He would sell out a couple of thousand pounds’ worth of stock, and generously place it as a first instalment to the credit of Jim Easton in another part of the world; and nobody but himself should know about it. For the last three years he had lived mainly on his rent-roll, and this should remain the means of subsistence of his wife, and of himself so long as he was in England. But the bulk of the remainder of his fortune left of late almost untouched, should gradually be transferred, little by little, to the credit of the wanderer.
At breakfast he was so enthralled with his scheme that he paid no attention whatsoever to Dolly’s offended silence. He told her that he was going to London for a few days, and that very possibly he would there make arrangements to go abroad for a holiday.
“As you please,” she replied, coldly. “I, too, need a change; but I can’t play the deserter. I must stay here, and try to do my duty.”
Driving into Oxford he turned the matter over in his mind unceasingly, and in the train he thought of little else, nor so much as glanced at the newspapers he had brought. The difficulty was to think out a means whereby he could now place this capital sum to the account of Jim Easton, and later add to it, without using his cheque book or any bank notes which could be traced; for all the salt would be gone out of the proposed enterprise if his recurrent change of personality were open to detection. He wanted to be able to say to Dolly each year: “I am going away, and I shall be back about such-and-such a date, until then I shall not be able to be found, nor troubled in any way by the exigencies of domestic life.”
At length, as he reached the hotel where he was going to stay, the simple solution came to him; and so eager was he to put the plan into execution that he was off upon the business so soon as he had deposited his dressing-case in the bedroom. In South Africa he had become an expert in the valuation of diamonds, and now he proposed to put this knowledge to use. He knew the addresses of two or three dealers who supplied the trade with unset stones; and to these he made his way, with the result that during the afternoon he had selected some twenty small diamonds which were to be held for him until his cheques should be forthcoming.
The business was resumed next day; and by the following evening he had depleted his capital by two thousand pounds, and in its place he held a little boxful of diamonds which, so far as he could tell, were worth considerably more than he had paid for them. These stones he proposed to sell again, practically one by one, in various foreign cities, depositing the proceeds in the name of Jim Easton at some bank, say in Rome; and, as all the jewels were of inconspicuous size and small value, his dealings would not be able to be traced beyond the original purchases in London, even if so far as that.
Before returning to Oxford he decided to pay a call on Mrs. Darling to invite her to go down to stay at Eversfield during his absence. He regarded her as a capable, good-natured, and entirely unprincipled woman; and she had invariably shown him that at any rate she liked him, if she were not always proud of him. As a mother-in-law she had been extraordinarily circumspect, and, in fact, she had effaced herself to a quite unnecessary extent, seldom coming to stay at the manor, but preferring to pass most of her time at her little flat in London.
She was at home when he called, and greeted him with affection, good-temperedly scolding him for not writing to her more often.
“You might have peaceably passed away, for all I knew,” she said.
Jim smiled. “Oh, I think Dolly would have mentioned it, if I had,” he replied. He gazed around the room: it was always a source of profound astonishment to him. The walls were silver-papered, the woodwork was scarlet, the furniture was of red lacquer, the carpet was grey, and the chairs and sofa were upholstered in grey silk, ornamented with much silver fringe and many tassels of silver and scarlet. Upon the walls were a dozen Bakst-like paintings of women displaying bits of their remarkable anatomy through unnecessary apertures in their tawdry garments; and as Jim stared at them he was devoutly thankful that Mrs. Darling had not robed herself in like manner.