London, And So On: Low Company!

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the gem industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

But it must not be thought that the London police, with their widespread net of ‘information received’ and who are famed for their astuteness, did not from time to time gather in the fish whose predatory boldness had outgrown their caution. It is in the public interest that the police should often tolerate the existence of meeting places frequented by known ‘bad hats’. For where men walk in the twilight of the law, valuable information is liable to leak out from within, and what is more, many a suspect is steadily kept under observation until his cup of iniquity is full and he is duly gathered in.

But it is only the unthinking man who draws a thick line between the criminal and the honest classes, or who imagines that even a notorious breaker of the law is devoid of all good qualities, or per contra that he who is known as a good man and a law-abiding citizen has no criminal tendencies whatsoever. Just as we all carry millions of germs waiting for their opportunity in our moments of physical weakness, so do criminal tendencies lurk in the best of men. I have discovered from my own experience )and I am a more or less normal type) that nothing short of constant vigilance will keep a man from succumbing to temptations of one kind or another. Unchecked passions, the gradual and almost unperceived acquisition of expensive habits or tastes, the desire to shine or to go one better than one’s neighbor, any of those factors may bring an otherwise well-intentioned man into conflict with the law and so to social ruin. Half the impulses of mankind are honest and law-abiding; that is why we have police. But half are concerned with short cuts to getting what one wants; that is why we need police.

There occurs to me the case of I B (the initials were misleading. He was mild-mannered, quiet-living teacher in an elementary school whose only diversion was the study of the classics and who denied himself the smallest luxury in order to assist those poorer than himself. He had come to the notice of a diamond merchant who took him into his employ. Eventually he set up in business on his own account, and his industry, marked ability and reputation for straightforwardness gained him unlimited credit in the trade.

Then after twenty years of unremitting labor he one day called his creditors and informed them that whilst on a journey he had been robbed of the wallets containing his whole valuable stock, which was only partly insured. Some of the creditors, knowing his reputation, were ready to believe this story and were prepared to accept a composition of two shillings and sixpence in the pound to save him from bankruptcy. They were even willing to help give him a fresh start. But there were others less prepared to forgo their just claims without further probing. They applied for a search-warrant, as a consequence of which the whole of the missing stock was discovered hidden beneath the brick floor of his wine cellar. It was a clumsy bit of work, and the penalty, though not a gaol sentence, since his creditors refused to prosecute, was an ostracism so severe that the offender dared never again show his face amongst reputable traders in any of the great gem centers of the world.

When many years after I ran up against him in San Francisco, I asked him point-blank what had possessed him to do such a thing, as he had been perfectly solvent at the time. He said simply, and I believe truthfully, that having devoted so many years to business, he thought the time had come for him to retire on a sufficient competency in order to devote the rest of his life to social and charitable works.

Another public benefactor was H F (again the initials betray nothing of the man), whose genius for organization was so great that had he been in the army he might have risen to be quartermaster-general. Instead, having started as a mere working jeweler with practically no means of his own, his peculiar gift only began to shine forth when he first made contact with a master criminal for whom the police of two continents had lain in wait for years. He was the reality of which the writer of ‘thrillers’ dreams, the human spider in the midst of a worldwide web of crime.

Master thief and organizing genius together, they built up a perfect organization in which every international jewel thief had membership and drew his pay in accordance with services rendered. So much for the member who furnished valuable information or who carefully prepared diagrams of chosen localities. So much for the snatch-thief, the car-burglar, the safe-breaker, terms more generous than the average ‘fence’ would pay; a liberal allowance to those who could be trusted to follow a dealer in gems half-way round the world before, at an opportune moment, relieving him of his goods without violence. H F disliked violence, and was prejudiced against murder.

To cover their tracks the astute heads of this gang had in their pay in every important center experts who could rapidly remove gems from their settings, smelt down the precious metal into bars, alter the size of stones by recutting them and of pearls by reducing their weights. Everywhere there were others, too, brokers who were not squeamish about handling ‘cheap’ goods and asked no questions. ‘Ask no questions and you will be told no lies’ was a saying as constantly on the lips of H F as on those of a nursemaid. It was a motto that appeared to pay him as well as honesty in another wise saw, for H F died in his own bed and left a handsome estate to his children. It might have been even larger but for the fact that H F was a known philanthropist, whose hand was as often in his pocket as the hands of his underlings were in the pockets of other men.

London, And So On: Low Company! (continued)