Copyright Story. The German Girl's Diamonds.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIX, Issue VIII, 23 August 1902, Page 498

Copyright Story. The German Girl's Diamonds.

By

ROBERT HOWARD.

It cannot be said, my children, that I liked my position in that sink of evil, the New York Customs. I was on good terms with my comrades, but I found no friendship among them. It has been, and still is, a notion of mine, and one formed at an early age, that everybody bears suggestive resemblance to some bird, fish or beast. I’ve seen a human serpent’s face in my time, triangular, poisonous, menacing with ophidian eyes. I’ve seen a dove’s face, soft, gentle, harmless and with lips that cooed as they framed and uttered words. And there are faces to remind one of dogs, of sheep, of swine, of eagles, of pike—ravenous, widemouthed, swift. I’ve even encountered a bear's face on Broadway—one full of window-peering curiosity, yet showing a contented, sluggish sagacity withal. And every face about me in the Customs would carry out my theory. As I glanced from Borns to Quin, and from Quin to another, and so to the last upon the list, I beheld reflected as in a glass a hawk, or an owl, or a wolf, or a fox, or a ferret, or even a cat. But each rapacious; each stamped with the instinct of predation, as though the word “Wolf” was written across the forehead. Even Betelnut Jack gave one the impression that belongs with some old, small, rusty black eagle with worn and tumbled plumage. 1 took no joy of my comrades, saw no more of them than I might; despised my trade of land pirate—for what

else could it be called?—and, following that warning from “Josephus,” was ever haunted of a weird fear of what might come. Still I remained and claimed my loot with the rest. And you ask why? When all is said I was voracious as the others; I clinked the coins in my pocket and consoled myself against the dubious character of such profits with that thought of Vespasian: “The smell of all money is sweet.” Following my downfall of tobacco I had given up my rich apartments in Twenty-second-street, and while I retained my membership I went no more to the two or three clubs into which I’d been received. In truth, these Custom-house days I seldom strolled as far northward as Twenty-third-street; but taking- a couple of moderate rooms to the south of Washington Square I stuck to them, or to the park in front, as much as ever I might; passing a lonely life and meeting none I’d known before. One bright, sun-filled Steptember afternoon, being free at that hour, 1 was occupying a bench in Washington Square, amusing my idleness with the shadows checkered across the walk from an overspreading tree. A sound caught my ear; I looked up to be mildly amazed by the appearance of Betelnut Jack. It was seldom my chief was found so far from his eyrie in the Bowery; evidently he was seeking me. His first words averred as much. “I was over to your rooms,” re-

marked Betelnut Jack; “they told me you were here.’*

iThen he gave me u pure Havana—for we of the Customs might smoke what cigars we would—lighted another and betook himself to a few momenta of fragrant, wordless tranquility. I was aware, of course, that Betelnut Jack had a distinct purpose in coming; but curiosity was never among 'my vices, and I did not ask his mission. With a feeling of indifference I waited its development in his own good way and time. Betelnut Jack was more apt to listen than talk; but this Washington Square afternoon he so far departed from those habits of taciturnity commonly his own as to furnish the weight of conversation. He did not hurry to his business, but rambled among a score of 'topics. He even described to me by what accident he arrived at his nom de plume of Betelnut Jack. He said he was a sailor in his far-away youth. Then he related how he went on deep water ships to India and to the China seas; how he learned to chew betel from the Orientals; how. after he came ashore, he was still addicted to betel; how a physician, ignorant of betel and its crimson masticatory consequences, fell into vast excitement over what he conceived to be a perilous hemorrhage, and how, before Jack could explain, seized on him and hurried him into a near-by drug shop. When he understood his mistake the physician took it in dudgeon and was inclined to blame Jack for those sanguinary, yet fraudulent symptoms. One result of the adventure was to rechristen him “Betelnut Jack.” the name still sticking, albeit he had for long abandoned betel as a taste outgrown.

Betelnut Jack continued, touching his career in New York; always with caution, however, slurring some parts and jumping others, from which I argued that portions of my chief’s story were made better by not being divulged. It occurred, too, as a deduction drawn from his confidences that Betelnut Jack had been valorous as a Know Nothing,

and he spoke with rapture of the great prize fighter, Tom Hyer, who beat Yankee Sullivan, and then of the fiatio virtues of the brave Bill Poole, coining near to tears as he set forth the latter’s murder in Stanwix Hall. Also, I gathered that Betelnut Jack had been no laggard at the work of hurling stones and smashing windows in the Astor place riot of 1849. “And the soldiers killed 134,” sighed Betelnut Jack, when describing the battle with him and his comrades; “and wounded four times as many more. And all, mind you, for a no-good English actor with an Irish name!” This last in accents of profound disgust. At last Betelnut Jack began to wax uneasy; it was apparent that he yearned for his nest in the familiar Bowery. With that he came bluntly to the purpose. “To-morrow early,” he said, “take one of the women inspectors and go down to quarantine. Sometime in the . course of the day the steamship Wolfgang, from Bremen, will arrive. Go aboard at once. In the second cabin you will find a tall, grey, old German;, lean, with longish hair. He may have on dark goggles; if he hasn’t, you will observe that he is blind of the right eye. His daughter, a girl of 23, will be with him. Her hair will be done up in that heavy roll which hairdressers call the ‘waterfall,’ and hang, in a silk closemeshed net, low on her neck. Hidden in the girl’s hair are diamonds of a Berlin value of over $120,000. You will search the old man, and have the woman inspector search the girl. Don’t conduct yourselves as though you knew what you were looking for. Tell your assistant to find the girl’s diamonds naturally; let her work to them by degrees, not swoop on them.” Then Betelnut Jack disposed himself for homeward flight. I asked how he became aware of the jewels and the place of their concealment. “Never mind that now,” was his reply; “you will know later. But get the diamonds; they’re there and you must not fail. I’ve come for you, as you’re more capable of doing the gentleman

than some of the others; and thia is a case where a dash of refinement won’t hurt the trick.”

With that Betelnut Jaek lounged orer to Fourth-street and disappeared toward Broadway and the Bowery farther east.

Following my chief’s departure, I continued in idle contemplation of the shadows. The occupation did not forbid a mental looking up and down of what would be my next day’s work. The prospect was far from pleasing. When one is under 30, a proposal to plunder a girl—a beautiful girl, doubtless—-of her diamonds, does not appeal to one. There would be woe, tears, lamentations, misery, with much wringing of hands. 1 began to call myself a villain. Then, as against her, and defensive of myself, I argued the outlaw character of the girl’s work. Be she.beautiful or be sha favoured ill, still sh'e was breaking the law. It was our oath to seize the gems; whatever of later wrong was acted, at best or worst, it was no wrong done her. In truth, when she was at last left free and at liberty, she was favoured beyond her deserts; for these customs acts which she was cheating spoke of grates and keys and bars and bolts. In this wise, and as much as might be, I comforted myself against the disgrace of an enterprise from which I naturally recoiled; hardening myself as to the poor girl marked to be our prey. I confess I gained no great success; say what I might, I contemned myself.

While thus ruminating that dishonour into which I conceived myself to have fallen, I recalled a story written by Edgar Allan Poe. It is a sketch wherein a wicked man is ever followed and thwarted by one who lives his exact semblance in each line of face and form. This doppel-ganger, as the Germans name him, while the same with himself in appearance and dress, is his precise opposite in moral nature. This struggle between the haunted one and his weird begins in boyhood, and continues till middle age. At the last, frantic under a last opposition, the haunted one draws sword and slays h.s enemy. Too late, as he wipes the blood from his blade, he finds that he has killed his better self; too late he sees that from- that time to the end the present will have no hope, the future hold no heaven; that- he must sink and sink and sink, until he is grasped of those hands outstretched of hell to forever have him for their horrid own. I wondered if J were not like that man, unhappy; I asked if I did not, by these various defences and apologies which I made ever for my wickedness, work for the death of my better nature whose destruction when it did come would mean the departure forever of my soul’s chance. I stood up and shook myself in a canine way. Decidedly, loneliness was making me morbid. However that may be, I passed a far from happy afternoon. Fairly speaking, these contentions shook me somewhat in my resolves. There were moments w’uen I determined to refuse my diamond hunting commission and resign my place. I even settled the style of my resignation; it should be full of sarcasm; I would base it on “the necessity of giving my self-respect a vacation; it. having been overworked to the point of death since my connection with the Customs.” But alas! Those white dreams faded; at the end I was ready to execute the orders of Betelnut Jack; and that which decided me was surely the weakest thought gf all. Somehow, I had in my conscience put down the coming German maiden as beautiful; Betelnut Jack had said her age was 23, which helped me. doubtless, to this thought of a girlish loveliness. Thus my imaginings worked in favour of the girl. But next the thought fell blackly that she would some day—probably a near day—love some man unknown and marry him. Possibly this lover she already knew; perhaps he was here and she on her way to meet him. This will sound like jest; it will earn derision from healthful, balanced spirits; and yet I tell but the truth. I experienced a vague, resentful jealousy, hated this imagined lover of a girl I’d never met; and waxed contemptuous of aught of leniency towards one or both. I would do as Betelnut Jack said; I would go down to quarantine on the morrow, and I would find the diamonds.

It was late in the afternoon when, with a woman assistant, 1 boarded the Wolfgang in the Narrows. My lean, grey, aged German was readily picked up; his daughter was with him. And her beauty was as I’d painted on the canvas of my thoughts. Yet as I beheld the loveliness which might have melted me I recalled that lover to whose arms she might be coming, and was hardened beyond recall. 1 told the Inspectress to take her into a private room and find the diamonds. With that 1 turned my back and strolled to the forward deck. Even at that distance I heard the shriek of the girl when her treasure was discovered; I smiled. “There will be less for the lover!” I thought. When my woman assistant—accomplice might be the better term —joined me she had the jewels. They were in a long eel-skin receptacle, sewed lightly, and had been secreted in the girl’s hair, as described by Betelnut Jack. I took the gems, and, buttoning them in my coat, told my aid to arrest the girl, hold her until the boat docked, frighten her with tales of fetters and dungeons and clanging bars, and at the last to lose her on the wharf. It would be 9 o'clock of the night by then, and murk dark. This loss of her prisoner would seem to come honestly about.

If I were making- a romance rather than bending to a relation of cold, grey, hard, untender facts, I would at this crisis defy Betelnut Jack, rescue the beautiful girl, restore her jewels, love her, win her, wed her, and, with’her true, dear arms about me, live happy ever after. As it was, however, I did nothing of that sort. My aid obeyed directions in a mood at once thorough, blithe and spiteful, and never more did I set eyes on the half-blind father or the tearful, poor, pretty victim of our diamond-hunt-ing. Lost in the crush and bustle of the wharf, they were never found, never looked for and never rendered themselves.

I had considered what profit from these jewels might accrue to the ring and the means by which it would be arrived at. I took it for granted that some substitutional arts —when paste would take the places of old mine gems—would be resorted to as in the excellent instance of the Emperor’s cigars. I still believe that this would have been the better, as it would surely have been the more profitable course.

But Betelnut Jack shook his careful head; there would be no hoktispokus of substitution; there were good reasons; also, there was another way secure. If our profits were somewhat shaved our safety would be augmented; and Betelnut Jack’s watchword was “Safety first!” I was bound to acquiesce; I the more readily did so as I, like Lorns and Quin, had grown to feelings of perfect confidence in the plans of Betelnut Jack. However, since I had brushed aside etiquette and broken the ice of the matter with my chief, I at the close of discussion asked how he meant to manoeuvre in the affair.

“Wait!” retorted Betelnut Jack, and that was the utmost he would say.

In due time came the usual auction, and the gems were sold. They were snapped up by a syndicate of Mark Lane, who paid therefor into the hands of the Government the even sum of 100,000 dollars. Still I saw not how the ring would have advantage; no way could open for us to handle that one hundred thousand dollars in whole or in part. I was in error; a condition whereof I was soon to be made pleasantly aware. On the day following the sale, and while the price paid still slept unbanked in the Customs boxes of proof-steel, there came one to see our canny chief. It is useless to waste description on this man. Suffice it that he was in fact and in appearance as skulkingly the coward scoundrel as might anywhere kj* met. This creeping creature was shown into the private rooms of Betelnut Jack. A moment later I was sent for.

Betelnut Jack was occupying a chair. He wore an air of easy, high confidence, and over that a sentiment of contempt for his visitor. Thia latter was posted in the middle of the room, ajid, while an apprehension

of impending evil showed on his face, he made cringing and deprecatory gestures with shoulders Launched and palms turned outward.

“Sit down,” observed Betelnut Jack, pushing a chair toward me. When 1 was seated he spoke on. ‘‘Since it was you who found the diamonds I thought it right to have you present now. You asked me once how I knew in advance of those gems and their scheme of concealment. To-day you may learn. This is the gentleman who gave me the information. He did it to obtain the reward, to receive that great ]>er cent, of the seizures proceeds which is promised the informer by the law. Ilis information was right; he is entitled to the reward. That is what he is here for. He has come to be paid.” Then to the hangdog, cringing one: “Pretty good day’s work for you, eh? Over 50.000 dollars for a little piece of information is stiff to pay.” The hangdog one bowed lower and a smirk of partial confidence began to broaden his face. “And now you've come for your money—fiftyodd thousand?” “If you please, sir; yes, sir.” More and wider smirks. “All right,” retorted Bctelnut Jack. “You shall have it, friend; but not now—not to-day.” “Then when?” and the smirk fled. “To-morrow” said Betelnut Jack. “To-morrow, next day, any day, in fact, when you bring before me to be witness of the transaction the father, the sister and your wife. “You would cheat me!”

“No; I would do you perfect justice,*’ replied Betelnut Jack. “Not • splinter do you linger until you bring your people. Your wife and her sister and their father shall know this story and stand here while the money’s paid. Not a stiver else! Now go!”

Betelnut Jack's tones were as remorseless as a storm. They offered nothing to hope’ The hangdog one heard and crept away with a look on his face that was but ill to see. Once the door was dosed behind him Betelnut Jack turned with a cheerful gleam to me.

“That ends hiin! It's as you guess. This informer is the son-in-law of the old German. He married the elder daughter. They came over four years ago and live in Hoboken. Then the father and the youngest sister were to come. They put their whole fortune into the diamonds, aiming to cheat the Customs and manage a profit; and the girl wrote their plans and how they wpuld hide the jewels to her sister. It was she who told her husband—this fellow who’s just sneaked out. He came to me and betrayed them. He was willing to ruin the old man and the girl to win riches for himself. But he’s gone—he’ll not return; we’ve seen and heard the last of them. One fears the gaol, the others disgrace; and that’s the end.” Then Betelnut Jack, as he lighted a cigar, spoke the word which told to folk initiate of a division of spoils on the morrow. As I arose he said: “Ask Lorns to come here.’’