Читать книгу Anybody's Pearls - Footner Hulbert - Страница 10

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“We fellows has to dispose of our stuff to the Jews,” Rulon began, lighting his ragged cigar afresh. “Jews are the receivers the world over, and blast them for a lot of dirty bloodsuckers, I say. They live soft, and take the big end of the profits. Well, the big operators are connected the world over, so they can ship the stuff from place to place, and baffle the local police, see?

“A month ago, a Jew that I do business with in New York come to me—I needn’t mention his name; you’ll meet him later; and he says to me: ‘Mike,’ says he, ‘how’d you like a trip to England right in the season?’ ‘Oh, my health’s good,’ I says, ‘I don’t require an ocean voyage.’ ‘There’s ten thousand dollars in it for you, and expenses,’ he says. ‘Then I bet the job is worth fifty,’ I comes back. ‘Oh, you will always have your joke, Mike,’ he says, laughing like a Jew does when it hurts him and twisting his body.

“Well, we sparred back and forth awhile, him tryin’ to make me bite at his proposition, and me holdin’ back. As a matter of fact I was just about stony at the time, but it don’t do to let anything on to a Jew. I satisfied myself that ten thousand was really the most he was able to offer. The circumstances were these: there was a valuable pearl necklace kept in a safe in a country house in England, that was just asking to be lifted. There was a certain gang of country house operators had got on to it; they had fixed up all the preliminaries, such as getting full information about the inmates of the house; making a plan of the interior; getting the combination of the safe, and a duplicate key to the front door, and so on. But there wasn’t a man amongst them, the Jew said, with nerve enough to enter the house, and lift the pearls.

“So his associate in London had written to him to ask if he could supply a nervy American for the job. ‘And of course I thought right away of you, Mike,’ the Jew says to me, ‘being as there isn’t a cooler hand in the world for such a job.’ Soft soap, of course, but I admit I was attracted by the idea of goin’ over to England to pull off a stunt that the best they had in England was stumped by. I would be associated with the most high-toned crowd in London, the Jew said, and would be furnished with every assistance beforehand, and protection afterwards.

“That was all I could get out of him. He said it was all he knew. It sounded fishy to me, but at that, he offered to advance me fifteen hundred for expenses then and there, so I wasn’t risking anything. And I like to travel abroad in good company as well as the next one. So I came over on the last trip of the Baratoria, three weeks ago.

“I was given the address of another Jew in London, name of Abrams....”

Dick cast down his eyes to avoid giving anything away.

“... Same breed, but a different style,” Rulon went on. “In New York they live in a swell apartment and sport a bunch of ten-carat sparklers; in London they live in the slums, and act humble. But bloodsuckers just the same. This Abrams treated me like I was his long-lost brother. He introduced me to different members of the gang. They all laid themselves out to make me feel good. That don’t cut no ice with me. I knew they had an object.

“Well then I heard the story of the pearls; a real romantic story. Seems there was a King in one of the little countries in Europe—I needn’t mention its name; and a few years ago he got kicked out in a revolution, and came to England to live. Seems that all those discarded kings gen’ally beat it to England, ’cause England’s so strong for law ’n order, see? His Nibs carried the crown jewels with him, when he lit out, and the revolutionaries kicked up a hell of a stink, because they claimed the jewels wasn’t the property of the royal family, but of the State.

“They threatened to sue his Nibs in the English courts. I dunno how good a case they had, but anyhow, they threw a scare into him; he came across with the jewels, and the revolutionaries went back satisfied. But he had held out that pearl necklace on them, see? The revolutionaries wasn’t up on the jewels; they thought they had the lot; but fine jewels are always known to the experts; others knew about that pearl necklace. Abrams the Jew knew about it.

“Well, there was the situation. The mouths of Abrams and his gang watered bad for them pearls. You see, they was satisfied there couldn’t be no prosecution. To my mind the King had as good a right to the pearls as the revolutionaries; they on’y cashed in on what they did get, and spent it in riotous living. The State didn’t benefit any. Leastways, that was how it was told me. But just the same, the King couldn’t let it be known publicly that he had held out the pearls on them, without damaging his honor as a King and a gentleman. If they were stolen he would never dare prosecute. Moreover, for obvious reasons, he kept them in his own house instead of a bank; and for these reasons they were not insured. It looked almost too good to be true.

“In telling me all this, Abrams and his gang touched real light on the difficulties of the job. I began to find them out for myself later. It is true they had obtained the combination of the safe through the maker, but that was only the beginning. The ex-King lived in a grand house on the river Thames, a short distance above a town called Maidenhead, a great boating resort. I went to Maidenhead and engaged a room in a swell little riverside hotel; just the place where an American gentleman might settle down for awhile. I got a room with French windows opening directly on the garden, that I could go in and out of at any hour, and I hired a rowing boat by the week, and kept it moored at the foot of the garden.

“I reconnoitred the scene from the river by day, and again at night. There was plenty of gossip about his Nibs, to be picked up too. The house was a magnificent affair of brick and stone, hundreds of years old. There was not much land about it, six or eight acres, maybe; a fine lawn between house and river, and big trees at either side. It was surrounded on three sides by a twelve foot wall; on the fourth side was the river.

“His Nibs made out to live here like a simple English gentleman, but I was told in the village that he still kept up a royal state, so far as he was able. With my own eyes I could see that he kept about half a company of his former bodyguard hanging about the place camouflaged as gardeners. You see the revolutionaries pretended that as long as the ex-King lived, the republic was in danger, and his Nibs wasn’t takin’ any chance of a pot shot from an ardent patriot.

“The more I looked into it the less I liked it. The fact that the grounds were patrolled at night, didn’t bother me. I found a way in over the wall from the adjoining place, and I soon learned how to avoid those gentry. It was the precautions that were taken inside the house that stumped me. Lights were left burning in the principal corridors all night. Peeping through a window on the ground floor, I saw a regular guard-room, where three or four ex-soldiers sat all night, smoking and playing cards. In the main corridor overhead, where the principal rooms were—one of them the library with the safe, I could see the shadow of a sentry pacing to and fro. Oh, and I forgot to mention, that though I had a key to the door (it was not the front door but a scullery door) the whole house had lately been wired for a burglar alarm, so my key was damn little good to me.

“It was a regular man-trap, you see, and I was sore. Those wops would have filled you full of lead, without thinking twice about it, and there wouldn’t have been no inquest, neither. They would have planted you in the cellar while still warm. They didn’t want the English law nosing into their affairs. Yes, I was good and sore. Anybody but me would have turned around and sailed home at Abrams’ expense. But my patriotism was all het up. I was out to show them Britishers that a proper American could surmount even the impossible.

“Another handicap I laboured under was that the nights were so short. Finally a real bad night broke, with squalls of rain and wind that made the old trees rock and knock their branches together, and I set out to do my stuff. For nearly two weeks I had visited the place every night, and planned out every move. The damn scullery door was of oak about two inches thick, and I couldn’t cut a hole in it to reach in and snip the wires of the burglar alarm. But I found a little window near-by with leaded panes. I picked out the lead with my penknife and got a glass out.

“When I had cut the wires, I opened the scullery door with my key, and walked in. I had the plan of the house by heart. The door from the guard-room to the corridor was standing open, and I could hear the men talking in there. I flattened myself against the wall, and listened, until I got them placed just right. Then I flitted past the open door like a shadow. That was the worst moment.

“I lingered on the stairs until I heard the sentry overhead pass down to the far end of the corridor. Then I slipped up, and hid myself behind a curtain until he come back again. He turned right in front of me. I reached out and handed him one on the coco with a blackjack. I caught him as he dropped. If you hit ’em just right, they never let a peep out of ’em. I tied him up and gagged him, and carried him into one of the dark rooms.

“Then I went into the library, and opened the safe with the help of a flashlight, and took out the little flat box that had been described to me. Gosh! but those babies inside looked good to me, when I put the flash on ’em. I had been warned not to touch anything else that they could prosecute on. Unluckily that stiff in the next room came to, and began to knock his head against the panelling in a senseless kind of way. Sounded through that quiet house like beating a drum. So I beat it quick. I couldn’t go back the way I came. I went out through one of the big windows, and dropped to the ground from a kind of balustrade. Matter of fifteen feet.

“By the time I landed, the whole house was rousing up. Lights sprang up in different windows. I pictured his Nibs the King runnin’ out in his pajamas. I never did clap eyes on that guy. I guess in pajamas he looked much the same as any other guy. I had studied every inch of the ground, I got over the wall by means of the tree I used every night, and so through the next place to my boat. I sculled down the river past Maidenhead, as far as the first lock. There I took to the tow-path—there’s an elegant path for walking the whole way along the river Thames; but thinkin’ some of those wops might come after me on bicycles, I struck away from the river when the dawn broke. The next town I come to, I took train to London.

“Well you know how these English railway coaches are; all little compartments like. For awhile I had a compartment to myself, and I took the opportunity to examine my takings. I was astonished. Pearls are a sort of speciality of mine, and I could see at a glance that these were no ordinary pearls, but some of the finest in Europe. I got sore all over again, thinking of the nerve of that bunch offerin’ a man of my reputation a beggarly ten per cent. of the profits. And sending me to almost sure death at that. It was nothing to them if my career was cut short by a wop’s bullet. Inhuman, I call it.

“I got thinkin’ it over, and I made up my mind I’d dicker for the big end, see? What the blazes, didn’t I hold all the cards? His Nibs couldn’t prosecute; neither could Abrams and his gang tip me off to the police, because while they was showin’ me London, I had learned enough about them to put them all behind the bars. And these English guys are askeared of their jails, let me tell yeh.

“So instead of going to Abrams’ house, in Whitechapel, I come here to the Chester, and I wrote Abrams if he wanted to see me he could come to my hotel. He called me up then, but he found me suffering from an impediment in my speech, see? He said he wouldn’t be let into the hotel—that’s what a little self-respect these English crooks have; takin’ that from a hotel!—so I said I’d wait for him out in front. We argued it out on the sidewalk. I stood out for seventy-five per cent. Abrams cried and wrung his hands. That was all comedy, of course. He thought he had me. He hadn’t never tested the quality of American nerve before. When I’d had enough, I turned around and walked into the hotel. And now these babies” (here Rulon tapped his breast) “are going back to America with me. Abrams has written me, offering me seventy-five per cent., but the price has gone up to ninety now. The moral of this story is: It pays to be hard-boiled.”

Rulon looked at his watch. “Well, I got to go to the American Consulate,” he said. “Want to come?”

Dick shook his head. He felt a bit dazed. “I’d better stay away from that joint until I get a passport,” he said.

“Suit youself,” said Rulon indifferently. “See you later.” He stalked away.