“And you were sent for a carriage and you watched the inspector hand his prisoner in and drive away,” said Faro. “Is that so?”
Mr. Jacob looked puzzled and then he sighed. “You smile, sir? I expect you know what happened next,” he added glumly.
“When you came back into the shop you realised that your sixty pounds change had not been returned to you and that your fake minister had also carried off the diamond ring.”
The jeweller nodded sadly. “I realised there had been a mistake. When I closed the shop I went at once to the police station. But do you know, Inspector, no one would believe a word of my story. They pretended that no inspector of theirs had brought in a holy man. When I protested that I was telling the truth, they became very suspicious and asked a lot of questions while another policeman wrote it all down. Where are your papers? they kept shouting. What about this shop of yours? How did you pay for it?”
He spread his hands wide. “I was so ashamed and upset, Inspector, and very afraid. This was the kind of life I had escaped from when I fled to Scotland. Was I to go through it all over again? Fortunately, for me, that is, there was a disturbance. A bad woman-from the streets-was brought in drunk and fighting. So I took my chance and ran away as quickly as I could.”
Faro shook his head, aware that would make the Central Office even more suspicious. He knew his men. Edinburgh was full of people who came in with wild stories and tried to obtain compensation for imagined frauds. They would jump to the obvious conclusion that they were dealing with another criminal-or a madman. And they got plenty of both kinds in a day’s work.
“After that I was afraid to go back again,” Mr. Jacob continued. “I know I should not have rushed out like that, but you see, no one, not even a policeman, wishes to believe that a foreigner is telling the truth. I could see it in their eyes as they listened to me. An expression I have reason to know very well. Suspicion and something worse-hatred.”
Again the jeweller spread his hands in that despairing gesture. “Like eager hungry dogs waiting for the chance to leap on their quarry,” he added in a horrified whisper.
Faro protested with some soothing platitudes regarding the law and justice, which he knew were untrue. His words rang hollow, for Mr. Jacob was correct in his assumptions and Faro was well aware that many of his men had strong anti-Semitic feelings.
Even those with skins the same colour and speaking the same language, Irish and English, and their own countrymen from the Highlands were abused. To the struggling teeming mass of Edinburgh poor, signs of affluence in any “foreigner,” however hard won, were a subject of the most bitter hostility.
And now Faro was faced with the hardest part of all, to tell the jeweller what was patently obvious.
“The police inspector who made the arrest, Mr. Jacob-well, I am afraid he was not a real policeman.”
“Not real? But how could one doubt it? He was wearing a uniform.”
“Alas, that is no criterion of honesty. He had probably stolen it.”
Mr. Jacob looked at him wide-eyed. “What are you trying to tell me, sir?”
“That your police inspector and the minister were both criminals, in league together, planning to steal a diamond ring and sixty pounds from you.”
“But the hundred-pound note-”
“Oh yes, that banknote was genuine enough. And a very necessary part of their trick to defraud shopkeepers who would be-as you were-immediately suspicious of such a large denomination, rarely exhibited in public and even more rarely handed across shop counters.”
As he spoke, Faro realised that the jeweller must have seemed the perfect foil for the crooks. The success of this trick depended on the ignorance of new shopkeepers. Particularly foreigners who might have their own reasons, nothing to do with fraud, but a lot to do with past unhappy experiences of political persecution, which made them wary about any involvement with the law.
Mr. Jacob continued to look astonished and Faro repeated, “Please believe me, there was no inspector, no minister. You must understand that both men were thieves who had set out to rob you.”
“Ah, Inspector, in that you are mistaken,” said Mr. Jacob stubbornly. “There was no crime, since the very day after I went to the police station the inspector came back-to return the diamond ring with many apologies. It had been found on the reverend’s person when he was searched. He also returned my sixty pounds,” he added triumphantly. “Now that is not the action of a thief.”
And leaning towards Faro, he said, “What I still fail to understand is why he gave your name.”
But Faro had already worked out that ingenious part of the fraud. The first episode with the minister and the diamond ring, his dramatic arrest by the bogus inspector, and the subsequent return of both ring and sixty pounds were elaborate overtures to secure the jeweller’s confidence.
As for the bogus inspector, Faro guessed that he was a seasoned criminal and that perhaps their paths had already crossed. There was a certain grim humour in claiming to be Inspector Faro in the very neighbourhood where he lived and was a familiar sight.
Faro saw something else, too. That this was merely the beginning, carefully planned with intended results far beyond the remodelling of an emerald brooch into a ring.
Of one thing he was absolutely certain. The emerald brooch had been stolen. No doubt when he returned to the Central Office it would be listed as one of the missing jewels from the recent robbery at Jenners.
Mr. Jacob had to be unwittingly drawn into the thieves’ kitchen. The most invaluable and hardest accessory to find was a skilled craftsman who would be adept at totally altering the appearance of stolen gems, and melting down gold.
Once the jeweller was committed to them, then there was no escape for him. The gang would make sure of that, and their threats would be most effective, especially since the police would be ready to suspect an alien. Mr. Jacob’s visit to the Central Office, with his disastrous and wild-seeming accusations written down and filed as possible evidence, had landed him further into the net.
Faro knew that if the jeweller was to be saved and danger averted, there was only one way. The bogus inspector must be seized when he came to reclaim the brooch. But when might that be?
He stared out of the window. At three o’clock on a December afternoon, there was little light outside, the street already almost deserted.
He could hardly stand guard for an indefinite period, although most of his success in a long career owed much to that element of patient waiting. However, he had given up hope by the time the street lamps were lit and the smoking chimneys of Edinburgh that Robert Burns called “Auld Reekie” added their acrid stench to the freezing fog.
A thin stream of customers had long since gone. Not one resembled the bogus inspector and Mr. Jacob exchanged a despairing glance with Faro.
The plan had failed. Faro shook his head. Criminals, he knew, also have their intuitive moments. Perhaps the thief had already approached the vicinity of the shop in the dim light and, suspicions aroused, had decided that in his business, discretion was always the better part of valour.
Mr. Jacob went around the counter and was rolling down the door blind when a rap on the outside announced a last customer.
Concealed by the kitchen curtain, Faro observed a young woman. He groaned. His last hope had expired-
But wait-what was she asking?
“I have come from Inspector Faro-to collect my emerald ring. I am the inspector’s sister and here is the note he asked me to give you.”
As Mr. Jacob put on his spectacles and read the note slowly and carefully, Faro pushed aside the kitchen curtain. “Hello, my dear. I thought you were never coming. I’ve been expecting you for some time. What kept you?”
The young woman was clearly taken aback and would have bolted had he not stood firmly between her and the door.