Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

After a bit, however, his luck seemed to have changed, and diamonds began to turn up on his sorting-table. The queer thing about those diamonds was, that they were unlike river stones, and much more of the appearance of the stones found in the mines. The diamond-buyers to whom he sold seemed, he thought, to look at them and him rather queerly when he brought them out to sell. He did not, however, trouble himself much about this. While he was working at his claim, not over rejoiced at the slight turn of luck he was experiencing, as he had hardly any ambition to make money, one day a conversation took place in the office of the head of the police in Kimberley, which would have opened his eyes if he had heard it. There had been a good deal of what is called illicit buying down the river for some time. Persons who had bought stolen diamonds, and wished to dispose of the diamonds advantageously, had taken to get men who pretended to be river-diggers, to profess to have found them in their claims, and sell them advantageously. Stolen diamonds are rather awkward property to dispose of, as dealers have to keep registers by which diamonds can be traced back to the diggers who first found them; so it was an advantage to give a diamond that had been stolen a fictitious history.

The head of the police had determined to put a stop to this practice, and had sent a man down the river to see what was going on. The information he had received had surprised him a good deal, and at first he hardly believed it. “What, Darrell of Red Shirt Rush in this? Why, I should have thought he was straight,” he was saying to one of the detectives, who had come in to see him with another man.

“It ain’t the first time, sir, you’ve thought that about a party we have found to be pretty deeply in the trade; now this man here sold Darrell as many as half-a-dozen diamonds which we can swear to, and which we can prove he has sold again; is not that so, Seers?” the detective said, turning to the ill-looking, undersized man who had come in with him.

“Yes, sir, he has bought ’em off me; he has been buying for this last twelve months to my knowledge, and working off illicit stuff from his claims,” the man answered, his eyes as he spoke wandering about furtively, looking anywhere except into the face of the person he spoke to.

“Well, I suppose there is no doubt about it. It’s high time some one was made an example of down the river; you and Sergeant Black had better go down and trap Darrell, with this man Seers,” the head of the police said after he had talked for some time. “Look here,” he added, calling the detective on one side, “that fellow is an infernal scoundrel, and are you sure he is not humbugging us?”

“Well, sir, white traps mostly are infernal scoundrels, but what he says is right enough about Darrell. What object should he have in telling us what was wrong?—besides, I don’t think he would try and fool me,” the detective said with a grin, which expressed considerable satisfaction with his own astuteness.

Two evenings after this conversation, the man Seers came into Darrell’s tent, pretending that a mate of his was ill, and he wanted to be given some brandy. Darrell knew the man by sight, having seen him lately hanging about the diggings, and had not been much prepossessed by his appearance. He was civil enough to him, however, telling him he had got no brandy, and listening to his description of his mate’s illness.

The man talked away for a few minutes, and then went to the opening of the tent, gave a shout, and then in a second, to Darrell’s astonishment, two men, one of whom he knew by sight as a Kimberley detective, made their appearance. In a twinkling they had handcuffed him, searched him and the tent, and found a diamond in a pannikin near his bed. Darrell’s protestations of his innocence went for very little, and in the course of another twenty-four hours he found himself a prisoner in Kimberley jail, awaiting a trial for buying a diamond illicitly.

On his trial it was proved that Seers had been searched before he went into the tent, and had no money upon him; when he came out he had ten sovereigns in his possession. The detectives were able to swear to the diamond found in Darrell’s possession as the one they had given Seers before he went into the tent. The case seemed to be exactly like the ordinary cases of trapping that come before the courts at Kimberley almost every week. The judge who tried it expressed his opinion that it was one about which he had not the slightest doubt as to the prisoner’s guilt, and sentenced him to hard labour for five years.

The crime of buying stolen diamonds is considered on the Fields one of the most heinous of offences, those who are convicted of it being seldom allowed to escape without a severe punishment.