One might now suppose our woes were at an end, all danger over, and nothing to do but dispose of that shimmering cargo to best advantage. Harris and I were of that spirit-lifting view; we began on the very next day to feel about for customers.
Harris, whose former smuggling exploits had dealt solely with gems, knew as little of silk as did I. Had either been expert he might have foreseen a coming peril into whose arms we in our blindness all but walked. No, our troubles were not yet done. We had escaped the engulfing suck of Charybdis, only to be darted upon by those six grim mouths of her sister monster, Scylla, over the way.
Well do I recall that morning. I had seen but two possible purchasers of silks when Harris overtook me. His eye shone with alarm. Lorns had run him down with the news—however he himself discovered it, I never knew—that another danger yawned.
Harris hurried me to our Reade Street lair and gave particulars.
“It seems,” said Harris, quite out of breath with the speed we’d made in hunting cover, “that Stewart is for America the sole agent of these particular brands of silk which we’ve brought in. Some one to whom we’ve offered them has notified the Stewart company. At this moment and as we sit here, the detectives belonging to Stewart, and for all I may guess, the whole Central Office as well, are on our track. They want to discover who has these silks; and how they came in, since the customs records show no such importations. And there’s a dark characteristic to these silks. Each bolt has its peculiar, individual selvage. Each, with a sample of its selvage, is registered at the home looms. Could anyone get a snip of a selvage he could return with it to Lyons, learn from the manufacturers’ book just when it was woven, when sold, and to whom. I can tell you one thing,” observed Harris, as he concluded his story, “we’re in a bad corner.”
How the cold drops spangled my brows! I began to wish with much heart that I’d never met Harris, nor heard, that Trinity churchyard day, of Cornbury and his smuggling methods of gathering gold.
There was one ray of hope; neither Harris nor I had disclosed our names, nor the whereabouts or quantity of the silks; and as each had been dealing with folk with whom he’d never before met, we were both as yet mysteries unsolved.
Nor were we ever solved. Harris and I kept off the streets during daylight hours for a full month. We were not utterly idle; we unpleasantly employed ourselves in trimming away that telltale selvage.
Preferring safety to profit, we put forth no efforts to realize on our speculations for almost a year. By that time the one day’s wonder of “Who’s got Stewart’s silks?” had ceased to disturb the mercantile world and the grand procession of dry goods interest passed on and over it.
At last we crept forth like felons—as, good sooth! we were—and disposed of our mutilated silks to certain good folk whose forefathers once ruled Palestine. These gentry liked bargains, and were in no wise curious; they bought our wares without lifting an eyebrow of inquiry, and from them constructed—though with that I had no concern—those long “circulars,” so called, which were the feminine joy a third of a century gone.