s, and had himself smartened up. When the barber had finished with him he looked at himself long in the glass. What he saw was strange and unreal to him; he saw a man in the late thirties, his face bronzed and wrinkled, with hard lines round the fierce blue eyes. The mouth, tight shut, would have told a disinterested observer of profound suffering and of grim determination. The upper lip was adorned with a neatly clipped mustache of a golden tawny, and the hair was parted at the side and brushed smoothly away from the knotted forehead. What surprised Dawkins most was the fact that the barber’s attentions had made him look quite like a gentleman, as he put it to himself—a sunburned face and a tall figure and a clipped mustache is the normal English visualization of a gentleman; although he realized how incongruous his well-groomed head looked compared with his slop clothes.
From the barber’s Mr. Dawkins proceeded to a printer’s, where he ordered some plain visiting cards—“Mr. Henry Dawkins”—to be prepared at once, and from the printer’s Mr. Dawkins took his way to a vast and well-advertised gentleman’s outfitters, where commissionaires and shop-walkers received him dubiously. But Mr. Dawkins ignored their doubts, and proceeded to select a complete new set of clothes. In the tailoring department the fitter ran an appreciative eye over Mr. Dawkins’ tall stout figure, and justified the proud boast of his firm’s advertisements by finding at once a suit which fitted him miraculously, forty-two-inch chest and all. He was so pleased that he did not notice the anxious way in which Mr. Dawkins kept watch on his coat while it was off—there was a big parcel of precious stones in one pocket thereof. Mr. Dawkins hesitated a moment over blue and brown and gray, and finally chose navy blue as neatest and least conspicuous. They showed him pretty colored shirts and collars of blue and brown, but Mr. Dawkins chose white for the same reason, and a black tie, and medium weight underwear, and neat black shoes and socks, and a gray soft hat and light overcoat. Gloves and walking stick completed his purchases, and he suffered the assistants to shut him up in a mirror-lined dressing-room to change.
And when the change was completed, and Mr. Dawkins had his twenty pounds’ worth of clothing on his back, he looked in the mirror with more astonishment than ever. The well-fitting clothes, despite their brand-newness, set off his burly figure to perfection, and the clipped mustache and neat head no longer seemed incongruous. Mr. Dawkins, hat, stick and gloves in hand, and light overcoat open down the front, with his air of assurance, heightened by his powerful frame, looked every inch a man of wealth and position—a fact curiously reflected in the changed behavior of shop assistants and commissionaires.
Leaving his other clothes in a parcel to be called for, Mr. Dawkins strolled back to the printer’s and collected his visiting cards, and two doors away he bought a card-case. Then he took his way leisurely toward where City and West End meet, and turned northward. A reference to a telephone directory reassured him that the man he was seeking was still in business at his old address; even the most carefully made plans ignore some possibilities of error, and Mr. Dawkins realized that he had made all these preparations for the impressing of Mr. Carver’s office boy without finding out first whether or not Mr. Carver still lived. It might have been serious, but as it happened it was all right.
Mr. Dawkins walked calmly into Mr. Carver’s office. He was about to put his fortune to the test, and he was conscious of a rise in blood-pressure and a quickened pulse, but he held himself in with an iron hand and betrayed no trace of emotion as he asked for “Mr. Carver?” when the office boy asked his business. He handed over a card nonchalantly, sat down in the proffered chair, and gazed calmly about him.
Dawkins was aware of his good fortune in having once been a pawnbroker; it was in consequence of this experience that he knew about the seamier side of the jeweler’s trade; he knew who had good reputations and who had bad, and who might have a bad reputation if more were known about them. Mr. Adam Carver, diamond merchant, belonged to this last category.
“Mr. Carver says will you come up, sir?” said the office boy. Mr. Dawkins’ plain visiting card had of course given no hint of his business, and his name conveyed little. What had turned the scale had been Mr. Dawkins’ twenty pounds’ worth of clothes and the office boy’s report upon them. Mr. Dawkins had not the look of a tiresome commercial traveler.
“Good morning, Mr.—er Dawkins,” said Mr. Carver, with a last glance at the card.
“Good morning,” said Mr. Dawkins, sitting in the armchair on the other side of the desk.
The two looked at each other curiously, although Carver had the advantage because, of course, Dawkins had the light on his face.
“And what can I do for you?” asked Mr. Carver.
For answer Mr. Dawkins produced from his vest pocket a wisp of tissue-paper and handed it over; when Mr. Carver opened it he revealed a large, white, brilliant-cut diamond. Carver went through a series of actions curiously reminiscent of Mr. Simpson’s the night before. He peered at the diamond, hefted it, handled it and put it down again.
“Brazilian,” he said. “Good water. Old-fashioned cut. What about it?”
“I’ve got a lot to sell,” said Mr. Dawkins.
Mr. Carver’s eyebrows went up a shade.
“A lot?”
“A good many thousand pounds’ worth. A hundred and fifty, perhaps. Perhaps more.”
Mr. Carver’s eyebrows rose higher still, until there seemed to be a danger of their colliding with the hair on the top of his head—and there was not much room between them at the best of times.
“And do you want me to buy ‘em?”
“I should like you to sell ‘em for me.”
Mr. Carver was dazzlingly interested but exceedingly cautious.
“It doesn’t sound the sort of thing I could touch,” he said in surly fashion. “What made you come to me about it, anyway?”
Dawkins was as tactful as he knew how—he had anticipated this question a month back.
“Used to be in the trade myself,” he said. “I’m a third cousin or something of the Dawkins, but we had a row three years ago. Perhaps you heard about it? No? Anyway, if we hadn’t had the row I’d have gone to him, but as it is I thought you’d be the best man for the business.”
Mr. Carver was mollified, but his suspicions were still very acute.
“Where did you get all this stuff from, then?”
Dawkins in reply told him the truth. That was one of the best things about Dawkins’ character. If there was only one course practicable, he took it without flinching and made the best of it.
“It’s pirate treasure,” he said calmly.
“What?”
“It’s pirate treasure, just like the stuff you read about. We got it off an island in a small boat on the quiet.”
Mr. Carver continued to make interrogative noises difficult to write in print.
“Of course,” said Dawkins,
putting his cards on the table with unembarrassed simplicity, “it was a bit of a steal. The government which owns the island—there is no need for you to know which—would want a good big slice of it if they ever heard about it. But it’s months now since we got it away, and we know that they haven’t heard a word. There’d been lots of unlucky searches for it before us—in fact we think there is one going on now. So it ought to be easy enough to get rid of it through quite ordinary channels. It’s not as though it were modern stuff. No one except me and my partners knows what it is—police and people like that aren’t on the lookout for it.”
Mr. Carver was almost dumb for a moment, which just showed how much his emotions had been touched.
“Well,” he said at length, “what—what have you got?”
“That’s a good sample,” said Dawkins, nodding at the diamond on the table. “There are about fifty as good as that. A couple of hundred a bit smaller. All sorts of cut and color. Some of it’s old Indian stuff, as far as I can make out. You know the kind of thing—you find ‘em on the market sometimes. They’ll want recutting before they’re any good for nowadays. People’ll think some rajah or some one is getting rid of a bit of his stock. That’s not a bad idea.”
Deep need—and a pure artistic interest in addition—was making Dawkins positively eloquent.
“Besides that,” went on Dawkins, “there’s a couple of dozen uncut stones, big ‘uns mainly, but God only knows what they’re worth, I don’t. And about twenty-five rubies —Burma, I think, and pretty good—and a few emeralds and some pretty poor turquoises.”
Dawkins’ eyes were fixed on Carver’s face, and he could see the signs of a burning interest, despite all Carver’s efforts to keep his features immobile. But Carver was still suspicious; he could not help thinking that all this might only be an ingenious plot to inveigle him into disposing for other people of property obtained in some fashion more criminal than that described.
“Let’s see some more of them,” he said.
Dawkins produced from his pocket another little parcel.
“There you are,” he said. “That’s one of the big uncut ones. And that’s Indian, I think. So’s that. That one isn’t. And that’s the best of the rubies.”
Mr. Carver peered at the six stones which now lay before him. All of them seemed perfectly sound, and he could not recall any similar stones which had been stolen lately.
“D’you mind if I show ‘em to one of my men?” he asked.
“Not a bit,” said Dawkins. “But I wouldn’t like ‘em to go out of this room until we’re more agreed about it.”
Carver almost indicated approval as he picked up his desk telephone.
“Send Mr. Solomon to me,” he snapped. “And bring me the trade list. You know the one I mean.”
So did Dawkins. What Mr. Carver was asking for was the confidential list of stolen property circulated among merchants of precious stones, great and small.
The office boy came in with the list on the heels of Mr. Solomon. Mr. Carver’s hand idly concealed the stones as he took the list, and remained there until the office boy had vanished. Not till then did Mr. Carver address Mr. Solomon.
“Here,” he said. “I want you to look these things over. Get my instruments out of that case by the window there and find out all about them. Specific gravity and refractive index and all. Buck up.”
Mr. Solomon bustled across to the window with the stones; Mr. Carver plunged into his confidential list; Mr. Dawkins leaned back in his chair, apparently calm but ready for anything. The room grew quieter and quieter, the silence only disturbed by the ticking of the clock and the slight noise made by Solomon as he fiddled with the jeweler’s balance and the specific gravity liquids and the other instruments. Soon Solomon walked across and laid on Mr. Carver’s desk one of the stones with a slip of paper.
“H’m,” said Mr. Carver, reading the figures on it and clearly searching for confirmation in his list. The office boy brought in a card.
“Can’t see him. Busy,” said Mr. Carver. “Busy to everybody.”
One by one Solomon brought back the stones and the figures obtained from them.
“Right. Thanks. That’ll do,” said Carver when the last stone had been weighed and measured and examined, and Solomon took his quiet way out of the room.
“D’you think I’m telling the truth now?” asked Dawkins.
Carver looked as if he did not, but he was nearly convinced by now that, truth or not, the business which Dawkins was offering him was not so entirely illegal as to be dangerous. He thought that perhaps, with a sufficient inducement, he might dabble in it. Should trouble develop he seemed to be sufficiently safeguarded to be able to prove innocence of intention.
“What are you offering me? Halves?” he asked.
“No,” said Mr. Dawkins, and he said it in such a manner as to prohibit Mr. Carver entirely from expressing discontent at this flat contradiction.
“One-third commission. Thirty-three and one-third per cent. Three times the usual rate,” said Mr. Dawkins. He had settled that mentally a long time ago. He did not much mind (such was his nature) whether he had a hundred thousand pounds or one hundred and fifty thousand, but all the same he disliked the idea of being robbed by Mr. Carver. The higher the rate of commission, the smaller the inducement to theft. And—this bulked large in Mr. Dawkins’ mind—if he was able to show that he had paid Carver a larger commission than usual it would give Carver a motive for avoiding police attentions—such a suspicious circumstance would incriminate Carver as well, if any one were incriminated at all. And Dawkins, for all his apparent confidence, was not absolutely sure of his ground, although he knew—none better—that there was no mutual extradition treaty between Great Britain and the Rainless Republic, so that he was at least safe from Eguia.
Carver was thinking hard, too. One-third of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds was fifty thousand—quite a useful little bit. And there would be pickings, private rebates, as well. Business was slack, and the five thousand a year he earned was not nearly enough for his needs. There was, of course, something fishy about the business, but it might only be the fishiness of which Dawkins had told him. Certainly none of the gems shown him had any known history, so that he was covered from the law. And the fishier the business was, the less likely was Dawkins to complain about any of Carver’s pickings and stealings, so that was all right.
“It’ll take me a year, pretty nearly, to get rid of ’em all,” said Mr. Carver, wavering.
“Nothing very surprising about that,” answered Mr. Dawkins in complete agreement.
“Your partners likely to raise trouble at all?” asked Carver.
“No. Absolutely certain they won’t,” said Dawkins. “They don’t know anything about this side of the business, and they’ve left it all to me.”
“And where’s the rest of the stuff?”
“In safe-deposit,” said Mr. Dawkins, with his hand resting upon it.
“Well, tell me the name of this island you got ‘em from.”
“Not me,” said Dawkins. “I’ve answered all the questions I’m going to this morning.”
And with that the two men sat and looked each other up and down, one of them all a-flutter with the prospect of fifty thousand pounds’ profit and fear of the unknown, the other expressionless, stupid and careless. Mr. Carver felt for an instant as if he were in the grip of one huge and soulless piece of machinery. Dawkins took a fresh grip on his hat and stick and gloves, and the gesture plunged Mr. Carver into a fresh fit of panic.
“Let’s go over it again,” said Mr. Carver desperately.
Then the haggling began; not haggling over the amount of the commission (Mr. Carver saw that it was futile to attempt to obtain more), but haggling over the terms of the agreement—indeed, Mr. Carver began by refusing to entertain the idea of any agreement and by expressing his dislike to putting anything on paper. But Dawkins insisted, with few words and no gestures, and against his immobility all Mr. Carver?
??s impassioned gestures and unhappy rhetoric beat in vain. Mr. Carver in the end fell back upon the last resort of the weak; he asked for time to “think it over.” Dawkins nearly yielded, but that strong sense of the matter of fact which enchained him recalled him to reality, and Mr. Carver, weak with emotion, gave in. A stenographer came in reply to Mr. Carver’s pressing of a button, and retired with a shorthand script of an agreement between Mr. Adam Carver of the one part, and Mr. Henry Dawkins of the other part, regarding the supply and sale of precious stones. That done, Mr. Carver hardly noticed having to hand over to Mr. Dawkins two further documents—one a receipt for five diamonds, as listed, and one ruby, and the other a check for the not inconsiderable amount of one hundred pounds sterling, for which in return Dawkins gave his receipt, as an advance payment. Mr. Dawkins felt quite a little thrill as he folded up this last and put it in his pocket.
“Thank God I’m not a limited company,” said Mr. Carver feebly, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “There’d be hell to pay with the auditors over this business if I were.”
Mr. Dawkins said nothing at all.
Chapter IX
Mr. Dawkins experienced only a few hours’ real activity after that interview for some days. He had to open a bank-account, put his jewels in a safe-deposit, buy himself a further supply of clothes, and establish himself in a hotel. Then at last he experienced a feeling of comparative ease and security; for the first time in fifteen weeks he was not carrying all those precious stones on his person. The first evening he dined leisurely and at ease, went to bed early and slept almost well. The second day dragged a little, and when the third came the novelty had entirely worn off. The fourth day was Sunday, and Sunday in a London hotel is enough to wring the soul of the most sedate of men should he be friendless. Mr. Dawkins obtained the exercise for which he craved by walking—walking unendingly round London streets, to Acton and Hampstead and Kennington and back again to a solitary meal at a lonely table in the gilded hotel restaurant. The drama had small appeal for him, and the silent drama less still. Dawkins drifted into and out of two or three theaters and cinematograph theaters in the course of each day, and it would be hard to say where he was most bored.