A Crime of the Under-seas

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Boothby Guy. A Crime of the Under-seas

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

The Phantom Stockman

The Treasure of Sacramento Nick

Into the Outer Darkness

The Story of Tommy Dodd and "The Rooster"

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

Cupid and Psyche

Misplaced Affections

In Great Waters

Mr. Aristocrat

This Man and This Woman

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"In the first place, Mr. Collon," said the old gentleman, who had shown himself so anxious to obtain my services, "I must introduce myself to you. My name is Leversidge, John Leversidge, and I am the junior partner of the firm of Wilson, Burke & Leversidge, of Hatton Garden, Paris, Calcutta, and Melbourne. We are, as you will have gathered from our first address, diamond and precious stone merchants, and we do a very large business in the East generally; also among the Pacific Islands and in Australia. With the two last named our trade is confined principally to pearls and gold, neither of them having very much in the way of gems to offer. Still their connection is worth so much to us as to warrant us in keeping two buyers almost continuously employed; a fact, I think, which speaks for itself. Now it so turned out that some six months or so ago we received a cablegram in London announcing the fact that an enormous black pearl, in all probability the finest yet brought to light, had been discovered near one of the islands to the southward of New Guinea. It had been conveyed first to Thursday Island, which, as perhaps you are aware, is the head and centre of this particular industry in Australian waters, and later on, with a considerable amount of secrecy, to Sydney, where our agent, a man in whom we had the greatest trust, made it his business to see it on our behalf. The result was a cypher cablegram to our firm in London, to say that the jewel was, as far as his knowledge went, absolutely unique, and that in his opinion it behoved us to purchase it, even at the exorbitant price asked for it by the rascally individual into whose hands it had now fallen. This was a person by the name of Bollinson, a half-bred Swede I should say by the description we received of him; though, for my part, from the way he treated us, I should think Jew would be somewhat nearer the mark. Whatever his nationality may have been, however, the fact remains that he knew his business so well, that when we obtained possession of the pearl, which we were determined to have at any price, we had paid a sum for it nearly double what we had originally intended to give. But that mattered little to us, for we had the most perfect confidence in our servant, who had had to do with pearls all his life, and who since he had been in our employ had been fortunate enough to secure several splendid bargains for us. So, to make a long story short, when he cabled the price – though I must confess we whistled a little at the figure – we wired back: 'Buy, and bring it home yourself by next boat,' feeling convinced that we had done the right thing and should not regret it. Now, as you know, there is to be an Imperial wedding in Europe in six months' time, and as we had received instructions to submit for his inspection anything we might have worthy of the honour, we felt morally certain that the sovereign in question would take the jewel off our hands, and thus enable us to get our money back and a fair percentage of interest, besides repaying us for our outlay and our trouble. Sure enough next day a message came in to us to say that our agent had completed the sale and was leaving for England that day, not viâ Melbourne and Adelaide, as we had supposed, or viâ Vancouver, which would have been the next best route; but by way of Queensland, the Barrier Reef, and the Arifura Sea, which was longer, and, as we very well knew, by no means so safe. Then he added the very significant information that since he had had the pearl in his keeping no less than three separate and distinct attempts had been made by other people to obtain possession of it. All that, you must understand, happened eight weeks ago. I was in London at the time, and can therefore give you the information first hand."

"Eight weeks exactly?" I asked, for I always like to be certain of my dates. Many a good case that I have taken in hand has collapsed for the simple reason that the parties instructing me had been a little slipshod in the matter of their dates.

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"Good-night," I answered, and after that we separated to go to our respective rooms.

By five o'clock next morning, after a troubled night, I had made up my mind. If the old gentleman would give the terms I wanted, I would do what he asked. Half of the amount was to be paid before we left Colombo, and the balance on our return to Batavia, or on the completion of our work, provided it did not last more than six months. All expenses were to be defrayed by his firm, and a document was to be given me, exonerating me from all blame should the law think fit to come down upon us for what we were doing. All this I embodied in a letter which I copied and sent to Mr. Leversidge's room while he was dressing.

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