He looked like a practical person, and that is precisely what he was. You never could think that the man had any imagination; and he didn’t have any. At least, he didn’t have any imagination in the sense that we usually understand it. I suppose he had the kind of imagination that the inventor has, or the mathematician when he figures the orbit of the stars, or the engineer when he has to make some calculation on the stresses of a bridge.
I asked him to look at my diamond when he came out. His face took on a decided expression of interest.
“Go up and see Bartoldi,” he said. “I will be along in an hour.”
He added with a sort of smile:
“There is no leisure in my trade. Somebody’s always either robbing a national bank or trying to rob—boring from within or setting up some game on the outside.”
Then he laughed.
Now, that is how I happened to find Walker—just when I wanted to find him. By accident I stepped into something, as you would say.
Well, it was not explained to me. In fact, to say plain truth, behind a lot of courteous indirections, he put me out of the bank and sent me up to Bartoldi’s to await his coming in an hour. I do not mean that he ordered me out. He enticed me out; he edged me out, a good deal as one would do with a child that had wandered into a rather tense conference.
I went up to Bartoldi’s. Everybody knows where it is.
He has a mammoth place on Fifth Avenue, rather far up—the trade is going up. The big retailers saw that a dozen years ago. Bartoldi is not the greatest jewel dealer in the world, but he is one of the greatest. The greatest jewel dealer in the world is Mahadol in Bombay; then come Vanderdick in Amsterdam, and Hauseman in Paris.