REALLY don’t know what induced me to do it; it was done on the impulse of the moment—one of those impulses to which collectors, real collectors, collectors in the higher sense, are peculiarly liable; I know I am.
Pugh had left the room for a moment. I just opened his cabinet of rings. I glanced within. One of the rings particularly caught my eye. I just picked it up as he came in. Unconsciously—or almost unconsciously—as Pugh entered, I dropped the ring into my waistcoat pocket. It was the merest coincidence. Five minutes afterwards I went away.
As I was walking homewards it occurred to me that the ring was—where it was. The fact is that I slipped my fingers into my waistcoat pocket, and—found it there. It struck me that, as it was where it was, I might as well examine the thing.
I took it out. It was an engraved cameo, Italian, of about the middle of the sixteenth century; it was set in gold. I don’t suppose it was of any value, either intrinsic or fanciful. It was merely a little curio—quite a commonplace affair—the sort of thing one might almost pick up in the street. But the odd part of the affair was that it was just the ring I wanted; that struck me then, and it strikes me now, as being, in its way, peculiar.
I have a few rings of my own—Pugh fancies his collection is better than mine, but then it is notorious that Pugh is simply a conglomerate mass of vanity and ignorance—but, strangely enough, I am particularly weak, as a collector, in Italian work of the middle of the sixteenth century. The coincidence, under the circumstances, of finding that identical ring in my waistcoat pocket, was, of course, surprising.
I examined the thing more closely. It was a large cream-coloured ground, with the head of a woman cut in white relief. It was not badly done—not at all. The more closely I looked into the thing, the more clearly I saw that the cameo, for a cameo, was quite a work of art. In my collection it would look uncommonly well. The woman’s head was beautiful; the face was perfectly exquisite. I slipped the ring on to my little finger to study the effect.
As I did so I was just turning into the Edgware Road. As I reached the corner I was seized with a sudden spasm of pain; it was like a sudden constriction of the heart, or, better, an acute attack of heartburn. At that moment who should come slouching along, with that habitual graceful slouch of his, but Martin Brasher. I attempted to wave my hand to him; but so severe was the spasm that I had to stagger against the railings to save myself from falling. He pulled up in front of me.
“Are you ill?” he asked.
“Do you think I’m drunk?”
It was such an absurd question to ask a man who he saw was almost fainting! Brasher’s eyes began to wander all over me—he was quite capable of thinking, in spite of visual evidence to the contrary, that I was drunk! His gaze began at the soles of my boots, and I knew that, in the course of ages, it would ascend to the crown of my hat. I was aware that nothing would escape his glance; he would be sure to perceive the ring. As the coincidence by which it came into my possession was not one of those coincidences which one is necessarily desirous of publishing to the world, I began fumbling at my little finger to get it off. Brasher immediately fixed me with his eagle eye.
“What are you doing?” he inquired.
“Trying to stand,” I said. “Brasher, would it be subjecting you to too great an inconvenience if I were to ask you to turn round and call me a cab?”
He hesitated; then, turning, he hailed a hansom. The instant his back was towards me I replaced the ring in my waistcoat pocket.
The cabman drove me home. Directly I reached Randolph Crescent I stumbled upstairs to my bedroom; I went straight to bed. That scoundrel Bob was out, as usual, so I had to undress myself. A pretty job I found it! That heartburn—I had never been subject to heartburn, but if that was not heartburn I did not know what it was—had never for one instant ceased since it had first begun. Every vein in my body seemed to be throbbing at once. My head seemed to be on the point of splitting. I supposed that I was suffering from an acute attack of indigestion, though what I had eaten or drunk to give me indigestion was more than I could think. I mixed myself a strong sleeping-draught—I felt that if I did not go to sleep at once I should go mad—and, somehow, tumbled into bed.
“!” Someone seemed to be shaking me. “Tress!” Someone was shaking me. “Tress!” There could be no doubt about it, someone was shaking me to pieces. “Tress!”