A Gentleman's Gentleman/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
LOBMEYR APOLOGIZES
The next stage in the story of the great white diamond carries me to the seventh day after the dinner at the Métropole. The situation brought about by the events of that night was a very simple one. King had gone off to Buda-Pesth with the diamond, promising to let us have his answer within the week; Lobmeyr had gone off with a worthless check on the Bank of England, which he was not to cash until seven days had passed. During the between-time we were safe enough, and could go about Vienna as we pleased. But on the seventh morning the danger-bell rang, suddenly and in a way we had never looked for. To put it short, King wrote saying that his return to the Métropole was delayed for five days, but that he would give us a definite answer about the Mazarin directly he was back.
"Hildebrand," said Sir Nicolas, when he read this note, "the game is just up, don't you think? Lobmeyr will never wait another week. And he'll be learning that the check's froth before then. It couldn't have happened worse."
Truth to tell, I was inclined to side with him. I had no fancy to see the shape of an Austrian prison; and yet to clear out of Vienna and leave ten thousand pounds behind us seemed a cruel thing indeed.
"Look here, sir," said I, "the first thing to do is to lie low, and to keep out of our rooms in the Singer Strasse. If the police do get enquiring about us, we may as well have the start of them. I'll take your traps up to that little French hotel by the arsenal during the morning; and after breakfast I'll call on Lobmeyr and see if he won't wait five days. It's strange if he's in all that hurry."
Well, he agreed to this, though he was very gloomy about it; and when I had engaged a room for him at the Hotel Henri IV., booking him as Mr. Winstanley of London, I went down to the Graben, meaning to call upon Lobmeyr. I can remember the events of that morning as if the whole thing happened yesterday—the biting cold, the snow shining crisp in the sun, the hurry-scurry of all who shopped. Nor shall I ever forget the creeping feeling which came over me, when, and just as I was ten yards from Lobmeyr's house, I saw two policemen get out of a cab and go straight in at the door.
Now, if you're engaged on a bit of shaky business,—if for days past you have been saying to yourself, "This will bring me into a law-court or a cell,"—the last thing you care to see is a policeman. I can tell you that for five minutes after I watched those two men get out of the cab and go into Lobmeyr's place, I stood stock still, as if they had glued me to the pavement.
"Good God!" said I to myself, "here's the end of your ten thousand, Bigg, any way. And if you're not precious smart, here's the end of your public engagements for months to come. What's brought those men there, you can't say. Perhaps he's heard that the real Comte de Laon is in Paris; perhaps he's tried to cash the check and got it back again. That don't concern you—what you've got to do is to show your heels and quick about it."
True enough, my first impulse was to run for it, and not stop until Sir Nicolas and I were inside a train for the frontier. A second thought held me back. How was I to be sure, just because I had seen two policemen enter Lobmeyr's shop, that those two policemen were concerned in my fortunes? And it might be, I said, that we could cheat them, even if they were. Once King came back to Vienna, the game was ours. And if we could keep out of the clutches of enquiring busybodies for five days, we might, at the end of that time, tell them to go to the devil or stay at home, just as they pleased.
All this passed through my mind like a flash of lightning while I stood gaping with astonishment at the sight of the policemen. And no sooner had I weighed the matter up than I saw the light through it. Next door to Lobmeyr's there was a meerschaum-pipe shop. A big wooden partition divided the two houses, and to step behind this was the work of a second. But scarce was I in the cover when the two sergeants of police were back again in the cab, and the direction they had given to the coachman was ringing in my ears:
"Singer Strasse Sechzehn."
The gift to gabble in German is not among my acquirements, as you may learn from the story; but German or no German, I don't want any one to tell me what "Singer Strasse Sechzehn" meant.
"They're going straight to our shop to search it," said I to myself; "and that's just the worst thing that could happen to us. They'll find we're missing, and then the fun will begin. Oh, Nicky, Nicky! the devil himself took the tickets when we set out on this job."
You see my mind turned to Nicky at once, for though I had left him snug at the hotel by the Arsenal, I could not say but that he had gone up to his old rooms for the letters, and in that case, the Lord only knew what would follow. I saw that the police might have him even while I was running like a madman to the Hôtel Henri IV. Spurred on by the fear, I flew over the ground like one bewitched. When at last I reached the hotel, he met me on the steps of it, and I nearly knocked him down in my excitement.
"Thank God for this, sir!" said I; and then I told him.
"Ye don't mean to say that," cried he, turning very white.
"Indeed and I do; I saw the cab start with the pair of them inside. There's nothing to be done now but to lie as low as moles. The odds are that they'll search the railway stations and the big hotels; but they'll hardly come to a shop like this."
"That's true," said he; "and yet to think that we wanted only five days of winning! Oh, if King would only come back!"
It was all very well for him to say, "Oh, if King would only come back!" and, for the matter of that, I could almost have prayed for the same thing. King alone could save us. If he turned up, we could pay Lobmeyr or return him his diamond. But King was in Buda-Pesth, and we might as well have prayed for the moon. Meanwhile the police were in the Singer Strasse!
This was how the thing stood—then and for the next three days. The life we lived is not to be told here. Sufficient to say that the pair of us started at every shadow we saw; turned pale every time a waiter entered the room. It's well enough to read in books about haunted men; but I've no fancy myself to play the rôle, nor ever had. What I went through at that little Hotel Henri IV. I would not go through again for a thousand pounds, and that's saying something. So badly did the thing wear me, so strangely did it act on my nerves, lying boxed up there like a rat and not knowing from minute to minute whether I was free or a prisoner, that on the third afternoon, at dark, I made up my mind to do something; and I left the hotel while my master was asleep on his bed, worn out with the anxiety and the watching.
You ask me what I was going to do—I'll tell you in a word. I meant to go to the Hotel Métropole and ask for King's address. I thought I would wire to him, or find out, at any rate, exactly when he was returning. As the thing went, however, I did neither, for whom should I see, directly I entered the great hall of the hotel, but King's daughter—the pretty little American girl I had remarked in Paris. There she was, sitting alone at a tea table, a perfect little picture. And two minutes after I saw her she was listening to my story.
"You'll excuse me, miss," said I, "but is Mr. King likely to be in Vienna again soon?"
"Indeed he is not," said she, with a pretty, rippling laugh. "I am afraid he won't be here again at all; he is going straight from Mostar, where he is now, to Trieste. I join him at Venice." If she had struck me, she couldn't have made me reel like her words did.
"Going to Trieste!" exclaimed I, doing my best to hide what I felt; "but he's taking Sir Nicolas Steele's great diamond with him, then?"
She laughed again, appearing to enjoy ray confusion.
"Certainly he is," she said; "but he is leaving the money for it behind him. I have just sent round a draft on the Bank of Vienna."
"You have sent a draft?" I almost shouted, forgetting every thing in the excitement of it.
"Yes," she replied, looking at me very curiously, "to Singer Strasse, No. 16. I sent it ten minutes ago."
"You did!" said I. "Then there's the end of it." It was cruel, look at it as you like. There was the money, which would have done all for us, sent to a house which we dare not go near. I did not doubt that the police had got hold of it already; I was sure that, if we showed our faces to claim it, they would arrest us until the whole thing was explained. The mischief was that we dare not explain the whole thing. That would have been to have given ourselves away to King, who might have prosecuted us for obtaining money by false pretences. If ever two men had run into a blind alley, those two men were Hildebrand Bigg and Nicolas Steele.
Something of this must have showed itself in my face to Miss King, for she asked me suddenly if I were ill; and when I assured her that I was not, and managed to stammer out an excuse, I am sure that she thought she was dealing with a madman. Yet for what she thought, or what she did not think, I did not care a brass farthing; and the next thing I remember is that I was tearing up the street leading to the market-place, and that I never stopped until I was opposite our old quarters, and stood gaping up at the window of my master's sitting-room in the Singer Strasse. I had run along with the wild idea that I might overtake the messenger who had the money; but he was coming down the stairs when I reached the house, and a single glance at the lighted windows told me that the deal was lost. I could see a police officer standing by the fireplace. He seemed to be alone in the room, and he had the letter, which had just come, in his hand. I could see him fingering the very draft which would have been liberty and fortune to us. And at that I left prudence behind me and shut my teeth on the resolution.
"I will have that money, if I strangle him for it," said I, and no sooner said than I was on the stairs leading to the flat, and the revolver, which I always carry, whatever be my country, was full cock in my hands. There is no need to think now of all the risks I ran. However many they might have been, I should have faced them, wound up as I was then with greed of the money and despair of the situation. Yet it came to me, even as I mounted the stairs like a cat, that if there were two men in the room, nothing could save me. I carried my liberty, perhaps my life, with me, yet I would have staked them twice over sooner than turn my back on such a prize.
At the top of the stairs I paused a moment, and put my ear to the keyhole of our room. Though I listened for five minutes I did not hear the sound of any voice; and making sure from this that the police officer was alone in the place, I knocked gently with the butt-end of the revolver upon the door. A loud "Herein!" answered me; but taking no notice of this, I knocked again, and at the second knock the door was thrown wide open, and the man was before me. Quick as he was—and he put out his arm to grasp my collar directly he saw me—I gripped him by the throat in such a lightning grip that his eyes seemed to start straight out of his head, and the flesh of his face went all blue and discolored. Never was a man more taken by surprise than he was. He had looked to be the attacking party; I had forestalled him; and now as he reeled back over my knee, and the gurgling in his throat was an awful thing to hear, I forced him into the bedroom close by, and held him on the bed.
"Now," said I, not caring a rap whether he understood English or the other thing—"now, move a hand and I'll shoot you like a dog. What I've come here for is my money. Let me take that, and I'll give you a hundred pounds. But open your lips, and I'll close them with a bullet."
I said this still clutching his throat, and with my knee hard down upon his chest. He was pretty nearly insensible by that time, and when I made sure that he had not strength enough left to give me trouble, I snatched a sheet from the bed and bound it round his face and arms, tying knots which would have held a bullock. A couple of straps, torn off one of my master's trunks, did for his feet; and a length of rope from my box bound him up to the bed. When I had finished with him, I don't believe that he could move his neck an inch either way; and only then did I look for the money. It was lying, fair for all the world to see, on the table by the window. The draft had been in his hand when I knocked at the door; he had simply laid it down when he came to answer me.
Five minutes before closing time that night, we drew our money from the Bank of Vienna. A quarter of an hour later we were in Lobmeyr's shop. I don't think I ever heard a man apologize so much or look so astonished.
"This will teach you," said Sir Nicolas, "to be less hasty in your conclusions, sir. You have done us a very great injury, which I hope you will at once repair."
"Most certainly, I will," exclaimed Lobmeyr, as he turned his notes over and over, and examined them for the tenth time. "I will send to the police at once. But what was I to think? I telegraphed to Rome for the references of the Comte de Laon, and they said that he was not here at all, but in Normandy."
"And can't you understand," cried Sir Nicolas, "that a man may very well give it out that he's in Normandy and yet be in Vienna? Oh, you're a person of small discernment, Herr Lobmeyer! I shall have to call upon the police myself. And that reminds me, we left one of your agents in a bad way up at the Singer Strasse. You can just send up a man to release him, and give him a thousand florins for the inconvenience. Indeed, we had to tie him up to the bed before he would let us have our own money."
"I will do it with pleasure," said Lobmeyr, "and add a hundred florins of my own. I cannot express my sorrow at the whole episode. At any rate, you will have one of the finest diamonds in Europe to be a constant pledge of my regrets."
With this adieu we left him, and drove straight to the station.
"Bedad!" said Sir Nicolas, as we took our tickets, "to think that men could go through what we've gone through these past ten days and yet be gay about it! Hildebrand, ye've made a fortune for me, and I'll not forget it to my dying day."
I couldn't deny this, except that part about the fortune. What we really cleared was three thousand five hundred apiece. Benjamin King, like a true Yankee, knocked three thousand off our original figure, and we didn't make a fuss about the balance, you may be sure.