Роберт Фиш - Rough Diamond

“Whiskey. Double.”

“Make that two.” Barney turned back to the other man. “That was quite a move you made when you tossed that big bloke over your shoulder. How did you do that?”

The mustached man shrugged. “It’s a Jap trick. Learned it in Tokyo, when I was in ships.”

“It’s very clever,” Barney said admiringly. “You’ll have to teach me that sometime.” He held out his hand. “I’m Barney Barnato.”

If the name meant anything to the mustached man there was no indication of it. “Carl Luckner.”

The two men shook hands, each aware of the other’s strong grip. Barney relaxed his hand, withdrew it, and picked up his drink. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you around here before. What are you doing in town?”

“Had a little trouble in Cape Town,” Luckner said evenly. “Decided to come up here and see the place. Looking for some kind of work, as a matter of fact.”

“What kind of trouble? I’m not being nosy,” Barney said quickly, “but I could maybe use somebody like you. But the thing is, Kimberley has gotten awfully respectable lately. No more Miner’s Committee. Now we’ve got a mayor — J. B. Robinson himself — and a council and a regular police force, and everything. Including a jail,” he added significantly.

“I had no trouble with the law,” Luckner said grimly. He downed his drink and rapped his glass on the bar sharply for a refill. “Well, I suppose you could say I did, in a way, if you mean trouble with the stupid police chief they got down there. But it was really the other way around. I was a police officer there. The trouble I got into was that the chief said I was too tough on the bastards I picked up. Beat them up first and asked questions afterward. He never denied most of them deserved it, though.” He took his replenished glass and drank, setting the glass down. “Oh, I’ve a miserable temper, I’ll admit that. I lose my head, see red. I can’t help it.”

Barney glanced into the dining room. Someone had set the fallen table on its feet; a woman was cleaning up the mess. A boy from the kitchen was sweeping up the broken crockery. The large bearded man with the broken nose had been helped to his feet and out the door. Barney jerked his thumb toward the arena of the fight.

“And what was that all about?”

Luckner shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I don’t exactly know. Nothing important. I knew him slightly in Cape Town, we figured we’d have supper together. Then he said something I didn’t particularly like, and one thing led to another. I told you I had a temper.” He dropped the subject. “What’s this job you said you could use me for? Mining?”

“No,” Barney said, and looked around. His eyes came back to the tall man at his side. “I’ve been thinking of buying this place, the Paris Hotel. It’s up for grabs; owner’s going home. I’d need somebody to run it, somebody who could keep order. But not lose his head with the customers,” he added evenly. “Toss them out on their arse if they get hard, but not kick them to death first.”

Luckner laughed. It was a harsh sound, as if he weren’t used to laughing much. “I seldom lose my head with strangers. Just with folks I know.” The laugh disappeared as quickly as it had come. His voice hardened. “And most people stay strangers with me for a long, long time.”

“Well,” Barney said, “would you be interested in the job? If I buy the place?”

“I don’t know,” Luckner said. He turned, resting his elbows on the bar behind him, looking around as if summing up the place and its possibilities. He glanced at Barney over his shoulder. “What would it pay?”

Barney made up his mind. Fast, as he had done with Armando, now working out so well in the big hole. Harry would think him crazy, making a decision that fast; Harry would have objected on general principles without further investigation of the man. But Harry was in London and really not involved. If it had been up to Harry he would still be kopje walloping and as far from Fay as ever!

“You show me what you can do the first thirty days after I close the deal,” he said, “and you get room and board and we split any profits the place shows fifty-fifty.”

Luckner looked at him coolly. “You’ve got a deal,” he said at last and raised his glass to confirm it. “But,” he added, “the best room in the place is mine.”

“The second-best,” Barney said evenly. “Me and me wife got the best.”

Solly Loeb, now handling the claims and the sorting yards for the newly formed Barnato Mining Company while his cousin, Jack Joel, improved his knowledge of diamonds in the trading office, found his uncle’s stubbornness most irritating.

“Uncle Barney—”

“You’re getting old enough to call me Barney. What do I have on you in age? Four years?”

“Less than three. All right, Barney. Rhodes is doing it over at De Beers; Robinson is doing it right next door to us, and so is Kimberley Central and the French Company people. And all the combines over at Bultfontein and Dutoitspan! We’re the only ones who aren’t putting in compounds, the only company that doesn’t sign their Kaffirs to contracts, the only company that doesn’t search them properly!”

Barney looked at his nephew with curiosity. “Solly — do you think making a man shit by giving him castor oil is going to stop illicit diamonds from being taken out of the mines or from the sorting yards? Or sticking your finger up his behind? When they start doing it with the foremen, the whites; when they start doing it with those police dogs they got running around like crazy wolves who’ll eat anything and then go crap for their trainers, then maybe. But only maybe. Anything one man can figure out to keep something from being stolen, another man can figure out how to steal.”

“But—”

“Or making a man live without his woman,” Barney went on, quite as if Solly had not tried to interrupt. “Instead of keeping his mind on what he’s doing, all he thinks about is how to get his rocks off. Did you notice, maybe, that since Rhodes put in his compounds the accident rate at De Beers almost doubled? You think that was an accident?”

“Then we ought to do it if only for our own protection! They’re starting to say that when all the other companies have compounds, any illicit diamonds would be our responsibility!”

Barney frowned. “What? Where did you hear that?”

Solly reddened a bit. “At the Kimberley Club. I… I’ve been invited there a few times…”

“Solly, if you want to go to the Kimberley Club, go. It’s a free country; it’s your business. But don’t lose your head. Don’t believe everything you hear. Anyone who says that the illicit stones would be our responsibility is either lying or sick in the head. Outside of the fact that the Kaffirs aren’t the only ones bringing stones out of the mines, if all the illicit diamonds were coming from our claims, whose loss would it be? Theirs or mine?” He shook his head. “Solly, Solly! You treat a man like a thief, don’t be surprised if he steals. And there are good Kaffirs and bad ones. When your friends from the Kimberley Club come to the end of the contracts with their Kaffirs, we’ll get the good ones; the bad ones will sign up again with them.”

“So you won’t put in compounds?”

“Not at this time, and maybe never.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“So I may be wrong.” Barney shrugged. “It won’t be the first time and it won’t be the last. But at least it’s my mistake, not yours.” He changed the subject. “So outside of that, what’s new?”

“The yellow dirt is running out. We’ll have to close Kerr Number Three and let some of the Kaffirs go.”

Barney frowned. The two men were having lunch at the Paris Hotel, which Barney had bought some six months before; Fay was out shopping for hotel supplies; Carl Luckner was in his office in his room, and Jack Joel was taking care of the trading office in Commissioner Street. Barney put his beer mug to one side and stared at his nephew, puzzled.