"Dann,_Jack_-_The_Diamond_Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

Without waiting for an answer, Jefferson left, and Robert introduced me to my new bodyguard, Wordsworth, who had been waiting like a good foot soldier in the wood-paneled lobby. I learned that Isaac was being punished for a dereliction of duty, and I would not see him again. I wondered if _anyone_ would ever see him again.
As Robert and Wordsworth escorted me out of the room, I could hear the faint splashing of water and Phoebe singing in a sweet, yet raucous voice -- "Who's Sorry Now?"
* * * *
Scrubbed down like a horse after a race, perfumed, pomaded, and dressed in evening clothes, I sat in the richly cushioned maroon seat beside Jefferson and watched Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton slap each other across the screen.
Jefferson's "theater" was more magnificent than any movie house I'd ever been in. Scarlet damask lined the walls, and the thirty-foot ceiling was supported by huge gold caryatids holding dimly glowing ruby lamps. As the moving picture flickered before me like a dream, I sipped Napoleon brandy and smoked a sweet cigar rolled in the Haymarket district of New York City. But the butterfly collar that Robert had snapped around my neck was so heavily starched that I felt like I was wearing sandpaper.
"I think all that business about Fatty raping that actress and all is a lot of hooey," Jefferson said in a whisper, although there was no one but his manservants and us in the theater. This was certainly a place that inspired awe, a church for the brightly lit images that towered before us in profound silence. This was the perfect temple for the new gods that were so much larger than life and above the sound and the fury, beyond boredom or smell or homely sound. We might laugh at their antics, but _they_ would have the last laugh and live forever. However, being here in this sumptuous palace atop a mountain of pure diamond, it would be easy to imagine that _we_ were the new gods.
"Even if he did have a bit of fun with her," Jefferson continued, "it would have been her fault, not his. He didn't force her to stay at his hotel. He didn't force her to stay there for two of God's long days. And now the poor soul is blacklisted and can't make a moving picture because that stupid woman ruptured her bladder, probably from being loaded to the plimsoll."
"Well, she did die from it," I said as we watched Buster Keaton being struck by a sack of flour. Keaton absorbed the shock as if he had been struck by a hanky. I'd seen _Butcher Boy_, although I can't say it was one of my favorites. But Jefferson howled with laughter.
After he calmed down, he said, "The court cleared him of all charges, and the jury said that a great injustice had been done to him."
"It did take three trials."
"I wouldn't care if it took a hundred trials. He was completely exonerated."
"I'm not sure that -- "
"Are you going to continue to argue with me?" Jefferson asked. His voice was soft, mellifluous, and menacing.
"No, of course not. I apologize."
"From what Phoebe tells me, you're good at that." He laughed, whether at me or Fatty Arbuckle's antics, I couldn't tell; but he patted my arm, thus preserving my -- dignity. "Perhaps I should get into the film business. What do you think? Give Arbuckle a second chance?"
"The press and public seem to hate him," I said.
He pulled on his cigar, belched a huge cloud of smoke, and said, "I can fix the press. And I can guarantee that the public will love him. I'll bet you a thousand dollars. Is it a bet?"
"I've already had a conversation like this once with your daughter, sir. I don't really _have_ a thousand dollars."
"Ah, but you've got a new ring, haven't you?"
"I think we'd both be in the doghouse if I lost her ring to you on a wager."
Jefferson seemed to like that because he put his arm around me, waved the porter over to fill my snifter with more brandy, insisted that I stop acting like a teetotaler, and told me the "improbable but true" story of the Jefferson family.
When he finished, I asked, "Why are you telling me all this?" I had become more and more nervous as he spoke because -- I already knew too much.
But he just handed our crystal -- or perhaps they were diamond -- snifters to one of his servants and said, "Because you're part of the family now, Paul.
"Shall we join the ladies -- ?"
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*Six*
Randolph Estes Jefferson was no relative of Thomas Jefferson.
Nor was he the scion of any distinguished lineage. His father Frances Tiberio Jefferson did, however, settle in Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, where the third president of the United States was born and grew up; and he claimed to be a distant cousin of "Thomas," who also had a reputation of being able to talk a tree out of its roots. Frances won a medal for "World's Greatest Liar" at the Great Albemarle Fair. Like Thomas, he was a states' rights man and distinguished himself in the War of Yankee Aggression by rising to the rank of Colonel. He was too robust to succumb to the diseases that routed both the northern and southern armies, and rose quickly through the thinning ranks.
After the war, he took his pay and his gift of gab and became the most successful auctioneer in Albemarle County; but he was too restless for that.
It happened that he found twenty-five "orphans," ex-slaves still living on a played-out plantation. Their owners had put the plantation up for sale and left for Europe. The men and women left behind spoke high German, had developed their own, unique dialect, and didn't know that the North had won the war and that they were no longer -- slaves. They were starving and Frances fed them, gained their trust, and promised them wealth and a piece of land out west.
However, he neglected to explain that they were emancipated.
And so Frances left the Thomas Jefferson Auctioneers & Feed Company to his brother. His plan was to buy twenty parcels of cheap Montana land in the names of his new wards and start a cattle and sheep farm. But that was not to be because, after a series of misadventures, all he had left were his orphans; and they were starting to have doubts about the master who could do no wrong.
In fact, they would have probably killed him if he had not gotten lost in the mountains and shot a squirrel that happened to have a perfect diamond the size of a pebble in its mouth. That pebble would be worth a hundred thousand dollars. He went back to his camp and told his orphans that he had discovered a cache of "rhinestones" that could be mined "for a few dollars." Since none of the slaves had ever seen a diamond, much less owned one, they agreed that they could dig out enough stones to get back sufficient money to buy homesteads.
Leaving his miners to continue their work, he took a valise of diamonds to Billings; but he underestimated their value and a jeweler, flabbergasted at the size and quality of one of the smallest stones, tried to have Frances arrested. Frances went to New York, where he started another furor; this with only one stone, which a dealer of consequence believed might have been part of the Duvergier Diamond, said to have been stolen by a French soldier from the eye of an idol. The Duvergier had been cut into twenty-one stones, which ranged from less than a carat to eighty carats, and The World's Greatest Liar did not dispute the opinion that _his_ diamond might have been cut from the same venerable stone.
After several weeks, Frances was several hundred thousand dollars richer. But he had to leave New York, as the metropolitan police were now looking for him. The diamond market was in chaos. Some said that the world's largest diamonds were somehow being cut up and "dumped by a syndicate." These new stones _had_ to be cut from great diamonds such as the Orloff, the Koh-i-nor, the Akbar Shah, the Dudley, and even the Cullinan -- which became part of the crown jewels -- because they were too big to be anything else. Madness had replaced logic. Would-be prospectors were rushing to Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Southampton, Long Island -- and the yellow rags kept proclaiming new locations where diamonds had "just been discovered."
Indeed, The World's Greatest Liar had found what was undoubtedly the world's largest diamond -- a solid and perfect mountain of diamond; and he realized that he would have to be careful, lest he devalue the world market.
He sent for his brother to manage the mine and left for a tour of the world. Carefully, he sold his diamonds. He used pseudonyms, forged passports. He lived like a criminal on the lam, yet he sold his stones to emperors, kings, criminals, sultans, and mercantile barons; his diamonds became invested with their own history and myth, as if they had been in circulation for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
In a few years, Frances was worth millions.
In a few more years, he was worth billions.
And he married a Spanish beauty; had two sons, Randolph and George; convinced his slaves that the South had indeed won the war, and that all was once again right with the world; murdered his brother, who became too generous with the family fortune and "talked out of school"; and dedicated himself to protecting his family and consolidating his fortune.
Randolph, being a chip off the old block, also invested widely and wisely; saw to the construction of his castle on the mountain; married a woman from Braga, his mother's village near the west coast of Spain; sired a son and two daughters; and being kinder and gentler than Frances, merely imprisoned his overly generous and voluble brother, rather than murdering him.
Thus was I introduced to the secrets of the family while titans who had assumed the shapes of Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton beat and kicked each other in joyous, rapturous revenge.
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*Seven*
It was like being invited to dinner in a cathedral, perhaps because great pennons hung from the high, gilded wood ceilings and paintings of winged cherubs and Rubenesque angels gazed down upon the guests, as though the heavenly host itself were in attendance. Perhaps it was the plundered sixteenth-century choir stalls, or the flickering candles and the altar of a table spread with linen and silver and gold. The plates and glassware seemed to be composed of layers of ruby, sapphire, emerald, opal, and diamond. Muted colors and pure, prismatic reflections met my eyes wherever I looked, and the Persian tile upon which I stood seemed to have infinite depth, as if this great room was floating stock-steady upon extraordinarily deep water. Servants glided in and out, as though stepping through shadows, and I could hear the clear but distant strains of Vivaldi's _The Four Seasons_. I tried to locate the music, but could not.
Randolph Jefferson stood at the head of the long table and motioned me toward a chair beside Phoebe, who was dressed like a blond angel in white chiffon. Beside Phoebe, and facing Jefferson at the other end of the table, sat a beautiful dark-haired woman wearing a black chiffon evening dress. I thought it particular that, except for a gold wedding band, she wore no jewelry. She looked like she could have been in mourning. To Jefferson's right was Morgan, and beside Morgan was a homely brown-haired girl in a stylish green evening outfit that somehow seemed larger than she was.
"Paul, allow me to introduce you to Giroma, my wife." I bowed, and the woman in black held out her hand to me. I wasn't sure whether I was expected to kiss it or formally shake it, so I decided upon the latter. She seemed pleased, but then she turned away from me, as though impatient to return to her own thoughts.
"And my son, Morgan, who tells me y'all met under rather unexpected circumstances." Jefferson gave Morgan a cold, disapproving look and then introduced me to Marion, his eldest daughter, who was still being overwhelmed by her green evening dress. Perhaps I had been too hasty in describing Marion as homely. She had the same features as Phoebe, but they were slightly -- crooked. What seemed like perfection in one sister was bland and uncomely in the other.
"Sit down," Phoebe whispered to me. "You look like you just stepped on your own foot." Marion giggled at that and, embarrassed, I sat down.
We made small talk throughout dinner, all seven courses, and Phoebe was winsome and witty and wickedly pressed her leg against my thigh. I asked about the music, wondering how many more musicians -- indeed, how many other "guests" might be on the grounds -- only to learn that the sweet music was being reproduced by an electrical phonograph that used a new Panatrope loud-speaker.