“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Beck,” stammered Harcourt. “I did not know; that is to say, I was engaged.”
“So I see, sir,” said Mr. Beck drily. “But I think the young lady will spare a moment or two for what I have to say and to show.”
“You have a clue, then?”
“Well, yes, I think I may say I have a clue.”
He took from his coat-tail pocket the old jewel-case which he had purchased for a sovereign, and set it on the table, pushing aside some costly trifles to make place for it.
“You see this, miss. Is it at all like the case that came with the diamonds?”
“The case that came without the diamonds you mean, Mr. Beck,” said Lilian smiling. “It is just like it in shape, but the other was quite new and shining.”
“That is a detail, miss. A clever hand could make that little change from new to old in half an hour. Now will you kindly open it?”
As Lilian opened it she thrilled with the sudden unreasonable notion that the diamonds might be inside. But it was quite empty; faded and empty.
“The inside is just the same, too,” she said, “only this is so faded. Anything else, Mr. Beck?”
“Would you oblige me by taking the case in your hands for one moment. No, don’t close it. Now will you kindly put your thumb here, and your other thumb here on the opposite side?”
Mr. Beck guided the slender little thumbs to their places while Harcourt looked on in amazement.
“Now, miss, kindly squeeze both together.”
Lilian gave a quick, sharp gasp of delight and surprise. For suddenly, as if by magic, there blazed on the slope of faded velvet a great circle of flashing diamonds with a star of surpassing splendor in the centre.
“Oh! oh! oh!” she cried breathlessly. “They are too beautiful for anyone! Oh, Syd,” turning to her lover with eyes brighter than the jewels, “did you ever see anything so beautiful? They dazzle my eyes and my mind together. I cannot look at them any longer,” and she closed the case with a snap, and turning to the placid detective: “Oh, how clever you were to find them, Mr. Beck; wasn’t he, Syd? Do tell us how and where and when you managed it?”
She so bubbled over with delight and admiration and gratitude that even the detective was captivated. He beamed like a full moon and bowed with the easy grace of a bear.
“Will you open the case again, miss,” was all he said. She raised the lid and was struck dumb with blank amazement.
The case was empty.
“A trick case,” said Harcourt, after a pause.
“Just so, sir, that’s the whole story in three words. About as neat a bit of work as ever came out of human hands. No wonder. Twenty thousand pounds, more or less, was the price the maker wanted for it. The closing of the case works the spring, as you see, sir. That’s the notion of it, and not a bad notion either.”
“And the diamonds are safe inside,” cried Lilian; “they were there all the time, and I have only to squeeze with my thumbs and they will come out again. It’s wonderful! Wonderful! I declare I like the case as much as the jewels. I hope the maker will be well paid, Mr. Beck.”
“He’ll be well paid, miss, never you fear,” said Mr. Beck, a little grimly, “though not perhaps in the coin he expected.”
“But however did you find it out? You must be most wonderfully clever. I suppose you have worked up some marvellous system that nobody can understand but yourself.”
Mr. Beck actually blushed under this shower of compliments.
“A little common sense, miss, that’s all. I have no more system than the hound that gets on the fox’s scent and keeps on it. I just go by the rule of thumb, and muddle and puzzle out my cases as best I can.”
“When did you guess the diamonds were in the case?” said Harcourt.
“I guessed it, sir, when I saw Mr. Ophir, and I was sure of it when I saw you. You see how it is, sir; if Mr. Ophir put the diamonds into the case and no one took them out, it stood to reason they were still there—whatever might be the appearance to the contrary!”
“It sounds quite simple,” murmured Lilian, “when you are told it.”
“Of course, when I found my double had been for the case, it made certainty doubly certain.”
“Your double! Then you were right, Lilian; there were two Mr. Becks.”
“Of course; I am always right.”
“Might I ask, sir,” continued Harcourt, “which you are?”
“He’s the second Mr. Beck, of course, Syd. How can you be so silly? But I want to know where is the first Mr. Beck, the man with the beautiful hands?”
“The first Mr. Beck, miss, otherwise Mulligan, otherwise Monsieur Grabeau, is in jail at present, awaiting his trial. He was arrested this afternoon by appointment at Simpson’s restaurant by the second Mr. Beck.”
Hagar of the Pawn-Shop
FERGUS HUME
The British-born New Zealander Ferguson Wright Hume (1859–1932) wrote the bestselling mystery novel of the nineteenth century, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886). He paid to have it published in Australia but it quickly had a modest success and he sold all rights to a group of English investors called the Hansom Cab Publishing Company for fifty pounds sterling (not unlike Arthur Conan Doyle, who sold all rights to A Study in Scarlet for twenty-five pounds in 1887). It went on to sell more than a half-million copies.
Although he had studied to be a barrister, Hume wanted to be a writer and once described how his famous book came to be written. He asked a Melbourne bookseller what sort of book sold best. The bookseller replied that “the detective stories of Émile Gaboriau had a large sale”; Hume notes, “and, as, at this time, I had never even heard of this author, I bought all his works…and…determined to write a book of the same class; containing a mystery, a murder, and a description of low life in Melbourne. This was the origin of Cab.” Hume went on to write an additional one hundred and thirty novels—all of which have been largely forgotten.
The protagonist of “Hagar of the Pawn-Shop” is the Romani niece of a miserly and corrupt owner of a pawn shop in London where she works. Pretty, smart, and honest, she soon learns the trade, becoming an expert in various areas of antiques, and largely takes over the running of the shop. Known for her decency and fearlessness, she is quick to help people who need it in righting wrongs and works as an amateur detective to that end. In the last story, Hagar gets married and the happy couple become professional traveling booksellers.
“Hagar of the Pawn-Shop” was originally published as two separate stories, “The Coming of Hagar” and “The First Customer and the Florentine Dante” in the author’s Hagar of the Pawn-Shop (London, Skeffington & Son, 1898).
HAGAR OF THE PAWN-SHOP
Fergus Hume
PROLOGUE
THE COMING OF HAGAR
Jacob Dix was a pawnbroker, but not a Jew, notwithstanding his occupation and the Hebraic sound of his baptismal name. He was so old that no one knew his real age; so grotesque in looks that children jeered at him in the streets; so avaricious that throughout the neighborhood he was called “Skinflint.” If he possessed any hidden good qualities to counterbalance his known bad ones, no person had ever discovered them, or even had taken the trouble to look for them. Certainly Jacob, surly and uncommunicative, was not an individual inclined to encourage uninvited curiosity. In his pawn-shop he lived like an ogre in a fairy-tale castle, and no one ever came near him save to transact business, to wrangle during the transaction thereof, and to curse him at its conclusion. Thus it may be guessed that Jacob drove hard bargains.
The pawn-shop—situated in Carby’s Crescent, Lambeth—furthermore resembled an ogre’s castle inasmuch as, though not filled with dead men’s bones, it contained the relics and wreckage, the flotsam and jetsam, of many lives, of many households. Placed in the center of the dingy crescent, it faced a small open space, and the entrance of
the narrow lane which led therefrom to the adjacent thoroughfare. In its windows—begrimed with the dust of years—a heterogeneous mixture of articles was displayed, ranging from silver teapots to well-worn saucepans; from gold watches to rusty flatirons; from the chisel of a carpenter to the ivory framed mirror of a fashionable beauty. The contents of Dix’s window typified in little the luxury, the meanness, the triviality and the decadence of latter-day civilization.
There was some irony, too, in the disposition of incongruous articles; for the useful and useless were placed significantly in proximity, and the trifles of frivolity were mingled with the necessaries of life. Here a Dresden china figure, bright-hued and dainty, simpered everlastingly at a copper warming-pan; there a silver-handled dagger of the Renaissance lay with a score of those cheap dinner-knives whose bluntness one execrates in third-rate restaurants. The bandaged hand of a Pharaohonic mummy touched an agate saucer holding defaced coins of all ages, of all nations. Watches, in alternate rows of gold and silver, dangled over fantastic temples and ships of ivory carved by laborious Chinese artificers. On a square of rich brocade, woven of silks, multi-colored as a parrot’s plumage, were piled in careless profusion medals, charms, old-fashioned rings set with dim gems, and the frail glass bangles of Indian nautch-girls. A small cabinet of Japanese lacquer, black, with grotesque gilded figures thereon; talismans of coral from Southern Italy, designed to avert the evil eye; jeweled pipes of Turkey, set roughly with blue turquoise stones; Georgian caps with embroideries of tarnished gold; amulets, earrings, bracelets, snuff-boxes and mosaic brooches from Florence—all these frivolities were thrown the one on top of the other, and all were overlaid with fine gray dust. Wreckage of many centuries; dry bones of a hundred social systems, dead or dying! What a commentary on the durability of empire—on the inherent pride of pigmy man!
Within doors the shop was small and dark. A narrow counter, running lengthways, divided the whole into two parts. On the side nearest the entrance three wooden screens by their disposition formed four sentry-boxes, into which customers stepped when bent on business. Jacob, wizen, cunning, and racked by an eternal cough, hovered up and down the space within the counter, wrangling incessantly with his customers, and cheating them on every occasion. He never gave the value of a pawned article: he fought over every farthing; and even when he obtained the goods at his own price he grudged payment; for every coin he put down was a drop of blood wrung from his withered heart. He rarely went outside the shop; he never mingled with his fellow-creatures; and, the day’s chicanery ended, he retired invariably into a gloomy back parlor, the principal adornment of which was a gigantic safe built into the wall. Here he counted his gains, and saw doubtful customers not receivable in the shop, who came by stealth to dispose of stolen goods. Here, also, in his lighter moments, he conversed with the only friend he possessed in Carby’s Crescent—or, indeed, in London. Jacob was in no danger of becoming a popular idol.
This particular friend was a solicitor named Vark, who carried on a shady business, in a shady manner, for shady clients. His name—as he declared himself—proved him to be of Polish descent; but it was commonly reported in the neighborhood that Vark was made to rhyme with shark, as emblematic of the estimation in which he was held. He was hated only one degree less than Jacob, and the two—connected primarily as lawyer and client—later on, had struck up a mistrustful friendship by reason of their mutual reputation and isolation. Neither one believed in the other; each tried to swindle on his own account, and never succeeded; yet the two met nightly and talked over their divers rascalities in the dingy parlor, with a confidence begotten by an intimate knowledge of each other’s character. The reputations of both were so bad that the one did not dare to betray the other. Only on this basis is honor possible among thieves.
Late one foggy November night Jacob was seated with his crony over a pinched little fire which burnt feebly in a rusty iron grate. The old pawnbroker was boiling some gruel, and Vark, with his own private bottle of gin beside him, was drinking a wineglass of it, mixed sparingly with water. Mr. Dix supplied this latter beverage, as it cost nothing, but Vark—on an understanding which dated from the commencement of their acquaintance—always brought his own liquor. A gutterring candle in a silver candlestick—a pawned article—was placed on the deal table, and gave forth a miserable light. The fog from without had percolated into the room, so that the pair sat in a kind of misty atmosphere, hardly illuminated by the farthing dip. Such discomfort, such squalor, was only possible in a penurious establishment like that of Jacob.
Vark was a little, lean, wriggling creature, more like a worm than a man made in the image of his Creator. He had a sharp nose, a pimply face, and two shifty, fishy eyes, green in hue like those of a cat. His dress was of rusty black, with a small—very small—display of linen; and he rubbed his hands together with a cringing bow every time Jacob croaked out a remark between his coughs. Mr. Dix coughed in a rich but faded dressing-gown, the relic of some dandy of the Regency; and every paroxysm threatened to shake his frail form to pieces. But the ancient was wonderfully tough, and clung to life with a kind of desperate courage—though Heaven only knows what attraction the old villain found in his squalid existence. This tenacity was not approved of by Vark, who had made Jacob’s will, and now wished his client to die, so that he, as executor, might have the fingering of the wealth which Dix was reported to possess. The heir to these moneys was missing, and Vark was determined that he should never be found. Meanwhile, with many schemes in his head, he cringed to Jacob, and watched him cough over his gruel.
“Oh, dear, dear!” sighed Mr. Vark, speaking of his client in the third person, as he invariably did, “how bad Mr. Dix’s cough is to-night! Why doesn’t he try a taste of gin to moisten his throat?”
“Can’t afford it!” croaked Jacob, pouring the gruel into a bowl. “Gin’s worth money, and money I ain’t got. Make me a little present of a glass, Mr. Vark, just to show that you’re glad of my company.”
Vark complied very unwillingly with this request, and poured as little as he well could into the proffered bowl. “What an engaging man he is!” said the lawyer, smirking—“so convivial, so full of spirits!”
“Your spirits!” retorted Jacob, drinking his gruel.
“What wit!” cried Vark, slapping his thin knees. “It’s better than Punch!”
“Gin-punch! gruel-punch!” said Dix, encouraged by this praise.
“He, he! I shall die with laughing! I’ve paid for worse than that at the theater!”
“More fool you!” growled Jacob, taking up the tongs. “You shouldn’t pay for anything. Here, get out! I’m going to put out the fire. I ain’t going to burn this expensive coal to warm you. And the candle’s half-burnt too!” concluded Jacob, resentfully.
“I’m going—I’m going,” said Vark, slipping his bottle into his pocket. “But to leave this pleasant company—what a wrench!”
“Here, stop that stuff, you inkpot! Has my son answered that advertisement yet?”
“Mr. Dix’s son hasn’t sent a line to his sorrowing parent,” returned the lawyer. “Oh, what a hard-hearted offspring!”
“You’re right there, man,” muttered Jacob, gloomily. “Jimmy’s left me to die all alone, curse him!”
“Then why leave him your money?” said Vark, changing into the first person, as he always did when business was being discussed.
“Why, you fool?—’cause he’s Hagar’s son—the bad son of a good mother.”
“Hagar Stanley—your wife—your gipsy wife! Hey, Mr. Dix?”
Jacob nodded. “A pure-blooded Romany. I met her when I was a Crocus.”
“Crocus for Cheap Jack!” whined Vark; “the wit this man has!”
“She came along o’ me to London when I set up here,” continued Jacob, without heeding the interruption, “and town killed her; she couldn’t breathe in bricks and mortar after the free
air of the road. Dead—poor soul!—dead; and she left me Jimmy—Jimmy, who’s left me.”
“What a play of fancy—” began Vark; when, seeing from the fierce look of Jacob that compliments on the score of the dead wife were not likely to be well received, he changed his tone. “He’ll spend your money, Mr. Dix.”
“Let him! Hagar’s dead, and when I die—let him.”
“But, my generous friend, if you gave me more power as executor—”
“You’d take my money to yourself,” interrupted Dix with irony. “Not if I know it, you shark! Your duty is to administer the estate by law for Jimmy. I pay you!”
“But so little!” whined Vark, rising; “if you—”
At this moment there came a sharp knock at the door of the shop, and the two villains, always expectant of the police, stared at one another, motionless with terror for the moment. Vark, who always took care of his skin, snatched up his hat and made for the back-door, whence, in the fog, he could gain his own house unquestioned and unseen. Like a ghost he vanished, leaving Jacob motionless until aroused by a repetition of the knock.
“Can’t be peelers,” he muttered, taking a pistol out of a cupboard, “but it might be thieves. Well, if it is—” He smiled grimly, and without finishing his sentence he shuffled along to the door, candle in hand. A third knock came, as the clock in the shop struck eleven.
“Who is there, so late?” demanded Jacob, sharply.
“I am—Hagar Stanley!”
With a cry of terror, Mr. Dix let the candle fall, and in the darkness dropped also. For the moment—so much had his thoughts been running on the dead wife—the unexpected mention of her name made him believe that she was standing rigid in her winding-sheet on the other side of the door. One frail partition between the living and the dead! It was terrible!
“The ghost of Hagar!” muttered Dix, white and shaking. “Why has she come out of her grave?—and so expensive it was; bricked; with a marble tombstone.”
The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries Page 36