Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

The scraps of the conversation which one hears as one passes along the street generally relates to matters affecting the trade. That is a somewhat wide margin, for all public events, from a threatened European war to the death of some dusky potentate, more or less influence diamonds. But most of the talk is of the precious stones themselves and the mines in which they are found—of falls of reef in Kimberley, and of the price of glassy stones, cape whites, off-coloured stuff, and boart. Many of the men who gather together there are birds of passage who are constantly backwards and forwards between London and the Diamond Fields, and often enough there are one or two men who have just come back from the Cape with a budget of Diamond Field news which the others are not a little interested in.

One morning, about two months after the adventure which ended so badly for Sixpence, Jack Enderby turned into that thoroughfare from Holborn. As he did so he pushed a soft felt hat of a decidedly colonial shape well over his face, for he saw two men on the opposite side of the street whom he had known on the Fields, and did not wish the recognition to be mutual. Taking a quick look at the numbers on the doors, he made the best of his way along the street and disappeared through a doorway on which he saw a name he was looking for, namely, that of Mr Le Mert, diamond merchant.

Mr Le Mert was in his office. He was a man of about fifty, who still looked mentally and physically not far past his prime. Some people would have called him a good-looking man, and there was plenty of strength in his face. But as he scanned some figures he had scribbled on the back of an envelope, there was rather an ugly gleam in his eye, which became a little more pronounced when his clerk came into the room and said, that a gentleman wished to see him. It changed, however, into one of relief when he read the name which his visitor had written on a piece of paper.

“Well, Jack, my boy, how goes it? You have just turned up from the Fields, I should say, from your get up!” he said heartily enough, as he shook hands with his visitor. “Wonder what that fool wants of me?” was his inward comment. But though, as a matter of fact, he was not particularly pleased to see Jack, he had expected an unpleasant visit from a man who had obtained some very awkward information about a company he had promoted, and was threatening to make things very unpleasant. So it was a relief to him to find it was one with whom he had been pretty friendly in former days on the Diamond Fields.

“Well, Le Mert, so you have become a great swell—one of the great guns of the diamond trade. Things are altered a bit, are they not, since the old days?” Jack said, after they had talked together for some time.

“When I kept a roulette-table at Dutoitspan, and you used to punt away the price of yours and your partner’s diamonds at it,” the other answered, wondering to himself what Jack wanted. He had at first been half inclined to suspect that his visitor was in quest of a loan, but his manner struck him as being too independent for that.

“I suppose you go in for being quite the straight and upright merchant now?” Jack asked, evidently remembering some old Diamond Field transactions.

“Well, I don’t suppose you have come all this way to inquire into my moral character, or bother me about old stories which nobody would believe, though I should not much care if they did,” Le Mert answered, looking at Jack and wondering what his business could be.

“No, I came on business. I have a diamond I found, which I thought perhaps you might make me an offer for.”

“Oh, one you found, eh? Yes, you were a policeman or something like that out there at the last, weren’t you? still you managed to find a diamond which you wish to sell to me. Well, let’s have a look at it.”