Читать книгу Thieves' Wit - Footner Hulbert - Страница 8

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I have not mentioned Mr. Alfred Mount lately though I saw him often on matters connected with the case. He was an interesting character. It was only by degrees that I realised what an extraordinary man I had to deal with. After our first meeting his manner towards me completely changed. He appeared to be sorry for his brusqueness on that occasion. Now he was all frankness and friendliness. Nothing crude, you understand, just the air of one man of the world towards another. I could not help but feel flattered by it.

While we worked together so amicably the mutual antagonism remained. I knew he still resented Miss Hamerton's having employed me without consulting him, and I believed that he was working independently. For my part, you may be sure, I told him nothing but what I had to. I found no little pleasure in blocking his subtle questioning by my air of clumsy innocence. I told him nothing about the cryptogram.

I never called at his office again. Sometimes he dropped into mine, his bright eyes wandering all around, but more often I called on him at his apartment over the store. For he occupied the second floor of the beautiful little building which housed his business. There was however nothing of the old-fashioned shop-keeper about his place. I never saw such splendour before or since. But it took you a while to realise that it was splendour, for there was nothing showy or garish. Everything he possessed was the choicest of its kind in the world. Even with my limited knowledge, when I stopped to figure up the value of what I saw, I was staggered. I saw enough at different times to furnish several millionaires.

Mount had a strange love for his treasures in which there was nothing of the usual self-glorification of millionaires. He had a modest, almost a tender, way of referring to his things, of handling them. I learned quite a lot about tapestries, rugs, Chinese porcelains, enamels, ivories and gold workmanship from his talk. He did not care for paintings.

"Too insistent," he said. "Paintings will not merge."

The man was full of queer sayings, which he would drawl out with an eye to the effect he was creating on you.

He never allowed daylight to penetrate to his principal room, a great hall two stories high, lined with priceless tapestries.

"Daylight is rude and unmanageable," he said. "Artificial light I can order to suit my mood."

Another odd thing was his antipathy to red. That colour almost never appeared in his treasures. In the tapestries greens predominated; the rugs were mostly old blues and yellows. The great room never looked quite the same. Sometimes it was completely metamorphosed over night. I understood from something he let fall that the other floors of the building were stored with his treasures. He had them brought down and arranged according to his fancy. The only servant ever visible was a silent Hindoo, who sometimes appeared in gorgeous Eastern costume, encrusted with jewels. It occurred to me that that was how his master ought to dress. The sober clothes of a business man, however elegant, were out of place on Mount. Long afterwards I learned that it was his custom when alone to array himself like an Eastern potentate, but I never saw him dressed that way.

One day, to see what he would say, I asked him point blank what was the value of Miss Hamerton's lost pearls.

He consulted a note-book. "She paid me at different times exactly twenty-five thousand, seven hundred for them."

"I know," I said quietly. "But what was their value?"

He bored me through and through with his jetty eyes before answering. Finally he smiled—he had a charming smile when he chose, and spread out his hands in token of surrender. His hands were too white and beautiful for a man's.

"I see you know the truth," he said. "Well—I am in your hands. I hope you will keep the secret. Only a great deal of unhappiness could result from its becoming known."

"I shall not tell," I said. "But how much are they worth."

"I really couldn't say," he said frankly. "There is nothing like them in the world, nothing to measure them by, I mean. It would depend simply on how far the purchaser could go."

"Wouldn't they be difficult to dispose of?"

"Very. That is our hope in the present situation."

"Do you suppose the thief knew what he was getting?"

"I doubt it. To distinguish the blue cast is a fad of my own. They ordinarily go with the black pearls."

Later he returned to the subject of his own accord. "Since you have learned or guessed so much, I should tell you the whole story, for fear you might have a doubt of Miss Hamerton."

"No danger of that," I said quickly.