Adventure, January 20, 1922 — page 111: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Men of the Night who envied his luck in the gem markets. A few ugly, jealous things might be whis- pered among the trade about him, but pouf! What successful man escapes that sort of thing? Drount knew his business. Also he knew the business of most of the other jewelers. Jewelers are jealous people. They whis- pered together about Drount, wondered, suggested, conspired, tried little tricks on him. For instance, they bought unset stones of him and examined them care- fully. For instance, also, they sent a clerk with | some stones of their own, and these were offered to Drount at an absurdly low price. Drount was agreeable, pleasing; he talked in his buoyant, fascinating way until the police arrived, whereupon he turned clerk and stones into their hands. The jewelers were painfully embarrassed. They could not dare say it was a trick on Drount, and they had to take care that their clerk did not say so. It made the situation difficult. Particularly so as Drount showed an eagerness to get into court and testify against the rascally clerk, to make an example of him; and Drount kept making inquiries about the case. When would it come up? Why was there delay? There was no doubt as to guilt, was there? If so, what doubt? Drount’s was not in Maiden Lane, neither was it at Union Square; nor yet on Fifth Avenue; but it was in the neighbor- hood of fashion. The entrance gave an impression of bronze work. The entire front was bronzed; and as smokers will scratch matches any place, it was retouched frequently for there was nothing lax or shabby about Drount’s. Inside there was the laboriously studied air of repressed luxury. “Quiet refine- ment” is now the gibberish that expresses Society’s disapproval of noisy refinement. In the best circles the idea of culture is to suggest enormous wealth without dis- playing the check-book; an idea that was possibly originated, as it has been perpetu- ated, by a lot of impoverished aristocrats who inherited the family trappings and a depleted exchequer, or at least one unable to compete with mushroom millionaires. Drount was an artist, or anyway his workmen were artists; and it gave him pride that his store was so exclusive that he 109 could not possibly have paid expenses ex- cept for his ingenuity. He played the quiet-refinement game to the point of impudence. He could charge forty dollars for a plain walking-stick with a thin silver band and imperturbably indi- cate the faint small “Drount” on the band if any one asked what made the value. Drount had more than enough humor to see the joke in his way of life, and he knew that New York pays for the trademark, and has no other way of knowing value, in fact doesn’t greatly care for any value but the caste fraternity of exclusiveness. But after all the only way a fifty-dollar bill can be distinguished from a ten-er is by the trade- mark. His impudence had got recognition for his name. He could carry it with high- handed ease because Drount’s was a fence for gem thieves. There are not more than a handful of good ones in the world, and many of them fenced through him. He gave about thirty per cent. of the actual value and offered a safe, sure market. It was then no wonder that he was genial and charming; for Drount was a gracious charlatan, quite aware of his attractive appearance in ladies’ eyes. His dark hair swept back with artistic curve from his high forehead. His eyes were full of life. He was no more French than a Dutchman, but he had cultivated a little shrug and other Gallic mannerisms that gave him a great advantage in the jewelry business. For some reason, per- haps imaginable, fashionable jewelers have a crepuscular, low-voiced manner not wholly unlike the anteroom whispers to a death-chamber where heirs are wondering what the will is like. MERWIN MIDDLETON §ssaun- tered into Drount’s with the half- bored air of one about to buy some- thing‘for a girl he did not want; but he smiled as much to himself as at the young man who came to meet him. Middleton had as many alias-es as he needed, and by one of them he was known at Drount’s. “Mr. Drount,” said the young man, “will not be busy long.” There were no customers about. There seldom were. Only plebeian shops are over- run with people. Nobody did anything s0 COmiclooolks (C@