The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

18

“But look at the hour! Surely you’ve both spent too much time already with a loquacious old man.”

I didn’t have to look at the hour, as the chiming clock on his mantle was busy announcing it. It must have chimed every fifteen minutes since our arrival, but I’d not once noticed it, nor had I ever thought to glance at my watch.

And how could I regret a single moment of the time we’d spent with this particular elderly gentleman?

“If this is purely a social call,” he went on, “I assure you it could not be more welcome. But would I be wrong to suspect that there’s an element of business to it, one you find yourselves too polite to mention?”

“Well, there is something,” I said, and drew the jewel case from my jacket pocket. Abel took it in both hands and held it as if waiting for a word from the treasure it held, and maybe he got that word, because something showed in his eyes.

He lifted the lid, and said something in German that certainly sounded heartfelt. He lifted the stone from its case, held it between his thumb and forefinger.

“Bernard, is this—”

“It is.”

“Of course it is,” he said. “It could be nothing else on earth or in heaven. When Richard Burton gave it to Elizabeth Taylor, she had it set in a ring, then complained it was too heavy to wear.”

Carolyn: “So she didn’t wear it?”

“Of course she did. She loved having it on her finger, even as she delighted in complaining about it. Then, after he’d died, she sold it and a few other pieces and donated the proceeds to African children.” He held the stone to the light. “To a good cause,” he clarified, “that sought to keep them from dying of a lamentable disease, but I don’t recall which one.”

He drew a jeweler’s loupe from the pocket of his smoking jacket, which suggested that he’d suspected I’d be bringing him something. While he studied the stone, he said, “The Kloppmann Diamond. Do you know its history?”

“Some of it.”

“It is an alluvial diamond, which is to say that erosion over the centuries freed it from where it had formed, probably beneath the coastal waters of the South Atlantic Ocean. Those waters eventually washed it ashore, on the west coast of what we now call Namibia, named for the Namib Desert. At the time, of course, it was German Southwest Africa, and would so remain until Germany’s colonies were redistributed after the First World War. The word German was dropped from its name, and as South West Africa it was a British mandate, administered by the Union of South Africa.”

“Who was Kloppmann?” Carolyn wanted to know. “And is it true that he just picked it up off the beach?”

“Someone picked it off the beach,” he said, “or found it by digging in the sand at the water’s edge. But it wasn’t Gerhardt Kloppmann. It would have been some native, very likely of the Herero people, who found the stone, and Kloppmann took it from him, probably paying him with a bullet, or sending him to a camp.”

There was no rushing Abel, and we were happy to listen to every word of the history lesson, but you don’t have to. The German colonial administration conducted a four-year campaign of genocide against the Herero, and it was a genuine dress rehearsal for the Holocaust, one that played out years before anybody ever heard of Adolf Hitler. For illustration, Abel quoted one General Lothar von Trotha: “‘I destroy the African tribes with streams of blood. Only following this cleansing can something new emerge.’”

The Herero population was reduced, one way or another, from eighty thousand to around fifteen thousand. German combat losses ran to 696 soldiers, and Gerhardt Kloppmann was not among them. He returned to Europe, where he held onto the stone just long enough to get his name permanently attached to it. Then he sold it for an unrecorded sum and went on to die rather heroically in the early years of the World War.

And so on.

The stone changed hands a few times, always at a higher price, and often enough tainted by some sort of scandal or tragedy. A maharajah got his hands on it, and the press began calling it the Star of Uttar Pradesh, but the name never caught on; the maharajah and three of his wives died violently in a palace coup, and their royal jewels disappeared, and a while later the Kloppmann surfaced in the possession of the pretender to the throne of Ethiopia.

Italy invaded that country in 1935. Emperor Haile Selassie went into exile, but his older cousin, whose claim to the throne was no stronger than his grip on the Kloppmann, chose to remain in Addis Ababa.

“His name escapes me now,” Abel said. “Although I do recall that a London journalist dubbed him Haile Unlikely. He stayed in Addis, where he lived just long enough to regret his decision. Someone must have taken the diamond to Rome, and from there it went to Zurich.”

And so on.

“And now you are here,” Abel said, “for which I am deeply grateful. And you have brought me this extraordinary object, this Kloppmann Diamond, and for that I am—”

“Not so grateful?”

“Still grateful,” he said, “because who would wish to be spared the thrill of holding such an item in his hand? But what on earth am I to do with it? I assume you wish to sell it.”

“Of course.”

“Do you have a price in mind?”

“I was hoping you might.”

“Gruss Gott. Carolyn, have you held the stone in your hand?”

I said, “She was the one who found it, Abel. She picked the right drawer to look in.”

“And did it speak to you, my dear?”

“It hummed,” she said, “but silently. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“No one could explain it better. Bernard, I think you should keep it. I think Carolyn should wear it. Not in public, obviously, but at home of an evening.”

“I suggested as much,” I told him, “but she doesn’t like the idea, and on reflection I don’t blame her.”

“No,” he said. “Neither do I. The most recent owner, the mean-spirited little man whose name escapes me—”

“Orrin Vandenbrinck.”

“Dutch?”

“Once upon a time,” I said. “An ancestor of his washed up in Nieuw Amsterdam around the same time as Peter Stuyvesant, but that wouldn’t account for more than a narrow slice of his DNA. But he’s proud of the name. He told one reporter he looks forward to the day when everybody calls it the Vandenbrinck Diamond.”

“An ambition worthy of the fellow. Does he know the stone is gone?”

“He might. New York One didn’t, as of a few hours ago. He was at the theater, and there would have been a party afterward, and he could still be out celebrating. But he might be home by now.”

“I can’t see that it matters,” he said. “It’s still the Kloppmann Diamond. It’s still impossible to sell.” He frowned. “Bernard, it begins to come back to me. The last time I had the pleasure of your company, yours and Carolyn’s, you brought me something very nearly as impossible to sell. Not a precious gem but a comparably precious coin.”

“The 1913 nickel.”

“It was one of five,” he recalled, “as opposed to one and only one Kloppmann Diamond. I had much the same feeling then that I am having now. I was honored that you brought it to me even as I wished you hadn’t. Of course I want to participate in its sale, but how can I possibly do so? Where am I to find a buyer?”

I didn’t have an answer, or anything to contribute, so I stayed silent. Carolyn stated to reach for a cookie, then changed her mind and withdrew her hand.

“Not Rotterdam,” he said forcefully, as if I’d dared to suggest that particular city. “It’s a large enough stone that it might be cut into smaller stones, each still large enough to be of value but entirely unidentifiable as having been part of a greater whole. But that would be a crime, Bernard.”

Oh?

“Against nature,” he clarified, and took another look into the diamond’s innards. “It would be like kidnapping Helen of Troy and selling off her organs for transplant.” He frowned. “Forgive me, Bernard, Carolyn. That is an unfortunate image. But it makes a point.”

“Vividly,” I said.

“And the pittance one would net through such arrant vandalism would not provide much of a motive. The Kloppmann amounts to ever so much more than the sum of its carats. But to whom could one sell it?”

He was on his feet, still holding the stone, pacing to and fro as an aid to thought, talking as much to himself as to us. There were enthusiasts of one sort or another for whom the pleasure of ownership was sufficient in itself, and their egos were sufficiently inflated without being able to boast of their treasures. Not a few Van Goghs and Rembrandts — and, he’d been given to understand, at least one superb Vermeer — reposed in private galleries the world would never see, the unlawful property of owners who could neither show them nor sell them.

“If it were orientalia,” he said, “there’s a man I know in San Francisco with access to collectors in Hong Kong. If it were a painting, there are avenues I could explore. Or a singularly desirable coin or postage stamp. But with a diamond, do I know anyone? Do I know anyone who knows anyone?”

No one seemed to come to mind.

“Hold this for me,” he said, and fitted the gold chain around Carolyn’s neck. “I won’t be a moment.”

He left the room.

“And here I am,” Carolyn said, “wearing the albatross.”

I looked at the Kloppmann, and, God help me, at the breasts it was adorning.

Abel wasn’t gone long. He returned to tell Carolyn that she really rocked the Kloppmann, although those weren’t the words he used. “So I say once again,” he said, “that you should keep it for your private enjoyment.”

“And I say once again,” she said, “that it’s not my style. I’m for tailored clothes and sensible shoes, Abel, and maybe my class ring from Erasmus High if it’s a special occasion. Here, you hold this.”

“If you insist. Bernard, the details are lost wherever an old man’s memories go, but when you brought me the 1913 V-nickel I seem to remember giving you two choices.”

That’s how I remembered it.

“A small sum, an almost insultingly small sum, on the spot. Or, as an alternative, a percentage of whatever sale price I might eventually realize. I have to admit I don’t recall the numbers.”

I could have refreshed his memory. He’d offered $15,000 cash or half of what he estimated might be a hundred thousand, and I’d had enough celebratory drinks to roll the dice.

“Nor do I recall the details of the aftermath,” he admitted. “I did in fact find a buyer, and I trust I turned your share over to you, and you were happy with the outcome?”

“I had nothing to complain about,” I said.

“Then perhaps it will please you to learn that the offer I’m prepared to make you tonight is similar in nature. You can go home with thirty-two thousand dollars, or you can wait for me to find a customer — in which case I’ll pay you a fourth of whatever sum I receive.”

“Thirty-two thousand,” I echoed.

“For an item that recently changed hands for sixty million, and yes, I admit it’s insulting.”

“I’m not insulted, Abel.”

“Shall I tell you how I arrived at the figure? I went to my safe and counted the cash in it. It came to thirty-seven thousand, and I make it a point never to have less than five thousand cash on hand.”

“And that’s what you’ll have left if you give us thirty-two.”

“But what I hope you’ll do,” he said, “is what you chose to do before. I’ll be looking for a man with long eyes.”

“A man with long eyes?”

He frowned. “It doesn’t really work in English, does it? Ein Mann mit langen Augen, and I’m not sure it works any better in German, but it means a very patient investor willing to bide his time. He might have to hold Herr Kloppmann’s namesake gem for years before the right opportunity presents itself.”

“And it might take you years to find this Mr. Long Eyes.”

“It might, but when I do I’ll get a minimum of a million dollars from him, because I won’t take a pfennig or a kopeck or a farthing less. And you would get a fourth.”

I thought about it. He was offering me a significantly lower percentage of this particular bird in the bush, but it was a much bigger bird.

None of which mattered.

“I’ll take the thirty-two thousand,” I said.

“You’re certain?”

I said I was, and he left the room again, but it didn’t take him as long this time, perhaps because he’d already done the counting. The money he handed me was in hundreds, used and out of sequence, and when he invited me to count it I told him I didn’t need to, and then counted it when he insisted. It was all there, of course, three hundred and twenty bills, which he then apportioned into three envelopes, which in turn found their way into various pockets of mine.

“I thought you might have long eyes yourself, Bernard.”

I explained that I had a pressing need for cash. “That’s why I went to work tonight. I didn’t really expect to find the Kloppmann, but I figured there’d be something worth taking in his apartment, or somewhere else in the building.”

“Thirty-two thousand for a sixty million dollar treasure. I feel as though I’ve insulted you.”

“I’m never insulted when someone gives me money,” I said. “Besides, there’s another way to look at it. I didn’t spend all that much time in the building, but if you add in research and prep, it might come to four hours max. So that means I just earned eight thousand bucks an hour for my labors, and it may surprise you to hear this, but that’s a higher hourly return than I generally net running a secondhand bookstore.”