“He was a lightning calculator, wasn’t he?”
“ ‘On my conscience,’ I answered, ‘I cannot give more than seven.’ ‘Ah!’ he replied, ‘I do not know how to haggle.’ He reflected a moment. ‘It is well,’ he said; ‘I accept.’ Gentlemen, when he said that, I felt that I had done a good day’s work. Apart from the commission I had a clean profit of eighteen thousand dollars; and eighteen thousand dollars is a tidy sum—not to you, gentlemen, nor to Jones there, but to me.”
“Ged, the little cad is getting sarcastic.” And Jones laughed quietly to himself and finished his brandy-and-soda.
Mr. Fairbanks waved his arms and pounded the table so excitedly that he roused a waiter from a nap.
“Yes, bring the same,” he cried. “Now, gentlemen, I am coming to the point. I insist on your attention. Mr. Jones, I will thank you not to interrupt—unless it happens that you care to aid me with the details. Yes, sir, I said details—d-e-t-a-i-l-s. Now wait a minute, will you? Gentlemen, I appeal to you. He shall wait. Beat it into his head—can’t you?—that I am coming to the point, and very interesting, I promise, you will all find it to be.”
“Tu te vantes, mon bonhomme, tu te vantes. Here’s to you.”
“Here’s to you. Well, gentlemen, it was then one o’clock. I always lunch at that hour, and I asked the Russian if he would let me offer him a bite. ‘I would very much like to try a Sam Ward,’ he said, ‘and I might take some tea and a bit of toast.’ ‘That,’ I replied, ‘would be tasty with a little caviar.’ I wanted to show him that, though a dealer in precious stones, I was first and foremost a man of the world.”
Alphabet Jones rolled over in spasms of delight. “Divinities of Pindar,” he shouted, “listen to that!”
“Gentlemen, gag that man—gag him: I will be listened to. There, now, will you be quiet? You make me lose the thread. Where was I? Oh, yes: the Russian seemed to reflect a moment, and looked at his watch. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘it would be better to go straight to the Brevoort House.’ (The grand duke, I knew, was stopping there.) ‘My prince is to go out this afternoon between two and three, and if you do not see him today it may be hard to manage it tomorrow.’ ‘I am at your orders, Excellency,’ I answered; ‘business before pleasure.’ ‘Good, then,’ he returned; ‘we will take a droshky, or, better even, your railway that is in the air.’ ‘The elevated, you mean,’ I said—‘the elevated. Yes, of course.’ Inwardly I was well pleased that the suggestion should have come from him, for I am not overfond of riding in a cab with a hundred and ten thousand dollars’ worth of rubies in my pocket and a stranger for sole companion. For he was a stranger—wasn’t he?—and, by his own account, not well-to-do. But that Russian had a knack of disarming suspicion. And, besides, how was it possible for me to have any doubts about a man who fought as he had over the percentage? It would have been nonsensical. So I did the rubies up in cotton, put them in a box, and off we went. On the way to the elevated you ought to have seen how the people stared at that coat. All the time he kept up a delightful flow of conversation. He told me any number of interesting things about his country, and when I asked if he had read The Journey Due North he told me that he had, and that when Sala was in Russia his father had entertained him at his country-house a few versts from Moscow. Think of that, now! Altogether, he made himself most agreeable. I asked him on the way if he thought that inasmuch as I was to have the honor of seeing the grand duke it would not be more in accordance with etiquette for me to put on a dress-coat. But he laughed, and said, no, the grand duke would never notice. Then he told me some very curious anecdotes about him—how, for instance, he fainted dead away at the sight of an apple, and yet kept a balloon and an aeronaut, just as Jones there might keep a dogcart and a groom. He told me, among other things, that at Petersburg the grand duke had a pet tiger, which would accept food from no one but him, and on my asking how the tiger got along when the grand duke was away, he said that the grand duke had him stuffed. Oh, he was very entertaining, and spoke English better than you would have imagined. We walked over from Eighth Street to the hotel, and when we reached it he took me straight upstairs to his own room. ‘If you will sit a minute,’ he said, ‘I will see if his Highness can receive you.’ He went away, and I looked about me. The room into which I had been shown was a sitting-room with a bedroom opening from it. There was a writing-table standing against the door which led to the adjoining apartment, and while I was waiting I just glanced at the things with which the table was littered. There were a number of foreign newspapers, but in what language they were printed I could not make out; there was a package of official-looking documents tied with a string, a great blue envelope addressed in French to the Prince Michel Zaroguine and postmarked Washington, and back of all, in a frame, the photograph of a man.”
For some
