The Black Lion Inn

by Alfred Henry Lewis

It is a merest truism; we hear it in the storm; the very waves are its witnesses. Everywhere and under each condition, it is true. The proof lies all about. We read it on every page of history; behold it when armies overthrow a throne or the oak falls beneath the axe of the woodman. Do I disfavor war? On the contrary, I approve it as an institution of greatest excellence. War slays; war has its blood. But has peace no victims? Peace kills thousands where war kills tens; and if one is to consider misery, why then there be more starvation, more cold, more pain, and more suffering in one year of New York City peace than pinched and gnawed throughout the whole four years of civil war. And human life is of comparative small moment. We say otherwise; we believe otherwise; but we don’t act otherwise. Action is life’s text. Humanity is itself the preacher; in that silent sermon of existence—an existence of world’s goods and their acquirement—we forever show the thing of least consequence to be the life of man. However, I am not myself to preach, I who pushed forth to tell a story. It is the defect of age to be garrulous, and as one’s power to do departs, its place is ever taken by a weakness to talk.

This filibusterer whom I liberated to sail against Spain, I long ago told you was called Ryan. That, however, is a fictitious name; there was a Ryan, and the Spaniards took his life at Santiago. And because he with whom I dealt was also put up against a wall and riddled with Spanish lead, and further, because it is not well to give his true name, I call him Ryan now. His ship rode on her rope in New York bay; I was given the Harriet Lane to hold him from sailing away; his owners ashore—merchants these and folk on ’change—offered me ten thousand dollars; the gold was in bags, forty pounds of it; I turned my back at evening and in the morning he was gone.

You have been told how I never thought on those adventures of The Emperor’s Cigars, and The German Girl’s Diamonds, without sensations of shame, and pain. Indeed! they were engagements of ignobility! Following the latter affair I felt a strongest impulse to change somewhat my occupation. I longed for an employment a bit safer and less foul. I counted my fortunes; I was rich with over seventy thousand dollars; that might do, even though I gained no more. And so it fell that I was almost ready to leave the Customs, and forswear and, if possible, forget, those sins I had helped commit in its name.

In the former days, my home tribe was not without consequence in Old Dominion politics. And while we could not be said to have strengthened ourselves by that part we took against the Union, still, now that peace was come, the family began little by little to regather a former weight. It had enough at this time to interfere for my advantage and rescue me from my present duty. I was detailed from Washington to go secretly to Europe, make the careless tour of her capitols, and keep an eye alive to the interests of both the Treasury and the State Department.

It was a gentleman’s work; this loafing from London to Paris, and from Paris to Berlin, with an occasional glance into Holland and its diamond cutting. And aside from expenses—which were paid by the government—I drew two salaries; one from the Customs and a second from the Secret Service. My business was to detect intended smuggling and cable the story, to the end that Betelnut Jack and Lorns and Quin and the others make intelligent seizures when the smugglers came into New York. The better to gain such news, I put myself on closest terms—and still keep myself a secret—with chief folk among houses of export; I went about with them, drank with them, dined with them; and I wheedled and lay in ambush for information of big sales. I sent in many a good story; and many a rich seizure came off through my interference. Also I lived vastly among legation underlings, and despatched what I found to the Department of State. There was no complaint that I didn’t earn my money from either my customs or my secret service paymaster. In truth! I stood high in their esteem.

At times, too, I was baffled. There was a lady, the handsome wife of a diamond dealer in Maiden Lane. She came twice a year to Europe. Obviously and in plain view—like the vulgarian she was not—this beautiful woman, as she went aboard ship in New York, would wear at throat and ears and on her hands full two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stones—apparently. And there they seemed to be when she returned; and, of course, never a dime of duty. We were morally sure this beautiful woman was a beautiful smuggler; we were morally sure those stones were paste when she sailed from New York; we were morally sure they were genuine, of purest water, when she returned; we were morally sure the shift was made in Paris, and that a harvest of thousands was garnered with every trip. But what might we do? We had no proof; we could get none; we could only guess.

And there were other instances when we slipped. More than once I tracked a would-be smuggler to his ship and saw him out of port. And yet, when acting on my cables, the smuggler coming down the New York gang-plank was snapped up by my old comrades and searched, nothing was found. This mystery, for mystery it was, occurred a score of times. At last we learned the trick. The particular room occupied by the smuggler was taken both ways for a round dozen trips ahead. There were seven members of the smuggling combine. When one left the room, his voyage ended, and came ashore in New York, another went duly aboard and took possession for the return trip. The diamonds had not gone ashore. They were hidden in a sure place somewhere about the room; he who took it to go to Europe knew where. And in those several times to follow when the outgoer was on and off the boat before she cleared, he found no difficulty in carrying the gems ashore. The Customs folk aren’t watching departures; their vigilance is for those who arrive. However, after a full score of defeats, we solved this last riddle, and managed a seizure which lost the rogues what profits they had gathered on all the trips before.

Also, as I pried about the smuggling industry, I came across more than one interesting bit of knowledge. I found a French firm making rubies—actual rubies. It was a great secret in my time, though more is known of it now. The ruby was real; stood every test save the one test—a hard one to enforce—of specific gravity. The made ruby was a shadow lighter, bulk for bulk, than the true ruby of the mines. This made ruby was called the “scientific ruby;” and indeed! it was scientific to such a degree of delusion that the best experts were for long deceived and rubies which cost no more than two hundred dollars to make, were sold for ten thousand dollars.

As a curious discovery of my ramblings, I stumbled on a diamond, the one only of its brood. It was small, no more than three-quarters of a carat. But of a color pure orange and—by day or by night—blazing like a spark of fire. That stone if lost could be found; it is the one lone member of its orange house. What was its fate? Set in the open mouth of a little lion’s head, one may now find it on the finger of a prince of the Bourse.

It was while in Madrid, during my European hunting, that those seeds were sown which a few months later grew into a smart willingness to let down the bars for my filibusterer’s escape. I was by stress of duty held a month in Madrid. And, first to last, I heard nothing from the natives when they spoke of America but malediction and vilest epithet. It kept me something warm, I promise, for all I had once ridden saber in hand to smite that same American government hip and thigh. I left Madrid when my work was done with never a moment’s delay; and I carried away a profound hate for Spain and all things Spanish.