“Your poor cunt’s pa I killed, did I? Well, let me tell you something about your poor cunt. Anytime I wanted her I had her, and she isn’t all that prime if you ask my opinion! Oh, she loves getting it from me, used to beg for it as a matter of fact—”
It was as far as he got. Barney, a growl in his throat, was on top of the man. Luckner’s chair with him in it went over with a crash and Barney was on top of him still, in insane fury, choking him. Luckner rolled, choking, breaking the grip, and then found himself being battered by vicious blows to his head and face. He shoved with all his strength, trying to hold the infuriated smaller man away with his greater reach, but Barney would not be denied, breaking through, his fists sledgehammers that battered Luckner unmercifully. The larger man finally scrambled loose and came to his feet only to be tackled fiercely about the knees and brought down. Once more he managed to get to his feet to face Barney and find that the punishing blows could not be avoided. Luckner tried a Japanese grip but Barney avoided it almost contemptuously. Luckner tried to protect himself from the constant barrage of blows and found himself on the floor. He sat up and wiped a hand across his face, staring in angry shock to see the blood that covered it. Barney picked up a chair, raising it on high, determined to bash the brains out of the liar who had had the nerve to impugn the good name of his beloved Fay, but the chair was suddenly seized by someone behind him, and others swarmed in to hold him, pulling him away.
“Barney, for God’s sake!” It was the bartender who had put down the whiskey bottle hurriedly and had grabbed the chair. “You’ll kill the man!”
“Damn right I’ll kill the bastard! Let me go!”
“Barney, cool down! He didn’t pull a knife on you or anything! He ain’t worth hanging for!”
Barney slowly came to his senses. He allowed the chair to be taken from him while he stood trembling from the force of his fury. Luckner was staring up at him with a look of pure hatred on his face, wondering how this little man whom he could break in two had managed to not only beat him but make him look a fool. It was something Luckner knew he would never forget and never forgive. Barney tugged himself loose of the hands that had been restraining him. “I’m all right. Let go.” He took a deep breath, trying to control his trembling, and looked down at Luckner with no expression at all on his face. “Get out.” It seemed to him he was standing there talking, listening to his own voice as from a stranger somewhere off to one side. “If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”
He watched Luckner come to his feet and stagger from the bar into the street. He turned to the bartender, who was watching him anxiously.
“I’m all right. Get the old man down to the undertaker, tell him I’ll be down later to talk to him. Clean up the hallway. See the place is straightened up.”
“Right, Barney.”
He slowly climbed the stairs, skirted the dead body in the hall, and walked into their room. He closed the door behind him and walked to the bed, slowly feeling the trembling in his hands and arms subside. He sat on the edge of the bed. Fay had stopped crying and was staring at the ceiling almost sightlessly. She turned and looked at him inquiringly. Barney leaned over and kissed her cheek; she put her arms around him, holding him tightly, the tears beginning to come again.
“Oh, Barney—”
“It’s all right, darling,” he said softly. “It’s all over. Luckner’s gone and he won’t be back. Your pa will be well taken care of. We’ll give him a good funeral.”
“… the poor man…”
“He wasn’t a happy man since your ma died, honey. After the funeral I’ll go down to the tent and see that everything’s taken care of.”
“No,” Fay said, a bit more of her usual strength in her voice. “I will. You won’t know where everything is, or who has clothes half finished. We’ll have to find someone else to finish them…”
“Someone else?” Barney tried to sound insulted. “Don’t you think I can do it? I ain’t a bad snip meself, if I’m the one’s got to say it.” He dropped the Cockney. “We’ll both go down and do the job right. Your pa would want that.”
“Oh, Barney!” she said with a catch in her voice, and held him even tighter. “I love you so much! I don’t know what I’d do without you!”
“You’ll never have to find out, I promise you that,” Barney said quietly, and knew that despite the horror of that day he had never felt happier or more secure than he did at that moment.
7
August 1883
The directors of the De Beers Mining Company were holding a meeting in a private room of the Kimberley Club. Present were Cecil Rhodes, Charles Rudd, Alfred Beit, Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, and Neville Pickering, Rhodes’ private secretary. The advantages of using the club rather than their own company offices just two blocks down the street were many. The club was less austere, for one thing; for another, there was a small serving door from the private room to the bar which permitted liquid refreshments to be served during the meeting. Then, too, the dining room of the Kimberley Club served the best food in town, should the meeting prove to run into the lunch hour. But while holding this particular meeting at the club made for pleasant surroundings, the subject of the meeting was less pleasant. They had met to discuss what to do about Barney Barnato.
“I am still absolutely amazed,” said Beit, addressing Rhodes who sat at the head of the table, “that you and Barnato have never met in person.” Beit was a short, rotund man with a happy disposition; he had been the leading trader in diamonds in Kimberley until Barney Barnato had overtaken him, but that fact had never dampened his good humor, nor did it in any way interfere with his meeting with Barnato when the need arose. He would even visit Barney at the Paris Hotel on occasion for dinner, mainly because he enjoyed Fay Barnato’s company. “After all,” he went on, “the two of you are the biggest factors in the business today.”
Rhodes shrugged. “There has never been any reason for me to meet the man as far as I could see,” he said, and leaned back in his chair, a large stoop-shouldered man with sharp hooded eyes that constantly went from face to face around the table. “He’s not my type of person,” he added, and fell silent, reaching for his whiskey glass, letting the others voice their opinions before he rendered the final decision.
“Well, I think it’s time to talk to him now,” Rudd said. He was sitting to the left of Rhodes, tilted back in his chair, a large cigar between his teeth. “Since he took over Kimberley Central and merged it with Barnato Mining, he’s taking more diamonds out of the mines than anyone else. Hell, we control the selling output of three mines, De Beers, Bultfontein, and Dutoitspan, and Barnato with half of the Kimberley hole is making us look sick.” He wiped ash from his cigar and returned it to his lips. “If he ever gets his hands on the other half, he could bankrupt us by flooding the market.”
“He got a big jump on us and everyone else in getting decent equipment to mine the blue ground,” Beit pointed out.
“That was a long time ago. Water over the dam,” Rudd said evenly. “You can’t cut your whiskey with it today.”
“He was also the first one to sink shafts and put through galleries to the blue, to get away from flooding,” Beit went on.
Rudd looked at him and nodded. Of all the others on the board of directors, Rudd liked Beit the best. He also thought that Beit had the best mind among them, and would have made a better chairman than Rhodes, although he also knew that Beit would have refused the position had it been offered him. “Everything you say is true, Alfred,” he said evenly, “which only makes the problem more acute. We lost a year to him back in ’seventy-seven and ’seventy-eight and we’ve never caught up. Between what’s in his safe and what he’s already shipped to London, Barnato probably has enough diamonds all together to put the entire market on the skids if he wants to. What he’s been releasing, added to our own releases, has already depressed the market. Try to picture what it would be like if he dumped the whole kit and caboodle.”