a
fit of laughter. "There's a man who spends twenty, thirty thousand
pounds on every buying trip, and still he says 'Two-pun-ten.' At any
rate, I've had one effect on him; I've cured him of boosting the price
by a couple of shillings on every bid. What a fellow!" He wagged his
head admiringly and led me over to the man in the corner. He clapped
the buyer on the shoulder. "Here we are," he said. "What are you going
to offer me now for that diamond?"
The
buyer scrambled to his feet, smiling and blinking shyly behind his
glasses. He was a small, bent man. As Mr. Bentinck had said, he didn't
have a prosperous appearance. He looked as if he had just been awakened
or violently torn from an all-absorbing book. He put down his loupe and
held out his hand: on the extended palm lay a big diamond, roughly
oblong in shape, deep and clear.
"I'm
getting acquainted with it," he said to me. "Every diamond is
different. Just like a person, it's different. There are no two
diamonds alike anywhere in the world, any more than there are two
persons alike. You have to study and study them until you get to know
them. I've been getting acquainted with this one for the past two days."
"It's a good one. It's a beauty," said Mr. Bentinck. "What are you offering for it now?"
"Hundred
twenty," said the buyer, smiling. Like two merchants on the stage they
argued for a while in broad burlesque. Mr. Bentinck turned to me and
said, sotto voce, "In the end I'll let him have it for a
hundred twenty-five, but don't tell him I said so," while the buyer
listened. Mr. Bentinck winked at me, then composed his face to poker
gravity and turned back. "Hundred and forty, and that's my last price,"
he said firmly.
