Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  Samuel put down the diamond and looked at his schoolfriend in astonishment. ‘Now, you’re really having me on toast. This is just a practical joke, isn’t it? You’re going to go back to all the fellows at Kennington and tell them how Samuel Kellogg thought a piece of glass from a Christmas cracker was worth millions of pounds.’

  ‘Samuel, I’m telling you the truth. I swear it. When my mother was in South Africa, she lived with Barney Blitz for years. He was my real father.’

  ‘Well, you could knock me down with a feather,’ said Samuel.

  Peter pointed to the diamond. ‘That’s why I’m quite sure that the diamond is real. And that’s why I have to know where I can take it to sell it. I don’t want to be sold short. My father gave that stone to my mother so that my future would be secure. I wouldn’t want to let him down by giving it to the first diamond dealer I meet for only a quarter of what it’s worth.’

  Samuel looked at the stone for a long time. ‘You’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never seen a diamond like this before, and I never will again. I want to make sure that I remember this moment. So, Barney Blitz was your father, was he? You could knock me down with a feather.’

  ‘The point is,’ said Peter, ‘where can I go with such a diamond?’

  Samuel laid the diamond carefully back on his workbench. ‘There’s only one man that I know of. Garth Steinman. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of him or not, but he’s a dealer in unusual and speciality jewels only. Quite an eccentric, but a very rich eccentric. He acquired the Montfort emeralds for the late Queen. He’s a friend of the Rothschilds, and of J. P. Morgan. He has a house in St John’s Wood, although he may not be there now. He winters in Italy, and spends his summers in Switzerland.’

  Peter took back the diamond and slipped it into the drawstring sachet. ‘I can only try. Do you think you can find me his address?’

  ‘My dear chap,’ said Samuel, ‘for the sake of a diamond like that, I’ll even take you there.’

  Samuel closed the jeweller’s shop early, and the two of them hailed a hansom from the corner of Gray’s Inn Road. The rush-hour traffic was easing off now, and the early evening sunlight filled the interior of the cab with gilded motes of dust. Neither of the friends spoke very much as they turned westwards towards Euston station. Peter felt as if the whole of his world had altered, as if he were now involved in a theatrical performance of his own life, rather than the real thing.

  It took them a little over twenty minutes to reach the quiet sidestreet in St John’s Wood where Garth Steinman’s residence stood. The Steinman house was only one of a whole row of huge, expensive mansions, each with a high wall and hedges. In those days, St John’s Wood, although it was only a mile or so north of Marylebone, was a quiet secluded village of its own, and the air was noticeably fresher than it had been in Holborn. Peter and Samuel alighted from the cab and paid the cabbie 1s 3d, with 3d tip.

  Samuel rang at the bell-pull on the gate. But it was almost five minutes before a gardener, who was trundling a wheelbarrow of dug-up daffodil bulbs, came past the front of the house and noticed them. A little while later, a footman in a green coat and stockings came out to enquire what they wanted.

  ‘Mr Steinman, if he’s at home,’ said Peter.

  ‘You have an appointment, sir?’

  ‘I have something better than an appointment.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I have the largest diamond he’s ever seen in his life.’

  The footman said, ‘I’m afraid Mr Steinman is seeing nobody today. He has a headache.’

  Peter took the diamond out of his pocket, and held it up. It flashed in the sunshine as brilliantly as if it had actually caught fire. The footman could not keep his eyes off it.

  ‘Tell Mr Steinman that you’ve seen the diamond for yourself,’ said Peter, quietly. ‘Tell him that it will be more than worth his while to forget his headache for five minutes.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the footman, and retreated towards the house. Peter glanced at Samuel and gave him a teeth-gritted grin, half optimistic and half fearful.

  Another five minutes passed before the footman returned. Without a word, he unlocked the gates, and beckoned them inside. He locked the gates behind them as they walked up the sloping gravelled driveway towards the pillared portico of the house. The flowerbeds all the way along the drive were clustered with white and yellow roses, and the fragrance was almost nauseating. Peter was reminded that he had not eaten anything all day, except for one desultory nibble at his rock cake.

  The footman opened the black-painted front doors, and led the friends into a wide, high-ceilinged hallway which had been decorated in a style which Peter could only think of as over-extravagant Byzantine. There were arches everywhere, decorated with gold and peacock-blue mosaics, and a fountain of nude entwined mermaids splashed water into the cool echoing silence.

  ‘You’ll come through to the afternoon room, sir?’ asked the footman, and ushered them into a sunny yellow-carpeted library at the far side of the hall.

  At a wide leather-topped desk, smoking a Turkish cigarette in a long holder, sat a small rotund man with shiny brushed-back hair, and a monocle. He was wearing a yellow silk dressing-gown which matched the colour of the carpet, and yellow silk slippers.

  On a chaise-longue at the opposite end of the room, next to a wall of gilded and leather-bound books, lay a very pretty girl who looked no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, with an embroidered silk headband around her blonde, upswept hair, and dressed in a multi-layered negligée of such fine laon and lace that Peter could distinguish the rosy pink of her nipples.

  ‘You’d better introduce yourselves,’ said the fat man behind the desk.

  ‘My name’s Peter Ransome,’ said Peter. ‘And this is Mr Samuel Kellogg, my friend. Mr Kellogg is a jeweller.’

  ‘I see,’ said Garth Steinman. ‘And what are you?’

  ‘I am an automobile mechanic,’ said Peter.

  Garth Steinman jotted a few notes on to the diary that was open in front of him. Then he closed it up, and said, ‘What is an automobile mechanic doing with a large diamond, that’s what I ask myself.’

  ‘I came by it legitimately, Mr Steinman. It was a bequest from my late mother. My … recently late mother.’

  ‘My condolences,’ said Garth Steinman. ‘Your mother was a wealthy woman? Should I know her name?’

  ‘She was not wealthy in any other respect, save this diamond,’ Peter told him, quietly.

  Garth Steinman looked up, one eye closed, the other eye staring through his monocle like a freshly opened clam. ‘I see. Well, a diamond’s provenance is not too difficult to check, if you know the right people to ask. My man told me that the stone was exceptional, by all appearances.’

  Peter took the diamond out of his pocket again and set it precisely in the centre of Garth Steinman’s closed diary. Garth Steinman kept his eyes on Peter for more than ten seconds before he turned his attention to the stone.

  ‘Well, then,’ he said. On the other side of the room, the pretty blonde girl had sat up and taken notice.

  While Peter and Samuel stood and watched him in silence, Garth Steinman laid the diamond on a sheet of white paper, and examined it closely. His cigarette now burned unnoticed in the ashtray, and the only sound in the room, apart from the faint splashing of the fountain in the hallway, was Steinmen’s hoarse breathing, in and out of his open mouth.

  Now Steinman took out a 20 × loupe, and scrutinised the diamond for brilliance and fire, and also to check whether it contained any ‘clouds’, which are small clusters of bubbles; and ‘butterflies’, which are cleavage cracks; or ‘naats’, which are the knotty flaws that sometimes appear at the interface between twinned crystals.

  After long minutes of study, he eventually put the diamond down again, and tucked his loupe into the breast pocket of his dressing-gown.

  ‘I am very seldom taken by surprise,’ he said, thickly. ‘I know the value and the whereabouts of
almost every major gemstone in the world. I have friends in the Russian court; in Vienna; and in Berlin. I was a close friend of Cecil Rhodes before he died last year, and Mr Ernest Oppenheimer regularly sends me cables from De Beers, and dines with me whenever he comes to London, or to Berne.’

  Garth Steinman paused, and then lifted up the diamond in his right hand. ‘This, however, has taken me by surprise. It is genuine, I can assure you of that. No paste diamond could be made to this size without its falsity being immediately obvious. And who would attempt to fake a stone of this immensity? It would be absurd. Mr Ransome – that is your name? – this diamond I believe to be the famous Rio Diamond, which was sold at auction in 1888 to a New York diamond dealer called Greenberg. I don’t remember how much it fetched, about two millions, I think. But its size, and its cut, and its colour – all correspond with what I know of the Rio.’

  The blonde girl had now got up from the chaise-longue and crossed the room, the lacy train of her negligée dragging across the canary-yellow carpet. She stood a little way away from Garth Steinman’s desk, and stared at the diamond as if it were a hypnotic eye. Peter gave her a quick, friendly smile, but she did not return it.

  ‘How much do you think the diamond is worth now?’ asked Samuel.

  Garth Steinman puffed out his cheeks. ‘It depends on its history. If Mr Ransome here can establish that it is rightfully his, then we can make some enquiries right away, of dealers and collectors, and of royal courts, and we may be lucky enough to be able to close a private sale, which usually fetches more than an open auction. The market price is quite steady at the moment – so we may get three to four millions, if we play things right. I’d expect a commission, of course, of thirty per cent.’

  ‘That seems excessive,’ said Peter.

  Garth Steinman smiled tightly. ‘Seventy per cent of three millions, which is what you’ll be left with, is rather more than seventy per cent of nothing. There aren’t many men on earth who can sell this diamond for you, I assure you. Well – you must know that, or you wouldn’t have brought it here to begin with.’

  ‘He’s right, Peter,’ said Samuel.

  Peter thought for a moment, and then nodded. ‘Very well, Mr Steinman, I’ll leave the sale to you. I shall require a receipt, of course, to the effect that you’re holding the diamond. And I shall also require you to seek my approval before you close the sale.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Garth Steinman. ‘Can I offer you a brandy?’

  It was more than a month before Peter heard from Garth Steinman again. Then, when he was back at the Vulcan motor works at Southport, on a sullen August day, he received a telegram saying, ‘Entrain for London at once. I have a sale – Steinman.’ He told his chief engineer that he was feeling sick, and took an omnibus back to his small walk-up flat on the outskirts of Southport to pack, hurriedly, a portmanteau. By tea-time, his train was pulling out of Northampton on its way to London, and the first flickers of lightning were lighting up the eastern horizon, over towards the flatlands of East Anglia. He arrived in St John’s Wood at six.

  Garth Steinman met him at the door. This time, Steinman was dressed in a consummately-tailored afternoon suit, with a wing collar, which gave his head the appearance of a pale Christmas pudding on a white dish.

  ‘You’ve been remarkably prompt,’ he said, and showed Peter inside. ‘Do you like nudes?’ he asked, as they passed the fountain in the hallway.

  Peter glanced at him. ‘In moderation,’ he replied. ‘There’s a time and a place for everything.’

  Garth Steinman cackled out loud. ‘I like your style, Mr Ransome. But then a man of your potential wealth can afford to have style.’

  They went through to the library. There was no sign of the blonde girl who had been there before. Instead, by the window, smoking a cigar, stood a broad-shouldered man of about fifty, wearing a black tailcoat and striped trousers. He had a permanently amused expression on his ape-like face, and a very bushy moustache.

  ‘Mr Ransome,’ said Garth Steinman, ‘I’d like you to meet Herr Albert Ballin. You might have heard of Herr Ballin – he is the managing director of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. He is also a close personal friend of the Kaiser, and that is why he has come here today.’

  Herr Ballin stepped forward, one hand thrust into the pocket of his trousers, the other around his cigar. He looked at Peter for a while, his eyes half-closed against the smoke, and then he said, ‘I have inspected your diamond, Mr Ransome, and I have made Mr Steinman an offer. My intention is to present it to the Kaiser as a gift on his next birthday.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure the Kaiser will like it,’ said Peter, hesitantly. ‘Is the offer fair, Mr Steinman?’

  ‘Three millions, seven hundred and fifty thousand,’ smiled Garth Steinman. ‘Three millions to be paid in two instalments in cash, in a London bank. The remainder in Hamburg-Amerika securities.’

  Albert Ballin sat down in a small armchair, and crossed his podgy legs. ‘You will not refuse me, Mr Ransome? I have a reputation for getting everything I want. My enemies call it ballinismus.’

  ‘I can recommend that you accept the offer,’ said Steinman. ‘I doubt if anybody else is in a position to be more generous than Herr Ballin.’

  Peter thought for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘The arrangement seems fair to me. As long as Herr Ballin is satisfied.’

  Albert Ballin nodded. ‘I am more than satisfied. This is one of the great treasures of the earth.’

  ‘You want to have it tested first?’ asked Steinman.

  Ballin laughed. ‘I think I trust you. Mind you, I could always drop it into a glass of clear crème-de-menthe, couldn’t I? That’s supposed to be an infallible test for diamonds.’

  Garth Steinman said, ‘You can drop it into whatever you want. But I should warn you that the old crème-de-menthe test is something of a romantic fallacy. The theory behind it is that, in crème-de-menthe, a diamond will show up clearly, because of its high refractive qualities, whereas a synthetic stone will disappear. The trouble is, plenty of up-to-date synthetics have high refractive indices, too. I would hate you to fool yourself.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Herr Ballin. ‘I will forego the test. If you are content with the price, Mr Ransome, I will talk to my bankers in the morning.’

  ‘The price is fine,’ said Peter. ‘I’m just wondering if the destiny is right.’

  ‘The destiny?’ asked Herr Ballin.

  ‘I’m wondering if this diamond was really meant to be the personal property of the Kaiser, and to be inherited by the German monarchy.’

  Garth Steinman walked across to his desk, where the diamond was lying on a small cushion of white velvet, and picked it up. ‘You should understand, Mr Ransome, that diamonds, even more than people, have their own destiny. Whatever their owners do, they will always find their place in history. If this diamond is not happy with the Kaiser, then it will not stay with the Kaiser. In any case, why should you worry? You are a rich man now, and you can do whatever you wish. Racing those motor cars of yours, I shouldn’t be surprised?’

  Peter said, slowly, ‘Yes.’ But he found himself looking at the diamond, and the way it sparkled, and he was suddenly reluctant to lose it. Garth Steinman recognised the expression on his face, however, and heartily grasped his shoulder. ‘You will never get a better price, old fellow. And, believe me, diamonds are better off in the hands of those who can really afford them. To everyone else, they bring nothing but grief and despair.’

  ‘Sehr philosophisch,’ smiled Herr Ballin.

  Peter took the diamond in his hand one last time. It meant so much more than Herr Ballin or Garth Steinman could ever understand. It was the crystallisation of the love between his mother and his father, the last adamant reminder of the passion that had created him, and of private fears and ambitions that he could only guess at.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, at last, and laid the diamond down again. He shook hands with Herr Ballin, and with Garth Steinman, and left the house quickly, withou
t saying another word.

  Later that day, he stood by the Thames at Chelsea embankment, as the sun sank behind the cluttered rooftops of World’s End. He tossed pennies into the river because now he could afford to; and each penny that splashed into the water created for one split second a sun-glittered diamond of its own.

  He had never felt so lonely in his life.

  ONE

  From inside the apartment, as he reached the top of the stairs, Barney could hear his mother arguing, and sobbing, and banging her ladle. It was the same as always. A jumble of rage, entreaty, tears, and stunning absurdities. Enough to turn a good son’s loyalty head-over-heels. ‘If your father should walk in now! What would he say?’ ‘Why didn’t I have sons like other women – sons who respect their mother?’ ‘Don’t you know how much I suffered, giving birth to two schlimazels like you?’ ‘Is this the reward I get?’

  Barney took the brass latchkey out of his dark vest pocket, on its long fine chain, and held it up for a moment. Then, with resignation, he unlocked the door. At the far end of the landing, rain still spattered against the frosted-glass window, like a pessimistic Romeo throwing up occasional handfuls of gravel. Barney hesitated, and then pushed the door wide. The scorched-tomato smell of burned goulash blew out of the apartment on the damp evening draught. He touched the mezuzah which hung on the doorframe, and stepped inside.

  On the wall, beside the peg where he hung up his coat, there was a steel engraving of Drensteinfürt, in Westfalen, Germany. The picture was grimy and foxed. Barney touched that too, the same way his father used to.

  Mrs Blitz was in the kitchen, a one-woman band, racketing her ladle against the sink, the cupboards, against the iron pans that hung above the range. Her hair was wiry and wild, as if she had just come in out of a hurricane. The goulash pot was smoking furiously on the hotplate, and there were half-chopped vegetables strewn everywhere.

  ‘You wait!’ she was screeching. ‘You wait until you run out of friends, and out of money, and out of love!’ And she beat against the colander, and the door, and the tin bowl in the sink. ‘You talk of gratitude! Duty, you talk of! Is this gratitude? Is this what you call duty? Riboyne Shel O’lem!’