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Erhard Riker and Solomon Barlowe were bent over the counter, each with a jeweler’s loupe screwed in his eye. Riker looked up, smiling. He extended his hand to Bell, and said to Marion, “I am afraid that you taxed your fiancé’s powers of observation. Try as he might-and I assure you he tried mightily-he was hard put to convey the fullness of your beauty.”
Marion said, “You tax my power of speech. Thank you.”
Riker bowed over Marion’s hand, kissed it, and stepped back, smoothing his mustache and slipping his thumb into his vest pocket. Barlowe whispered to Bell, “It is most unusual, sir, for a gentleman to show the ring to his fiancée before he has purchased it.”
“Miss Morgan is a most unusual fiancée.”
Something ticked against the window. On the sidewalk, ignoring the rain, laughing young men in black derbies were batting a badminton shuttlecock with their hands.
“You should call a constable before they break the glass,” said Riker.
Solomon Barlowe shrugged. “College boys. This summer, they’ll meet girls. Next spring, they’ll be buying engagement rings.”
“Here is the making of yours, Miss Morgan,” said Riker. He drew a slim leather case from his pocket, opened it, and removed a folded sheet of white paper. Opening the paper, he let slide onto a demonstration panel of white velvet an emerald-flawless, fiery, and filled with life.
The jeweler Solomon Barlowe gasped.
Isaac Bell thought it shimmered like a green flame.
Marion Morgan said, “It is certainly very bright.”
“Mr. Barlowe proposes setting it in a simple Art Nouveau ring,” said Erhard Riker.
“I have prepared some sketches,” said Barlowe.
Isaac Bell watched Marion study the emerald. He said, “I have the impression you do not love it.”
“My dear, I will wear anything you like.”
“But you would prefer something else.”
“It’s very beautiful. But since you ask, I would prefer a softer green-rich yet quiet, like the loden green of Mr. Riker’s coat. Is there such a gem, Mr. Riker?”
“There is a blue-gray shade of tourmaline found in Brazil. It is very rare. And extremely difficult to cut.”
Marion grinned at Bell. “It would be less expensive to buy me a nice loden coat like Mr. Riker’s…” Her voice trailed off. She was about to ask, Isaac, what’s the matter? Instead, she moved instinctively closer to him.
Bell was staring at Riker’s coat. “A rich green coat,” he said softly. “An old man in a rich green coat with rings on his fingers.” He fixed a cold gaze on Riker’s gem-studded cane.
“I’ve always admired that cane of yours, Herr Riker.”
“It was a gift from my father.”
“May I see it?”
Riker tossed it to Bell. Bell weighed it in his hands, testing its balance and heft. He closed one hand around the gold-and-gem head, twisted it with a flick of his wrists, and drew out a gleaming sword.
Erhard Riker shrugged. “One cannot be too careful in my business.”
Bell held the blade to the light. It was honed so sharply that no light gleamed on the edge. He hefted the cane, the scabbard that had held it. “Heavy. You wouldn’t even need the sword. You could floor a man with this.”
Bell watched Riker eye him warily as if he were wondering whether he had heard Bell correctly or was just taking his measure. Wondering, Do I have to fight? At last Riker spoke. “Two men, if you were faster than you looked.”
“And if the men were drunk.” Bell said, moving swiftly to shield Marion. It was suddenly clear to both men that they were discussing the night that Eyes O’Shay and Billy Collins had tried to rob the senior Mr. Riker.
Riker answered in a conversational voice, although his eyes were focused as hard on Bell’s as Bell’s were on his.
“I awakened,” he said, “in a first-class cabin on the high seas. The old man was tough as nails. But kind to me. Anything I wanted was mine for the asking. The food on that ship was like what I had heard people say that Diamond Jim Brady ate. Beefsteaks, oysters, roast ducks, wine from crystal glasses. I felt like I had arrived in Heaven. Of course, I wondered what did he want back for all that? But all he ever asked was that I go to school and learn to be a gentleman. He sent me to public school in England, and the finest universities in Germany.”
