‘Wants to do me if he can,’ he said to himself.
‘What can I do for you?’ he asked, with oily affability.
‘You buy diamonds, I want to sell some; and as I sell them under the pressure of peculiar circumstances I am prepared to let you have them a bargain,’ said the stranger, with a tone at once friendly and business-like.
‘I don’t believe in bargains. I’ll give you a fair price for a good article, if you came by the things honestly,’ replied Mr. Mosheh, with a suspicious look. ‘I am not a receiver of stolen goods. You have come to the wrong shop for that.’
‘If I’d thought you were I shouldn’t have come here,’ said the grey-bearded old man. ‘I want to deal with a gentleman. I am a gentleman myself, though a decayed one. I have not come on my own business, but on that of a friend, a man you know by name and repute as well as you know the Prince of Wales—a man carrying on one of the most successful businesses in London. I’m not going to tell you his name. I only give you the facts. My friend has bills coming due to-morrow. If they are dishonoured he must be in the Gazette next week. In his difficulty he went to his wife, and made a clean breast of it. She behaved as a good woman ought, put her arms round his neck and told him not to be down-hearted, and then ran for her jewel-case, and gave him her diamonds.’
‘Let us have a look at these said diamonds,’ replied Mr. Mosheh, without vouchsafing any praise of the wife’s devotion.
The man took out a small parcel, and unfolded it. There, on a sheet of cotton wool, reposed the gems, five-and-thirty large white stones, the smallest of them as big as a pea.
‘Why, they’re unset!’ exclaimed the diamond merchant. ‘How’s that?’
‘My friend is a proud man. He didn’t want his wife’s jewels to be recognised.’
‘So he broke up the setting? Your friend was a fool, sir. What do these stones belong to?’ speculated Mr. Mosheh, touching the gems lightly with the tip of his fleshy forefinger, and arranging them in a circle. ‘A collet necklace, evidently, and a very fine collet necklace it must have been. Your friend was an idiot to destroy it.’