Jewel Mysteries, from a Dealer's Note Book

by Max Pemberton

THE ACCURSED GEMS.

The accursed gems lie sedately in the lowest drawer of my strong room, shining from a couple of dozen of prim leather cases, with a light which is full of strange memories. I call them accursed because I cannot sell them; yet there are those with other histories, stones about which the fancy of romance has sported, and the strong hand of tragedy has touched with an indelible brand. It may be that the impulse of sentiment, working deep down in the heart of the ostensibly commercial character, forbids me to cry some of these wares in the market-place with any vigor; it may be that the play of chance moves the mind of the jewel-buyer to a prejudice against them. In any case, they lie in my safe unhonored and unsung—and, lacking that which Sewell called the "precious balsam" of reputation, are merely so much carbon or mineral matter giving light to iron walls which give no light again.

For the stones which have no history I am not an apologist. Some day, those excellent people who now decry them in every salon where jewels are discussed, will give up the hope of attempting to buy them cheaply; and I shall make my profit. Everything comes to him who can wait, and I am not in a hurry. As to the others, which have been the pivots of romance or serious story, they may well lie as they are while they serve my memory in the jotting down of some of these mysteries.

And that they do serve it I have no measure of doubt. Here, for instance, is a little bag of pearls and diamonds. It contains a black pearl from Koepang, so rich in silvery lustre, and so perfect in shape, that it should be worth eight hundred pounds in any market in Europe; a couple of pink pearls from the Bahamas, of fine orient yet pear-shaped, and therefore less valuable as fashion dictates; five old Brazilian diamonds averaging two carats each; a number of smaller diamonds for finish; and two great white pearls, which I find at the very bottom of the bag. Those stones were bought by the late Lord Maclaren a month before the date announced for his marriage with the Hon. Christine King. He had intended them as his gift to her, a handsome and sufficient gift, it must be admitted, yet so did fickle fortune work that his very generosity was the indirect cause of a commotion in the week of the wedding, and of as pretty a social scandal as society has known for a decade.

The matter was hushed up of course. For six weeks, as a wag said, it was a nine days' wonder. Aged ladies discussed it from every point of view, but could make nothing of it. The Society papers lacked enough information to lie about it. The principal actors held their tongues, and in due time the West forgot, for a new scandal arose, and the courts supplied the craving for the doubtful, which is a part of polite education nowadays. Yet I do not think that I make a boastful claim, in asserting that I alone, beyond those immediately concerned, became possessed of full knowledge of the occurrence. It was to me first of all that Lord Maclaren related the history of it, and, despite my advice to the contrary, laid it upon me that I should tell none in his lifetime. He is dead now, and the publication of the story will throw a light upon much that is well worth investigating. It may also help me to sell the pearls, which is infinitely more important, as any unprejudiced person will admit.

Here then is the story. I had a visit from the chief actor in it towards the end of June in the year 1890. He came to tell me that he was to be married quietly in the middle of the following month to the Hon. Christine King, the very beautiful sister of Lord Cantiliffe. She was then staying at the old family place at St. Peter's, in Kent; and she wished to avoid a public wedding in view of the recent death of her sister, whose beauty was no less remarkable than her own. Maclaren's visit was but the prelude to the purchase of a present, and the business was made the easier since he had the simplest notions as to his requirements. He had recently come from America—without a wife mirabile dictu—and there had seen a curious anchor bracelet. The wristband of this bauble was formed of a plain gold cable, the anchor itself of pearls and diamonds; the shackle consisted of a small circle of brilliants; the shaft had a pink pearl at either end; the shank had a black pearl at the foot of it, and the flukes were of white pearls with small diamonds round them. I found it to be rather a vulgar ornament; but his heart was set on having it, and it chanced that I had the very pearls necessary. I told him that I would make him a model, and send it down to his hotel at Ramsgate within a week; and that, if he then thought the jewel to be over showy, we could refashion it. He left much pleased, returning by the Granville express to Kent; and within the week he had the model; and I received his instructions to proceed with the work.

It is necessary, I think, to say a word here about this curious character. At the time I knew him, Maclaren was a man in his fortieth year, though he looked older. He was once vulgarly described in a club smoking-room as being "all hair and teeth," like a buzzard; and his best friend could not have ranked him with the handsome. Yet the women liked him—perhaps because it was a tradition that he made love to every pretty girl in town; and it was surprising beyond belief that he reached his fortieth year, and remained single. When he went to America in 1888 the whole of the prophets gave him six months of celibacy; but he cheated them, and returned without a wife. True, a copy of an American society paper was passed round the club, where the men learnt with surprise that New York had believed this elderly Don Juan to be engaged to Evelyn Lenox, "the lady of the unlimited dollars," as young Barisbroke of the Bachelors' called her; and had been very indignant when he took passage by the Teutonic, and left her people to face the titters of a triumphant rivalry. But for all that he was not married, and could afford to laugh at the malignant scribes who made couplets of his supposed amatory adventures in Boston; and dedicated sonnets of apology, "pro amore mea," to E—— L—— and the marrying mothers of New York generally. Such a man cared little for the threats of this young lady's brother, or for the common rumor that she was the most dashing girl in New York city, and would make things unpleasant for him. He had twenty thousand a year, and for fiancée one of the prettiest roses in the whole garden of Kent. What harm then could a broker's daughter, three thousand miles away, do to him? or how mar his happiness?

But I am anticipating, and must hark back to the anchor with the flukes of pearl. I sent the model down on Wednesday; on the Friday morning I received the order to proceed with the work. Early on the following Monday, as I read my paper in a cab on the way to Bond Street, I saw a tremendous headline which announced the "sudden and mysterious disappearance of Lord Maclaren." The report said that he had left his hotel on the Saturday afternoon to walk, as the supposition went, to St. Peters. But he had never reached Lord Cantiliffe's house; and although search had been made by the police and by special coastguard parties, no trace of him had been found. I need scarcely say that the murder theory was set up at once. Clever men from town came down to wag their heads with stupid men from Canterbury, and to discuss the "only possible theory," of which there were a dozen or more. The police arrested all the drunken men within a radius of ten miles, and looked for bloodstains on their coats. The Hon. Christine King was spoken of as "distracted," which was possible; and the family of the missing nobleman as "plunged into the most profound grief." Nor, as an eloquent special reporter in his best mood explained, was this supposed tragedy made less painful by the knowledge that the unhappy victim of accident or of murder was to have been married within the month.

For a whole week the press had no other topic; the police telegraphed to all the capitals; a reward of a thousand pounds was offered for knowledge of Lord Maclaren, "last seen upon the East Cliff at Ramsgate at three o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, the fifth of July." A hundred tongues gave you the exact details of an imagined assassination; ten times that number—and these tongues chiefly feminine—told you that he had shirked the marriage upon its very threshold. But the mystery remained unexplained—and as the day for the wedding drew near, the excitement amongst a section of society rose to fever heat. Had the body been found? Had the detectives a clue? Were the strange hints—implying that the missing man had quarrelled with his fiancée's brother, and thrown a glass of wine in his face; that he had a wife in Algiers; that he was married a year ago at Cyprus; that he was bankrupt—merely the fable of malicious tongues, or had they that germ of truth from which so vast a disease of scandal can grow? I made no pretence to answer the questions—but they interested me, and I watched for the development of the story with the keenness of a hardened novel reader.