Rubin shook his head. His sparse beard bristled and his voice, surprisingly full-bodied for one with so small a frame, rose in passion. “No, Mr. Reed, if you consider yourself a purveyor of beauty only, you are being hypocritical. It’s rarity you’re selling. A synthetic ruby is as beautiful as a natural one and indistinguishable chemically. But the natural ruby is rarer, more difficult to get, and therefore more expensive and more eagerly bought by those who can afford it. Beauty it may be, but it is beauty meant to serve personal vanity.
“A copy of the Mona Lisa, correct to every crack in the paint, is just a copy, worth no more than any daub, and if there were a thousand copies, the real one would still remain priceless because it alone would be the unique original and would reflect uniqueness on its possessor. But that, you see, has nothing to do with beauty.”
Reed said, “It is easy to rail against humanity. Rareness does enhance value in the eyes of the vain, and I suppose something that is sufficiently rare and, at the same time, notable, would fetch a huge price even if there were no beauty about it—”
“A rare autograph,” muttered Halsted.
“Yet,” said Reed firmly, “beauty is always an enhancing factor, and I sell only beauty. Some of my wares are rare as well, but nothing I sell, or would care to sell, is rare without being beautiful.”
Drake said, “What else do you sell besides beauty and rarity?”
“Utility, sir,” said Reed at once. “Jewels are a way of storing wealth compactly and permanently in a way that is more independent of the fluctuations of the marketplace.”
“But they can be stolen,” said Gonzalo accusingly.
“Certainly,” said Reed. “Their very values — beauty, compactness, permanence — make them more useful to a thief than anything else can be. The equivalent in gold would be much heavier; the equivalent in anything else far more bulky.”
Avalon said, with a clear sense of reflected glory in his guest’s profession, “Latimer deals in eternal value.”
“Not always,” said Rubin. “Some of the jeweler’s wares are of only temporary value, for rarity may vanish. There was a time when gold goblets might be used on moderately important occasions, but for the real top-of-vanity the Venetian cut glass was trotted out — until glass-manufacturing processes were improved to the point where such things were brought down to the five-and-ten level.
“In the 1880’s the Washington Monument was capped with nothing less good than aluminum and, in a few years, the Hall process made aluminum cheap and the monument cap completely ordinary. Then, too, value can change with changing legend. As long as the alicorn — the horn of a unicorn — was thought to have aphrodisiac properties, the horns of narwhals and rhinoceroses were valuable. A handkerchief of a stiffish weave which could be cleaned by being thrown into the fire would be priceless for its magical refusal to bum — till the properties of asbestos became well known.
“Anything that becomes rare through accident — the first edition of a completely worthless book, rare because it was worthless — can become priceless to collectors. And synthetic jewelry of all sorts may yet make your wares valueless, Mr. Reed.”
Reed said, “Perhaps individual items of beauty might lose some of their value, but jewelry is only the raw material of what I sell. There is still the beauty of combination, of setting, of the individual and creative work of the craftsman. As for those things which are valuable for rarity alone, I do not deal with them; I will not deal with them; I have no sympathy with them, no interest in them. I myself own some things that are both rare and beautiful — own them, I mean, with no intention of ever selling them — and nothing, I hope, that is ugly and is valued by me only because it is rare. Or almost nothing, anyway.”
He seemed to notice for the first time that the gems he had earlier distributed were lying before him. “Ah, you’re all through with them, gentlemen?” He scooped them toward himself with his left hand. “All here,” he said. “Each one. No omissions. No substitutions. All accounted for.” He looked at each one individually. “I have showed you these, gentlemen, because there is an interesting point to be made about each of them—” Halsted said, “Wait. What did you mean by saying ‘almost nothing’?”
“Almost nothing?” said Reed, puzzled.
“You said you owned nothing ugly just because it was rare. Then you said ‘almost nothing.’ ”
Reed’s face cleared. “Ah, my luck piece, my charm, my talisman. I have it here somewhere.” He rummaged in his pocket. “Here it is. You are welcome to look at it, gentlemen. It is ugly enough, but actually I would be more distressed at losing it than any of the gems I brought with me.” He passed his luck piece to Drake, who sat on his left.
Drake turned it over in his hands. It was about an inch wide, ovoid in shape, black and finely pitted. He said, “It’s metal. Looks like meteoric iron.”
“That’s exactly what it is as far as I know,” said Reed.
The object passed from hand to hand and came back to him. “It’s my iron gem,” said Reed. “I’ve turned down five hundred dollars for it.”
“Who the devil would offer five hundred dollars for that?” asked Gonzalo, visibly astonished.
Avalon cleared his throat. “A collector of meteorites might, I suppose, if for any reason this one had special scientific value. The question really is, Latimer, why on earth you turned it down.”
“Oh,” and Reed looked thoughtful for a while. “I don’t really know. To be nasty, perhaps. I didn’t like the fellow.”
“The guy who offered the money?” asked Gonzalo.
“Yes.”
Drake reached out for the bit of black metal and when Reed gave it to him a second time, Drake studied it more closely, turning it over and over. “Does this have any scientific value as far as you know?”
“Only by virtue of its being meteoric,” said Reed. “I’ve brought it to the Museum of Natural History and they were interested in having it for their collection if I were interested in donating it without charge. I wasn’t. And I don’t know the profession of the man who wanted to buy it. I don’t recall the incident very well — it was ten years ago — but I’m certain he didn’t impress me as a scientist of any type.”
“You’ve never seen him since?” asked Drake.
“No, though at the time I was sure I would. In fact, for a while I had the most dramatic imaginings. But I never saw him again. It was after that, though, that I began to carry it about as a luck charm.” He put it in his pocket again. “After all, there aren’t many objects this unprepossessing that I would refuse five hundred for.”
Rubin, frowning, said, “I scent a mystery here—”
Avalon exploded. “Good God, let’s have no mystery! This is a social evening. Latimer, you assured me that there was no puzzle you were planning to bring up.”
Reed looked honestly confused. “I’m not bringing up any puzzle. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to the story. I was offered five hundred dollars; I refused; and there’s an end to it.”
Rubin’s voice rose in indignation. “The mystery consists in the reason for the offer of the five hundred dollars for a valueless piece of iron. It is a legitimate outgrowth of the grilling and I demand the right to investigate the matter.”
Reed said, “But what’s the use of probing? I don’t know why he offered five hundred dollars unless he believed the ridiculous story my great-grandfather told.”
“There’s the value of probing. We now know there is a ridiculous story attached to the object. Go on, then. What was the ridiculous story your great-grandfather told?”
“It’s the story of how the meteorite — assuming that’s what it is — came into the possession of my family.”