Роберт Фиш - Rough Diamond

“Robinson, eh? And why would old J.B. hire a vicious, insane, brutal animal like Carl Luckner fer the Diamond Squad? Why not fer walkin’ a beat where he could kick some poor old drunk t’ death just fer the bleedin’ fun o’ it? Or some poor old man not even drunk?”

Fry bit down hard on his temper. “You’ll have to ask him.”

“Yer bleedin’ right I’ll ask him! With me fist up his nose if need be!” He glared across the desk. “I always thought you was square, Fry! That’s what I always heard. Yet yer a party to this frame! How much brass passed hooks?”

Fry’s face whitened further. He sat erect, his eyes hot with anger.

“Now you listen to me, Barnato! Watch your mouth! I’ve taken a lot from you, but I happened to be there when Jack Joel opened that safe under my orders, and Luckner lifted out that tray and found that diamond! It isn’t hearsay with me, and it won’t be hearsay when I repeat what I’m saying to you, to the judge at the trial! I was there! And if you think your ranting and raving like a maniac is going to make the slightest difference when Jack Joel goes up before the court, you’ve got another think coming!” He forced himself to cool down a bit, eyeing Barney speculatively. “They tell me you used to be quite a Shakespearean at one time, Barnato. Maybe you recall the line ‘Methinks the Queen protests too much.’ It’s from Hamlet.”

Barney sneered. “You got that wrong, like you got everything wrong. And you ain’t heard protestin’ yet. Maybe you recall the line, ‘Me bloody thought wit’ violent pace shall ne’er look back… till that a capable an’ wide revenge swallow ’em.’ It’s from Othello .” And he stalked, still furious, from the room.

He marched resolutely across the hall of the newly built City Hall and into the mayor’s office. He strode through the secretary’s office without looking at the startled man, and into the adjoining office without bothering to knock. J. B. Robinson, his ever-present topee within reach on his desk, looked up from his paperwork with a frown.

“What are you doing here, Barnato? And coming in without knocking?”

“I want to know why you an’ Fry fixed me nephew!”

“Fixed?”

“That’s what I said, you ain’t deaf! Fixed, framed, take yer choice!”

“You’re insane, coming in here like this! Your nephew was caught with an illicit diamond in his possession! You know the law! So don’t take that tone with me!”

Barney dragged a chair before the desk and sat down, eye-level with the mayor. He glared across the desk. “Listen, Robinson, don’t worry about me tone. You ain’t never heard me when I’m in a real miff! Why did you hire Carl Luckner an’ put him on the diamond squad?”

Robinson caught his breath. To be talked to like this, him, J. B. Robinson and the mayor, besides, and by the Jew Barnato of all people! “I don’t have to explain to you or anyone else why I hire peace officers, or where I assign them!”

“Peace officers? Peace officers? Carl Luckner is a peace officer? Carl Luckner is as crazy as a drunken nit, and a vicious, murderin’, lyin’ shit besides! Now, I want to know why you picked this turd from Cape Town, brought him back here to Kimberley where he already killed a man without reason, and put him on the Diamond Squad, just in time fer him to find a diamond in me safe that wasn’t there until he put his dirty hooks in it! With Fry there so convenient, to see him do it!”

“And I want to tell you, you’ve more than outstayed your welcome here and if you don’t leave this very instant, I’ll have the police in here and have you jailed!” Robinson was white about the mouth; his hands were trembling. “Either your nephew Joel is guilty or you are, and making all those accusations will only get him a longer sentence when he comes up for trial, if I have anything to say about it!” Robinson had had a strong and sickening feeling since the time of the arrest that it really had been a frame and that he had been done in the eye by his old friend Rhodes; but this was certainly neither the time nor the place to admit it. There was the chance he might even reap some benefit through Rhodes if he just kept quiet and kept his nerve. He glared across the desk. “Now get out!”

Barney came to his feet. He forced himself to calmness, and with the change of temper his Cockney seemed to automatically disappear.

“Do you imagine that this is the end of the matter, Robinson?” he said quietly. “Jack goes to the Cape breakwater to sweat for ten or twenty years, and the rest of you get off scot-free for a crime you committed, not him? You know who’s behind this frame, and so do I. It wasn’t aimed at Jack; it was aimed at me.” He shook his head. “You’re a fool, Robinson. You’re nobody. You’re just a man in the middle of something too big for you to understand. But you made a serions mistake. You’re a Bible-beating churchgoer, I understand. Well, next time you’re in church, ask for forgiveness, because you’re going to need it!”

He walked out.

The evening meal at the hotel was melancholic.

“He ain’t — I mean, he doesn’t have a chance,” Barney said glumly. “I’d bet a spoiled jugged hare against a team of healthy Cape oxen they send him over. Between ten and twenty years on the Cape breakwater. Jack’ll never make it. I think Fry’s straight, blind in this case, but straight; but Robinson’s another story. He’d sell his old ma for fat for frying. And he has the judge in his pocket. I think he got hooked into playing cat’s-paw for old horse-faced Rhodes, but he’ll never admit it. He’ll try to milk it for whatever advantage he can get out of it. I can almost understand Rhodes; he’s got big ideas and he doesn’t care how he gets there. But I’ll never understand a man like Robinson. Or forgive him.” He sighed in misery. “What am I going to tell my sister Kate?”

“You may not have to tell her anything, darling,” Fay said quietly.

Barney put down his knife and fork; he hadn’t been eating but had merely used them to push his food listlessly around his plate. He looked at Fay. “What do you mean?”

“What bail did you put up for Jack?”

“Five thousand quid. Why?”

“I heard a poem the other day,” Fay said, quite as if she were changing the subject to a more pleasant one. “It went, ‘Over the Free State line, whatever is yours, is mine. If I’ve got a stone, it’s all my own, and no John Fry to make me groan.’ Free Town isn’t very far away.” She looked at him calmly. “How much is Jack’s freedom worth, Barney?”

Barney shook his head stubbornly. “It isn’t the money, Fay, you know that! It’s the fact that Jack’s innocent, that he was framed, that these bastards are getting away with something!”

“Can you prove it?”

“No,” he said miserably.

“Can you picture the judge freeing Jack?”

“No. But, damn it,” he added angrily, “he’s innocent!”

“And how much satisfaction in knowing he’s innocent do you suppose Jack will be able to garner while he’s putting in his time working on the breakwater?”

He looked at her for several moments, wondering as always how he had ever managed to survive before he had married her, and then came to his feet. “Have one of the boys fix up the Scotch cart and bring it around to the rear of the hotel,” he said. “Have them pile enough rubbish in it for Jack to hide under. Get some money from the safe, enough to get him home, at least. I’ll get Jack…”

Fay was asleep when Barney came into their room. He closed the door softly behind him and undressed as quietly as he could in the dark, slipping into bed beside her. She rolled toward him, pressing against him, her arm automatically reaching around him to hold him, nuzzling her head into his shoulder, murmuring in her half sleep.