The Firm of Girdlestone Part 26

"What's the matter now?" asked O'Flaherty, angrily. He was a man who lived in a state of chronic irritation.

"Have you a duplicate of that paper?"

"Suppose I have?"

"What will you sell it for?"

"What will you give?"

"Half a sovereign."

"A sovereign."

"Done!" and so Ezra Girdlestone walked out of the office with full details in his hand, and departed to his hotel, where he read the account through very slowly and deliberately. It appeared to be satisfactory, for he chuckled to himself a good deal as he perused it.

Having finished it, he folded the paper up, placed it in his breast pocket, and, having ordered his horse, set off to the neighbouring towns.h.i.+p of Dutoitspan with the intention of carrying the news with him.

Ezra had two motives in galloping across the veldt that October night.

One was to judge with his own ears and eyes what effect the news would have upon practical men. The other was a desire to gratify that sinister pleasure which an ill-natured man has in being the bearer of evil tidings. They had probably heard the report by this time, but it was unlikely that any details had reached them. No one knew better than young Girdlestone that this message from Europe would bring utter ruin and extinction to many a small capitalist, that it would mean the shattering of a thousand hopes, and the advent of poverty and misery to the men with whom he had been a.s.sociating. In spite of this knowledge, his heart beat high, as his father's had done in London, and as he spurred his horse onwards through the darkness, he was hardly able to refrain from shouting and whooping in his exultation.

The track from Kimberley to Dutoitspan was a rough one, but the moon was up, and the young merchant found no difficulty in following it. When he reached the summit of the low hill over which the road ran, he saw the lights of the little town sparkling in the valley beneath him. It was ten o'clock before he galloped into the main street, and he saw at a glance that the news had, as he expected, arrived before him. In front of the Griqualand Saloon a great crowd of miners had a.s.sembled, who were talking excitedly among themselves. The light of the torches shone down upon herculean figures, glaring s.h.i.+rts, and earnest bearded faces.

The whole camp appeared to have a.s.sembled there to discuss the situation, and it was evident from their anxious countenances and subdued voices, that they took no light view of it.

The instant the young man alighted from his horse he was surrounded by a knot of eager questioners. "You've just come from Kimberley," they cried. "What is the truth of it, Mr. Girdlestone? Let us know the truth of it."

"It's a bad business, my friends," he answered, looking around at the ring of inquiring faces. "I have been reading a full account of it in the _Cape Argus_. They have made a great find in Russia. There seems to be no doubt at all about the matter."

"D'ye think it will send prices down here as much as they say?"

"I'm afraid it will send them very low. I hold a lot of stones myself, and I should be very glad to get rid of them at any price. I fear it will hardly pay you to work your claims now."

"And the price of claims will go down?"

"Of course it will."

"Eh, mister, what's that?" cried a haggard, unkempt little man, pus.h.i.+ng his way to the front and catching hold of Ezra's sleeve to ensure his attention. "Did ye say it would send the price o' claims down?

You didn't say that, did you? Why, in course, it stands to reason that what happened in Roosia couldn't make no difference over here.

That's sense, mates, ain't it?" He looked round him appealingly, and laughed a little nervous laugh.

"You try," said Ezra coldly. "If you get one-third of what you gave for your claim you'll be lucky. Why, man, you don't suppose we produce diamonds for local consumption. They are for exporting to Europe, and if Europe is already supplied by Russia, where are you to get your market?"

"That's it?" cried several voices.

"If you take my advice," Ezra continued, "you'll get rid of what you have at any loss, for the time may be coming when you'll get nothing at all."

"Now, look at that!" cried the little man, throwing out his hands.

"They call me Unlucky Jim, and Unlucky Jim I'll be to the end of the chapter. Why, boss, me and Sammy Walker has sunk every d.a.m.ned cent we've got in that claim, the fruit o' nine years' hard work, and here you comes ridin' up as cool as may be, and tells me that it's all gone for nothing."

"Well, there are others who will suffer as well as you," said one of the crowd.

"I reckon we're all hit pretty hard if this is true," remarked another.

"I'm fair sick of it," said the little man, pa.s.sing his grimy hand across his eyes and leaving a black smear as he did so. "This ain't the first time--no, nor the second--that my luck has played me this trick.

I've a mighty good mind to throw up my hand altogether."

"Come in and have some whisky," said a rough sympathizer, and the unlucky one was hustled in through the rude door of the Griqualand Saloon, there to find such comfort as he might from the mult.i.tudinous bottles which adorned the interior of that building. Liquor had lost its efficacy that evening, however, and a dead depression rested over the little town. Nor was it confined to Dutoitspan. All along the diggings the dismal tidings spread with a rapidity which was astonis.h.i.+ng. At eleven o'clock there was consternation at Klipdrift.

At quarter-past one Hebron was up and aghast at the news. At three in the morning a mounted messenger galloped into Bluejacket, and before daybreak a digger committee was sitting at Delporte's Hope discussing the situation. So during that eventful night down the whole long line of the Vaal River there was ruin and heartburning and dismay, while five thousand miles away an old gentleman was sleeping calmly and dreamlessly in his comfortable bed, from whose busy brain had emanated all this misery and misfortune.

Perhaps the said old gentleman might have slumbered a little less profoundly could he have seen the sight which met his son's eyes on the following morning. Ezra had pa.s.sed the night at Dutoitspan, in the hut of a hospitable miner. Having risen in the morning, he was dressing himself in a leisurely, methodical fas.h.i.+on, when his host, who had been inhaling the morning breeze, thrust his head through the window.

"Come out here, Mr. Girdlestone," he cried. "There's some fun on.

One of the boys is dead drunk, and they are carrying him in."

Ezra pulled on his coat and ran out. A little group of miners were walking slowly up the main street. He and his host were waiting for the procession to pa.s.s them with several jocose remarks appropriate to the occasion ready upon their lips, when their eyes fell upon a horrible splotchy red track which marked the road the party had taken. They both ran forward with exclamations and inquiries.

"It's Jim Stewart," said one of the bearers. "Him that they used to call Unlucky Jim."

"What's up with him?"

"He has shot himself through the head. Where d'ye think we found him?

Slap in the middle o' his own claim, with his fingers dug into the gravel, as dead as a herring."

"He's a bad plucked 'un to knock under like that," Ezra's companion remarked.

"Yes," said the croupier of the saloon gambling table. "If he'd waited for another deal he might have held every trump. He was always a soft chap, was Jim, and he was saying last night as how this spoiled the last chance he was ever like to have of seeing his wife and childer in England. He's blowed a fine clean hole in himself. Would you like to see it, Mr. Girdlestone?" The fellow was about to remove the blood-stained handkerchief which covered the dead man's face, but Ezra recoiled in horror.

"Mr. Girdlestone looks faint like," some one observed.

"Yes," said Ezra, who was white to his very lips. "This has upset me rather. I'll have a drop of brandy." As he walked back to the hut, he wondered inwardly whether the incident would have discomposed his father.

"I suppose he would call it part of our commercial finesse," he said bitterly to himself. "However, we have put our hands to the plough, and we must not let homicide stop us." So saying, he steadied his nerves with a draught of brandy, and prepared for the labours of the day.

CHAPTER XXI.

AN UNEXPECTED BLOW.

The crisis at the African fields was even more acute than had been antic.i.p.ated by the conspirators. Nothing approaching to it had ever been known in South Africa before. Diamonds went steadily down in value until they were selling at a price which no dealer would have believed possible, and the sale of claims reached such a climax that men were glad to get rid of them for the mere price of the plant and machinery erected at them. The offices of the various dealers at Kimberley were besieged night and day by an importunate crowd of miners, who were willing to sell at any price in order to save something from the general ruin which they imagined was about to come upon the industry. Some, more long-headed or more desperate than their neighbours, continued to work their claims and to keep the stones which they found until prices might be better. As fresh mails came from the Cape, however, each confirming and amplifying the ominous news, these independent workers grew fewer and more faint-hearted, for their boys had to be paid each week, and where was the money to come from with which to pay them?

The dealers, too, began to take the alarm, and the most tempting offers would hardly induce them to give hard cash in exchange for stones which might prove to be a drug in the market. Everywhere there was misery and stagnation.

Ezra Girdlestone was not slow to take advantage of this state of things, but he was too cunning to do so in a manner which might call attention to himself or his movements. In his wanderings he had come across an outcast named Farintosh, a man who had once been a clergyman and a master of arts of Trinity College, Dublin, but who was now a broken-down gambler with a slender purse and a still more slender conscience.

He still retained a plausible manner and an engaging address, and these qualities first recommended him to the notice of the young merchant.

A couple of days after the receipt of the news from Europe, Ezra sent for this fellow and sat with him for some time on the verandah of the hotel, talking over the situation.

"You see, Farintosh," he remarked, "it might be a false alarm, might it not?"

The ex-clergyman nodded. He was a man of few words.