The houses are sombre, grimed, and old-fashioned, and there is an air of middle-class respectability about them which disguises from the stranger the real character of their contents. The very passers-by are for the most part shabby, though, now and then, one may see a well-dressed man enter or leave one of the houses let out in floors to the diamond dealers.
It is a street of experts, of men who pay thousands of pounds for a single stone, and who regard the little paper packets of glittering diamonds as the ordinary person would regard packets of seed-peas.
Many a shabby man with shiny coat, and rather down at heel, passing up the street, carries in his pocket, in a well-worn leathern wallet, diamonds, rubies or emeralds worth the proverbial king's ransom.
On that autumn afternoon the sun was shining brightly as I passed the house where "Gregory Vernon's" office was situated. Seldom, indeed, does the sun shine in Hatton Garden or in Saffron Hill, but when it does it brings gladness to the hearts of those sons and daughters of the sunny Italy, who are wearing out their lives in the vicinity. To them, born and bred in the fertile land where August is indeed the Lion Month, the sun is their very life. Alas! it comes to them so very seldom, but when it does, the women and children go forth into the streets bare-headed to enjoy the "bella giornata."
And so it was then. Some Italian women and children, with a few old men, white-haired and short of stature, were passing up and down the Road of Riches into which I had ventured.
I knew not, of course, whether old Gregory was still in London. He might be at his upper window for aught I knew. Therefore I had adopted the dress of a curate of the Church of England, a disguise which on many an occasion had stood me in good stead. And as I loitered through the road, with eyes about me on all hands, I presented the appearance of the hard-worked curate of a poor London parish.
Before the watchmaker's I halted, looking in at the side door, where I saw written up with the names in dark, dingy lettering, "Loicq Freres, Second Floor."
Beyond was a dark, well-worn stair leading to the other offices, but all looked so dingy and so dismal, that it was hard to believe that within were stored riches of such untold value.