The Datchet Diamonds

"I wonder if either of those gentlemen is shadowing me, and, if so, which?"

He turned up West Street. When he had gone some way up it he peeped to see. A man was coming up the same side of the street on which he was.

"There's Number One." He went farther; then looked again. The same man was coming on; at the corner of the street a second man was loitering. "There's Number Two. Unless I am mistaken that is the gentleman who on a sudden found himself so interested in the sea. The question is, whether they are both engaged by the same person, or if they are in separate employ. I have no doubt whatever that one of them defies the chances of catching cold in the interests of Mr. Lawrence. Until the little mystery connected with the disappearance of his Gladstone bag is cleared up, if he can help it, he is scarcely likely to allow me to escape his constant supervision. For him I am prepared; but to be attended also by a myrmidon of Ireland's is, I confess, a prospect which I do not relish."

He trudged up the hill, pondering as he went. The rain was falling faster. He pulled his coat collar up about his ears. He had no umbrella.

"This is for me an experience of an altogether novel kind, and uncommonly pleasant weather it is in which to make its acquaintance. One obvious reason why Mr. Lawrence should have me shadowed is because of the strong desire which he doubtless feels to know where it is that I am staying. The natural deduction being that where I stay, there also stays my Gladstone bag. The odds are that Mr. Lawrence feels a quite conceivable curiosity to know in what the difference exactly consists between my Gladstone bag, and the one from which he, as he puts it, for a time has parted. Why John Ireland should wish to have my movements dogged I do not understand; and I am bound to add I would much rather not know either."

Mr. Paxton had reached the top of West Street. The man on the same side of the road still plodded along. On the opposite side of the street, much farther behind, came the other man too. Mr. Paxton formed an immediate resolution.

"I have no intention of tramping the streets of Brighton to see which of us can be tired first. I'm off indoors. The Gladstone, with its contents, I'll confide to the landlord of the hotel, to hold in his safe keeping. Then we'll see what will happen."

He swept round the corner into North Street, turning his face again towards the front. As he expected, first one follower, then the other, appeared.

"It's the second beggar who bothers me. I wonder what it means?"

Arrived at the hotel, Mr. Paxton went straight to the office. He asked for the landlord. He was told that the landlord did not reside in the building, but that he could see the manager. He saw the manager.

"I have property of considerable value in my Gladstone bag. Have you a strong room in which you could keep it for me till the morning?"

The manager replied in the affirmative, adding that he was always pleased to take charge of valuables which guests might commit to his charge. Mr. Paxton went to his bedroom. He unlocked the Gladstone bag-again with some difficulty-unwrapped the evening paper which served as an unworthy covering for such priceless treasures. There they were-a sight to gladden a connoisseur's heart; to make the blood in his veins run faster! How they sparkled, and glittered, and gleamed! How they threw off coruscations, each one a fresh revelation of beauty, with every movement of his hands and of his eyes. He would get nothing for them-was that what John Ireland said? Nothing, at any rate, but the lowest market price, as for the commonest gems. John Ireland's correctness remained to be proved. There were ways and means in which a man in his position-a man of reputation and of the world-could dispose of such merchandise, of which perhaps John Ireland, with all his knowledge of the shady side of life, had never dreamed.

Putting the stones back into the bag, Mr. Paxton took the bag down into the office. Then he went into the smoking-room. It was empty when he entered. But hardly had he settled himself in a chair, than some one else came in, a short, broad-shouldered individual, with piercing black eyes and shaven chin and cheeks. Mr. Paxton did not fancy his appearance; the man's manner, bearing, and attire were somewhat rough; he looked rather like a prizefighter than the sort of guest one would expect to encounter in an hotel of standing. Still less was Mr. Paxton pleased with the familiarity of his address. The man, placing himself in the adjoining chair, plunged into the heart of a conversation as if they had been the friends of years. After making one or two remarks, which were of so extremely confidential a nature that Mr. Paxton hardly knew whether to smile at them as the mere gaucheries of an ill-bred person, or to openly resent them as an intentional impertinence, the man began to subject him to a species of cross-examination which caused him to eye the presumptuous stranger with suddenly aroused but keen suspicion.

"Stopping here?"

"It seems that I am, doesn't it?"

"On what floor?"

"Why do you ask?"

"On the third floor, ain't you?"

"Why should you suppose that I am on the third floor?"

"I don't suppose nothing. Perhaps you're on the fourth. Are you on the fourth?"

"The world is full of possibilities."

The man took a pull or two at his pipe; then, wholly unabashed, began again-

"What's your number?"

"My number?"

"What's the number of your room?"

"I see."

"Well-what is it?"

"What is what?"

"What is what! Why, what's the number of your room?"

"Precisely."

"Well, you haven't told me what it is."

"No."

"Aren't you going to tell me?"

"I am afraid that I must wish you good-night." Rising, Mr. Paxton moved towards the door. Turning in his chair, the stranger stared at him with an air of grievance.

"You don't seem very polite, not answering a civil question when you're asked one."

Mr. Paxton only smiled.

"Good-night."

He could hear the stranger grumbling to himself, even after the door was closed. He asked the porter in the hall casually who the man might be.

"I don't know, sir. He came in just after you. I don't think I have ever seen him before. He has taken a bed for the night."

Mr. Paxton went up the stairs, smiling to himself as he went.

"They are hot on the scent. Mr. Lawrence evidently has no intention of allowing the grass to grow under his feet. He means, if the thing is possible, to have a sight of that Gladstone bag, at any rate by deputy. I may be wrong, but the deputy whom I fancy he has selected is an individual possessed of such a small amount of tact-whatever other virtues he may have-that I hardly think I am. In any case it is probably just as well that that Gladstone bag sleeps downstairs, while I sleep up."

The door of Mr. Paxton's bedroom was furnished with a bolt as well as a lock. He carefully secured both.

"I don't think that any one will be able to get through that door without arousing me. And even should any enterprising person succeed in doing so, I fear that his success will go no farther. His labours will be unrewarded."

Mr. Paxton was master of a great art-the art of being able to go to sleep when he wished. Practically, in bed or out of it, whenever he chose, he could treat himself to the luxury of a slumber; and also, when he chose, he could wake out of it. This very desirable accomplishment did not fail him then. As soon as he was between the sheets he composed himself to rest; and in an infinitesimally short space of time rest came to him. He slept as peacefully as if he had not had a care upon his mind.

And his sleep continued far into the night. But, profound and restful though it was, it was light. The slightest unusual sound was sufficient to awake him. It was indeed a sound which would have been inaudible to nine sleepers out of ten which actually did arouse him. Instantly his eyes were wide open and his senses keenly on the alert. He lay quite still in bed, listening. And as he listened he smiled.

"I thought so. My friend of the smoking-room, unless I err. Trying to turn the key in the lock with a pair of nippers, from outside. It won't do, my man. You are a little clumsy at your work. Your clumsiness betrayed you. You should get a firm hold of the key before you begin to turn, or your nippers are apt to slip, and when they slip they make a noise."

Mr. Paxton permitted no sign to escape him which could show the intruder who was endeavouring to make an unceremonious entrance into the apartment that he had ceased to sleep. He continued to lie quite still and to listen, enjoying what he heard. Either the lock was rusty or the key refractory, or, as Mr. Paxton said, the operator clumsy, but certainly he did take what seemed to be an unconscionable length of time in performing what is supposed to be a rudimentary function in the burglar's art. He fumbled and fumbled, time after time, in vain. One could hear in the prevailing silence the tiny click which his nippers made each time they lost their hold. Some three or four minutes probably elapsed before a slight grating sound-which seemed to show that the lock was rusty-told that, after all, the key had been turned. Mr. Paxton almost chuckled.

"Now for the scattering of the labourer's hopes of harvest!"

The person who was outside the door, satisfied that the lock had been opened, firmly, yet no doubt gently, grasped the handle of the door. He turned it. With all his gentleness it grated. One could hear that he gave it an inward push, only to discover that the bolt was shot inside. And that same moment Mr. Paxton's voice rang out, clear and cold-

"Who's there?"

No answer. Mr. Paxton's sharp ears imagined that they could just detect the shuffling along the passage of retreating footsteps.

"Is any one at the door?"

Still no reply. Mr. Paxton's next words were uttered sotto voce with a grin.

"I don't fancy that there is any one outside the door just now; nor that to-night there is likely to be again. I'll just jump out and undo the result of that poor man's patient labours."

Re-locking the door, Mr. Paxton once more composed himself to rest, and again sleep came to him almost in the instant that he sought it. And for the second time he was aroused by a sound so faint that it would hardly have penetrated to the average sleeper's senses. On this occasion the interruption was unexpected. He turned himself slightly in bed, so that he might be in a better position for listening.

"What's that? If it's my friend of the smoking-room again, he's a persevering man. It doesn't sound as if it were coming from the door; it sounds more as if it were coming from the window-and, by George, it is! What does it mean? It occurs to me that this is a case in which it might be advisable that I should make personal inquiries."

Slipping out of bed, Mr. Paxton thrust his legs into a pair of trousers. He took a revolver from underneath his pillow.

"It's lucky," he said to himself, as his fingers closed upon the weapon, "that my prophetic soul told me that this was a plaything which might be likely to come in handy."

In his bare feet he moved towards the window, holding the revolver in his hand.

The room was in darkness, but Mr. Paxton was aware that in front of the window stood the dressing-table. He knew also that the window itself was screened, not only by the blind, but by a pair of heavy curtains. Placing himself by the side of the dressing-table, he gingerly moved one of the curtains, with a view of ascertaining if his doing so would enable him to see what was going on without. One thing the movement of the curtains did reveal to him, that there was a dense fog out of doors. The blind did not quite fit the window, and enough space was left at the side to show that the lights in the King's Road were veiled by a thick white mist. Mr. Paxton moved both the blind and the curtain sufficiently aside to enable him to see all that there was to be seen, without, however, unnecessarily exposing himself.

For a moment or so that all was nothing. Then, gradually becoming accustomed to the light, or want of it, he saw something which, while little enough in itself, was yet sufficient to have given a nervous person a considerable shock. Something outside seemed to reach from top to bottom of the window. At first Mr. Paxton could not make out what it was. Then he understood.

"A ladder-by George, it is! It would almost seem as if my friend of the smoking-room had given his friends outside the 'office,' and that they are taking advantage of the fog to endeavor to succeed where he has failed. If I had expected this kind of thing, I should have preferred to sleep a little nearer to the sky. Instead of the first floor, it should have been the third, or even the fourth, beyond the reach of ladders. Messrs. Lawrence and Co. seem resolved to beat the iron while it's hot. The hunt becomes distinctly keen. It is perhaps only natural to expect that they should be anxious; but, so far as I am concerned, a little of this sort of thing suffices. They are slow at getting to work, considering how awkward they might find it if some one were to come along and twig that ladder. Hallo, the fun begins! Unless my ears deceive me, some one's coming now."

Mr. Paxton's ears did not deceive him. Even as he spoke a dark something appeared on the ladder above the level of the window. It was a man's head. The head was quickly followed by a body. The acute vision of the unseen watcher could dimly make out, against the white background of fog, the faint outline of a man's figure. This figure did an unexpected thing. Without any sort of warning, the shutter of a dark lantern was suddenly opened, and the light thrown on the window in such a way that it shone full into Mr. Paxton's eyes. That gentleman retained his presence of mind. He withdrew his head, while keeping his hold on the blind; if he had let it go the movement could scarcely have failed to have been perceived.

The light vanished almost as quickly as it came. It was followed by a darkness which seemed even denser than before. It was a second or two before Mr. Paxton could adapt his dazzled eyes to the restoration of the blackness. When he did so, he perceived that the man on the ladder was leaning over towards the window. If the lantern had been flashed on him just then, it would have been seen that an ugly look was on Mr. Paxton's countenance.

"You startled me, you brute, with your infernal lantern, and now I've half a mind to startle you."

Mr. Paxton made his half-mind a whole one. He brought his revolver to the level of his elbow; he pointed it at the window, and he fired. The figure on the ladder disappeared with the rapidity of a jack-in-the-box. Whether the man had fallen or not, there was for the moment no evidence to show. Mr. Paxton dragged the dressing-table away, threw up the window, and looked out. The mist came streaming in. In the distance could be heard the stampede of feet. Plainly two or three persons were making off as fast as their heels would carry them. An imperious knocking came at the bedroom door.

"Anything the matter in there?"

Mr. Paxton threw the door wide open. A porter was standing in the lighted corridor.

"A good deal's the matter. Burglary's the matter."

"Burglary?"

"Yes, burglary. I caught a man in the very act of opening my window, so I had a pop at him. He appears to have got off; but his ladder he has left behind."

Other people came into the room, among them the manager. An examination of the premises was made from without. The man had escaped; but the precipitancy of his descent was evidenced by the fact that his lantern, falling from his grasp, had been shattered to fragments on the ground.

The fragments he had not stayed to gather. Still less had he and his associates stood on the order of their going sufficiently long to enable them to remove the ladder.

CHAPTER VII

THE DATCHET DIAMONDS ARE PLACED IN SAFE CUSTODY

When the morning came, and Mr. Paxton found himself being cross-examined by the manager, with every probability of his, later on, having to undergo an examination by the police, he was as taciturn as possible. Although he was by no means sorry that he had fired that shot, and so effectually frightened the man upon the ladder, he would infinitely rather that less fuss had been made about it afterwards.

One thing Mr. Paxton had decided to do before he left his bedroom. He had decided to remove the Datchet diamonds to a place of safety. That Mr. Lawrence and his friends had a very shrewd notion that they were in his possession was plain; that they were disposed to stick at nothing which would enable them to get hold of them again was, if possible, plainer. Mr. Paxton was resolute that they should not have them, who ever did.

It happened that, in his more prosperous days, he had rented one of the Chancery Lane Deposit Company's safes. Nor was the term of his tenancy at an end. He determined to do a bold, and, one might add, an impudent thing. He would carry the duchess' diamonds back with him to town, lock them in the safe he rented, and then, whatever might happen, nobody but himself would ever be able to have access to them again. He had the Gladstone bag brought up to his bedroom, removed from it the precious parcel, returned the bag itself to the manager's keeping, and, declining to have his morning meal at the hotel, went up by the Pullman train to town, and breakfasted on board. He flattered himself that whoever succeeded in taking from him the diamonds before his arrival with them in Chancery Lane, would have to be a very clever person.

Still, he did not manage to reach his journey's end without having had one or two little adventures by the way.

He drove up from the hotel to the station in a hansom cab. As he stepped into the cab he noticed, standing on the kerbstone a little to the left of the hotel entrance, a man who wore his billycock a good deal on the side of his head, and who had a cigar sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

He should not have particularly observed the fellow had not the man, as soon as he found Mr. Paxton's eyes turned in his direction, performed a right-about-face on his heels, and presented an almost ostentatious view of the middle of the back. When Mr. Paxton's cab rattled into the central yard, and Mr. Paxton proceeded to step out from it on to the pavement, another hansom came dashing up behind his own, and from it there alighted the man who had turned his back on him in front of the hotel. As Mr. Paxton took his ticket this man was at his side. And, having purchased his morning paper, as he strolled up the platform towards the train, he noticed that the fellow was only a few steps in his rear.

There seemed to be no reasonable room for doubt that the man was acting as his shadow. No one likes to feel that he is under espionage. And Mr. Paxton in particular felt that just recently he had endured enough of that kind of thing to last-if his own tastes were to be consulted-for the remainder of his life. He decided to put a stop there and then to, at any rate, this man's persecution. Suddenly standing still, wheeling sharply round, Mr. Paxton found himself face to face with the individual with his hat on the side of his head.

"Are you following me?"

Mr. Paxton's manner as he asked the question, though polite, meant mischief. The other seemed to be a little taken aback. Then, with an impudent air, taking what was left of his cigar out of his mouth, he blew a volume of smoke full into Mr. Paxton's eyes.

"Were you speaking to me?"

Mr. Paxton's fingers itched to knock the smoker down. But situated as he was, a row in public just then would have been sheer madness. He adopted what was probably an even more effective plan. He signalled to a passing official.

"Guard!" The man approached. "This person has been following me from my hotel. Be so good as to call a constable. His proceedings require explanation."

The man began to bluster.

"What do you mean by saying I've been following you? Who are you, I should like to know? Can't any one move about except yourself? Following you, indeed! It's more likely that you've been following me!"

A constable came up. Mr. Paxton addressed him in his cool, incisive tones.

"Officer, this person has followed me from my hotel to the station; from the station to the booking-office; from the booking-office to the bookstall; and now he is following me from the bookstall to the train. I have some valuable property on me, with which fact he is possibly acquainted. Since he is a complete stranger to me, I should be obliged if you would ask him what is the cause of the unusual interest which he appears to take in my movements."

The man with the cigar became apologetic.

"The gentleman's quite mistaken; I'm not following him; I wouldn't do such a thing! I'm going to town by this train, and it seems that this gentleman's going too, and perhaps that's what's made him think that I was following. If there's any offence, I'm sure that I beg pardon."

The man held out his hand-it was unclean and it was big-as if expecting Mr. Paxton to grasp it. Mr. Paxton, however, moved away addressing a final observation to the constable as he went.

"Officer, be so good as to keep an eye upon that man."

Mr. Paxton entered the breakfast carriage. What became of the too attentive stranger he neither stopped to see nor cared to inquire. He saw no more of him; that was all he wanted. As the train rushed towards town he ate his breakfast and he read his paper.

The chief topic of interest in the journals of the day was the robbery on the previous afternoon of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds. It filled them to the almost complete exclusion of other news of topical importance. There were illustrations of some of the principal jewels which had been stolen, together with anecdotes touching on their history-very curious some of them were! The Dukes of Datchet seemed to have gathered those beautiful gems, if not in ways which were dark, then occasionally, at any rate, in ways which were, to say the least of it, peculiar. Those glittering pebbles seemed to have been mixed up with a good deal of trickery and fraud and crime.

The papers gave the most minute description of the more important stones. Even the merest novice in the knowledge of brilliants, if he had mastered those details, could scarcely fail to recognise them if ever they came his way. It appeared that few even royal collections possessed so large a number of really fine examples. Their valuation at a quarter of a million was the purest guesswork. The present duke would not have accepted for them twice that sum.

Half a million! Five hundred thousand pounds! At even 3 per cent. – and who does not want more for his money than a miserable 3 per cent.? – that was fifteen thousand pounds a year. Three hundred pounds a week. More than forty pounds a day. Over three pounds for every working hour. And Mr. Paxton had it in his pockets!

It was not strange that Mr. Lawrence and his associates should betray such lively anxiety to regain possession of such a sum as that; it would have been strange if they had not! It was a sum worth having; worth fighting for; worth risking something for as well.

And yet there was something; indeed, there was a good deal, which could be said for the other side of the question. Mr. Paxton owned to himself that there was. He could not honestly-if it were still possible to speak of honesty in connection with a gentleman who had launched himself on such a venture-lay his hand upon his heart, and say that he was happier since he had discovered what were the contents of somebody else's Gladstone bag. On the contrary, if he could have blotted out of his life the few hours which had intervened since the afternoon of the previous day, he would have done so, even yet, with a willing hand.

Nor was this feeling lessened by an incident which took place on his arrival at London Bridge. If he were of an adventurous turn of mind, evidently he could not have adopted a more certain means of gratifying his peculiar taste than by retaining possession of the duchess's diamonds. Adventures were being heaped on him galore.

As he was walking down the platform, looking for a likely cab, some one came rushing up against him from behind with such violence as to send him flying forward on his face. Two roughly dressed men assisted him to rise. But, while undergoing their kindly ministrations, it occurred to him, in spite of his half-dazed condition, that they were evincing a livelier interest in the contents of his pockets than in his regaining his perpendicular. He managed to shake them off, however, before their interest had been carried to too generous a length.