Read Online The Pride of the Peacock by Victoria Holt - Free Book Online Page B

” He seemed to be lost for words, which was rare with him, and he was for the moment unaware of me. I guessed he was back in that time when he had opened the box and found the opal gone.
    I went over to him, took his cup and brought it over to refill it; and when I handed it back to him I said softly:
    “How did it happen, Ben ?”
    “It was here,” he said, ‘in this house. ” He pointed over his shoulder to the room we had just left.
    “I hadn’t had the place long then. I was anxious to show it off for I had a great pride in it. It was more than just a house. Thafs how you’d feel about a place like this. I reckon your family felt it. Well, their loss was my gain. I used to have people to stay here because I wanted to say: ” Look what I’ve got. This is what all these years of toil and disappointments have got for me.
    Success at last” Some of them had never seen a place like this. It was pride, pride going before a fall, as they say. Look what I’ve got.
    Look at my mansion. Look at my opals. We went in there . ” He pointed to the study door. There were four of us and on this occasion I brought out my opals just as I have for you and that was the last I saw of the Green Flash at Sunset. I put her back in her box and put that in the safe. The next time I went there, the box was in its place all the opals were there except one-the Green Flash at Sunset.”
    “Who had stolen it?”
    “Someone who knew the combination of the safe. It must have been.”
    “And didn’t you know who it was ? There was one young man. He disappeared. I never saw him again, although I searched for him. He was dearly the one who had the Green Rash.”
    “What a wicked thing to do There are wicked people in the world.
    Never forget it. Funny thing was, I’d never have thought it of him. He had that dedication, that determination which almost always ends in success. But when he set eyes on the Green Flash, that was his downfall. You see, there’ll never be another like her. She’s the Queen of Opals. The way you had to look for the flash and it never came for some, you see what I mean. And I’d lost her forever. “
    “Surely the police could find him.” - “He was far away in next to no
    time. Sometimes I tell myself that one of these days I’m going to find him and the Hash.”
    “Do you think he sold it?”
    “It wouldn’t have been easy. She’d have been recognized. Every dealer knew her and would have reported the sale. He may have taken her with him … just to keep her to himself. She had a terrible fascination for everyone who saw her. In spite of all the tales of bad luck, everyone who laid eyes on her wanted her.”
    “What tales, Ben?8 ” Well, you know how these things get round. She was unlucky, they said. There’d been one or two people who’d owned her and misfortune had come to them. The Green Flash meant death they used to say. “
    “So you didn’t find it in the first place, then ?”
    “Oh dear me no. It had passed through other hands before mine. You might say I won it.”
    “How did you do that?”
    “I was always a bit of a gambler. Take a chance, that’s me. I’d always keep a reserve though. I’ve never gambled to my last coin, like some.
    I liked to be rich and then do my gambling from there, if you know what I mean. There was old Harry Wilkins who’d got this stone, and from the moment he showed it to me I wanted it. I’d fallen under its spell, you might say, and I was bent on getting it. Ill luck dogged Harry. They said it was the stone. His son had never been much good and one night he went out and never came back. He was found with his neck broken. He’d always drunk too much. Old Harry went to pieces after that. He was a great gambler. He’d take a bet on anything. A couple of raindrops falling down a window pane.
    “I’ll bet you a hundred quid the right one gets to the bottom first,” he’d say. He just couldn’t help it. Well, I wanted that stone and it was about