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Turquoises: Paris—London—Romance 63
office
at half-past eight in the morning. It was a Friday and my luck always
held good at week-ends. Something had always turned up. I had barely
had time on this morning to open my bills when there was a loud knock
on my door and I heard agitated whispers outside. London had strange
inhabitants, I understood the voices to say, business men who rose late
to their work and were not ready to trade by eight in the morning. It
was quite otherwise in Cadiz, as the two strangers who presently
appeared in my doorway were not slow to tell me. Speaking half in
Spanish and half in bad French, they told their tale.
They
had arrived early off the boat-train and had come straight to Hatton
Garden, where they had knocked at every door without receiving any
answer. It was only a bet between them that had made them bother to
climb my three flights of stairs in order to see if there was at least
one merchant astir in "the Garden" before 9 a.m. It was a lucky bet for
me. For these two were jewellers, shopkeepers in Cadiz, who had come
to dispose of some Spanish antiques and to pick up anything in the way
of mounted goods that might suit their market. Also they hoped to find
a match, if a match could be found anywhere, for an unusually large
drop-shaped turquoise which belonged to a Spanish lady, a client of
theirs; and upon saying this the Spaniards unwrapped a parcel and
displayed a splendid stone before my astonished eyes. And astonished I
was, for I recognised one of the two turquoises which I had last seen
in Madame "X's" ears seventeen years before.
I could not be mistaken. Old Poldar had rubbed it well
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