The Datchet Diamonds

CHAPTER III

THE DIAMONDS

Mr. Paxton heard no more-he made no serious attempt to hear. As the German-American ceased to speak the train slowed into Preston Park. At the station Mr. Paxton saw that some one else got into the next compartment, forming a third, with its previous occupants, the rest of the way to Brighton.

Mr. Paxton had heard enough. The whirlwind in his brain, instead of becoming less, had grown more. His mental confusion had become worse confounded. He seemed unable to collect his ideas. He had attained to nothing like an adequate grasp of the situation by the time the train had arrived at its journey's end. He alighted, his Gladstone in his hand, feeling in a sort of intellectual fog. He saw Mr. Lawrence-also carrying a Gladstone-get out of the next compartment. A tall, thin man, with high cheekbones, a heavy moustache, and a pronounced stoop, got out after him-evidently the German-American. Mr. Paxton allowed the pair to walk down the platform in front, keeping himself a respectful distance in the rear. They turned into the refreshment-room. He went in after them, taking up his position close beside them, with, however, no sort of definite intention in his head. Mr. Lawrence recognised him at once, showing that he also had a memory for faces. He nodded.

"Mr. Paxton, I believe."

Mr. Paxton admitted that that was his name, conscious, on a sudden, of a wild impulse to knock the fellow down for daring to accost him.

"What is your drink, Mr. Paxton?"

That was too much; Mr. Paxton was certainly not going to drink with the man. He responded curtly-

"I have ordered."

"That doesn't matter, does it? Drink up, and have another with me."

The fellow was actually pressing him to accept of his pestilent charity-that was how Mr. Paxton put it to himself. He said nothing-not because he had nothing to say, but because never before in his life had he felt so stupid, with so little control over either his senses or his tongue. He shook his head, walked out of the refreshment-room, got into a cab, and drove off to Makell's hotel.

Directly the cab had started and was out of the station yard he told himself that he had been a fool-doubly, trebly, a fool-a fool all round, from every possible point of view. He ought never to have let the scoundrels out of his sight; he ought to have spoken to the police; he ought to have done something; under the circumstances no one but an idiot would have done absolutely nothing at all. Never mind-for the moment it was too late. He would do something to repair his error later. He would tell Miss Strong the tale; she would rejoice to find a friend of her own figuring as the hero of such a narrative; it would be a warning to her against the making of chance acquaintance! He would ask her advice; it was a case in which two heads might be better than one.

Reaching the hotel, he went straight to his bedroom, still in a sort of mental haze. He had a wash-without, however, managing to wash much of the haze out of his head. He turned to unlock his Gladstone, intending to take out of it his brush and comb. There was something the matter with the key, or else with the lock-it would not open. It was a brand-new Gladstone, bought with a particular intent; Mr. Paxton was very far from being desirous that his proposed voyage to foreign parts should prematurely be generally known. Plainly, the lock was not in the best of order. Half abstractedly he fumbled with it for some seconds, before it could be induced to open, then it was opened rather by an exertion of force, than in response to the action of the key.

Having opened it, Mr. Paxton found himself a little puzzled by the arrangement of its contents. He could not at first remember just where he had put his brush and comb. He felt on the one side, where he had a sort of dim idea that it ought to be, and then on the other. He failed to light on it on either side. He paused for a moment to consider. Then, by degrees, distinctly remembered having placed it in a particular corner. He felt for it. It was not there. He wondered where it had contrived to conceal itself. He was certain that he had placed it in the bag. It must be in it now. He began to empty the bag of all its contents.

The first thing he took out was a shirt. He threw it from him on to the bed. As it passed through the air something fell from it on to the floor-something which came rolling against his foot. He picked it up.

It was a ring.

He could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes. He sat staring at the trinket in a stupor of surprise. And the more he stared the more his wonder grew. That it was a ring there could not be the slightest shadow of doubt. It was a woman's ring, a costly one-a hoop of diamonds, the stones being of unusual lustre and size.

How could such an article as that have found its way into his Gladstone bag?

He picked up another shirt, and as he did so felt that in the front there was something hard. He opened the front to see what it was. The shirt almost dropped from his hand in the shock of his amazement. Something gleamed at him from inside the linen. Taking this something out he found himself holding in his hand a magnificent tiara of diamonds.

As he knelt there, on one knee, gazing at the gaud, he would have presented a promising study for an artist possessed of a sense of humour. His mouth was open, his eyes distended to their fullest; every feature of his countenance expressed the bewilderment he felt. The presence of a ring in that brand-new bag of his was sufficiently surprising-but a tiara of diamonds! Was he the victim of some extraordinary hallucination, or the hero of a fairy tale?

He stared at the jewel, and from the jewel to the shirt, and from the shirt to the bag. Then an idea, beginning at first to glimmer on him dimly, suddenly took vivid shape, filling him with a sense of strange excitement. He doubted if the bag were his. He leant over it to examine it more closely. New brown Gladstone bags, thirty inches in length, are apt to be as like each other as peas. This was a new bag, his was a new bag-he perceived nothing in the appearance of this one to suggest that it was not his.

And yet that this was not his bag he was becoming more and more convinced. He turned to the shirt he had been holding. The contents of his bag had all been freshly purchased-obviously, this shirt had just come from the maker's too. He looked at the maker's name inside the neckband. This was not his shirt-it had been bought at a different shop; it had one buttonhole in front instead of three; it was not his size. He looked hastily at the rest of the things which were in the bag-they none of them were his. Had he had his wits about him he would have discovered that fact directly the bag was opened. Every garment seemed to have been intended to serve as cover to a piece of jewellery. He tumbled on to the bed rings, bracelets, brooches, necklets; out of vests, shirts, socks, and drawers. Till at last he stood, with an air of stupefaction, in front of a heap of glittering gems, the like of which he had scarcely thought could have existed outside a jeweller's shop.

What could be the meaning of it? By what accident approaching to the miraculous could a bag containing such a treasure trove have been exchanged for his? What eccentric and inexcusably careless individual could have been carrying about with him such a gorgeous collection in such a flimsy covering?

The key to the situation came to him as borne by a flash of lightning. They were all diamonds on the bed-nothing but diamonds. He caught up the evening paper which he had brought with him from town. He turned to the list which it contained of the diamonds which had been stolen from the Duchess of Datchet. It was as he thought. Incredible though it seemed, unless his senses played him false, in front of him were those priceless jewels-the world-famed Datchet diamonds! Reflection showed him, too, that this astounding climax had been brought about by the simplest accident. He remembered that Mr. Lawrence had alighted from the railway carriage on to the Brighton platform with the Gladstone in his hand; – he remembered now, although it had not struck him at the time, that that bag, like his own, had been brown and new. In the refreshment-room Mr. Lawrence had put his bag down upon the floor. Mr. Paxton had put his down beside it. In leaving, he must have caught up Mr. Lawrence's bag instead of his own. He had spoiled the spoiler of his spoils. Without intending to do anything of the kind, he had played on Mr. Lawrence exactly the same trick which that enterprising gentleman had himself-if Mr. Paxton could believe what he had overheard him say in the railway carriage-played on the Duchess of Datchet.

When Mr. Paxton realised exactly how it was he sat down on the side of the bed, and he trembled. It was so like a special interposition of Providence-or was it of the devil? He stared at the scintillating stones. He took them up and began to handle them. This, according to the paper, was the Amsterdam Necklace, so called because one of the Dukes of Datchet had bought all the stones for it in Amsterdam. It, alone, was worth close in the neighbourhood of a hundred thousand pounds.

A hundred thousand pounds! Mr. Paxton's fingers tingled as he thought of it. His lips went dry. What would a hundred thousand pounds not mean to him? – and he held it, literally, in the hollow of his hand. He did not know with certainty whose it was. Providence had absolutely thrown it at his head. It might not be the Duchess's, after all. At any rate, it would be but robbing the robber.

Then there was the Datchet Tiara, the Begum's Brooch, the Banee's Bracelet; if the newspaper could be credited, every piece in the collection was historical. As he toyed with them, holding them to the light, turning them this way and that, looking at them from different points of view, how the touch of the diamonds seemed to make the blood in Mr. Paxton's veins run faster!

He began to move about the bedroom restlessly, returning every now and then to take still another look at the shimmering lumps of light which were beginning to exercise over him a stronger and stronger fascination. How beautiful they were! And how low he himself had fallen! He could scarcely sink much lower. Anyhow, it would be but to pass from one ditch to another. Supposing he obtained for them even a tithe of their stated value! At this crisis in his career, what a fresh start in life five-and-twenty thousand pounds would mean! It would mean the difference between hope and helplessness, between opportunity and despair. With his experience, on such a foundation he could easily build up a monstrous fortune-a fortune which would mean happiness-Daisy's and his own. Then the five-and-twenty thousand pounds could be easily returned. Compared with what he would make with it, it was but a trifle, after all.

And then the main point was-and Mr. Paxton told himself that on that point rested the crux of the position-it would not be the Duchess of Datchet who would be despoiled; it was the robbers who, with true poetic justice, would be deprived of their ill-gotten gains. She had lost them in any case. He-he had but found them. He endeavoured to insist upon it, to himself, that he had but found them. True, there was such a thing as the finder returning what he had found-particularly when he suspected who had been the loser. But who could expect a man situated as he was to throw away a quarter of a million of money? This was not a case which could be judged by the ordinary standards of morality-it was an unparalleled experience.

Still, he could not bring himself to say, straight out, that he would stick to what he had got, and make the most of it. His mind was not sufficiently clear to enable him to arrive at any distinct decision. But he did what was almost equally fatal, he allowed himself, half unconsciously-without venturing to put it into so many words-to drift. He would see which way the wind blew, and then, if he could, go with it. For the present he would do nothing, forgetting that, in such a position as his, the mere fact of his doing nothing involved the doing of a very great deal. He looked at his watch, starting to find it was so late.

"Daisy will be tired of waiting. I must hurry, or she'll be off before I come."

He looked into the glass. Somehow there seemed to be a sort of film before his eyes which prevented him from seeing himself quite clearly, or else the light was bad! But he saw enough of himself to be aware that he was not looking altogether his usual self. He endeavoured to explain this in a fashion of his own.

"No wonder that I look worried after what I've gone through lately, and especially to-day-that sort of thing's enough to take the heart out of any man, and make him look old before his time." He set his teeth; something hard and savage came into his face. "But perhaps the luck has turned. I'd be a fool to throw a chance away if it has. I've gone in for some big things in my time; why shouldn't I go in for the biggest thing of all, and with one bold stroke more than win back all I've lost?"

He suffered his own question to remain unanswered; but he stowed the precious gems, higgledy-piggledy, inside the copy of the evening paper which contained the news of the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds; the paper he put into a corner of the Gladstone bag which was not his; the bag he locked with greater care than he had opened it. When it was fastened, he stood for a moment, surveying it a little grimly.

"I'll leave it where it is. No one knows what there is inside it. It'll be safe enough. Anyhow, I'll give the common or garden thief a chance of providing for himself for life; his qualms on the moral aspect of the situation will be fewer than mine. If it's here when I come back I'll accept its continued presence as an omen."