Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/11

 the valley, and as the political situation was satisfactory, by the signs that the gem trade read, it was time for Obert Goles to go selling gems from Pittsburgh to Cairo.

His going was not announced in any of the trade papers, and the fact was not heralded on Maiden Lane. The New York gem trade has long since learned that a salesman carrying from $50,000 to $250,000 worth of gems needs to slip away from his home store in the night, like a thief, and to scout from centre to centre like a spy in the land of the enemy, telling no man his business, suspecting even little children and hating especially beautiful women and good fellowmen.

So Obert Goles vanished from Maiden Lane, and apparently no one missed the shadow that never stood in the way of the least sparkle in a diamond or clouded the lustre of a pearl. He glided uptown and caught a train over to Pittsburgh, where he appeared unannounced in a little store around a corner, under a stairway, in which a little Rabbi of a man welcomed him and shortly paid him for certain stones the sum of $4,360.

Goles mailed his sales slip to the home office that night in a plain and not overly clean envelope. He deposited the cash in a bank to the credit of Ofsten & Groner, and dropped down the Ohio by train. He stopped in three towns, and made two sales—two or