Anyone who could afford to live in Streetly House, that imposing and historic residence just off Park Lane, must by that fact alone, be known in some degree to the public. Mr. Solly Gertstein had added claims to a certain amount of limelight. He had been—was still to some extent—a financial power. He had interests in gold, in diamonds, in oil, but of late years he had relinquished the reins of his enterprises to brothers and cousins, while he concentrated on his ambition to get together a unique, and fabulously costly, collection of gems, and what the dealers call objets d’art.
He was not an artistic object in himself. A rotund little man, with a gait that somehow suggested a milk can rolled by a railway porter, and with a tendency to pomposity in his speech and manner, he yet contrived to hold some poise of dignity. He was unquestionably excited when Labar introduced himself.
“So you ’ave come.” In moments of stress he was apt to lose his usual meticulous command of the English language. “You ’ave come at last.”