They had been walking through the town; Barney now began to understand the deserted nature of the place when he had arrived. Everyone who didn’t have business in town was at the mine, working. Well, at least that meant somebody was making a living out of the diamonds, even if it wasn’t a very fancy one. It was an encouraging thought. Harry turned into the Queen’s Hotel, leading the way past the desk into a separate dining room. The Queen’s Hotel, Barney could see, was far better than the so-called hotel where Harry entertained and where he had gotten directions. Maybe Kimberley wasn’t as bad as his first impression of it had been. Well, whether it was or not, here he was and here he intended to stay.
The two men seated themselves at a table and waited until a matronly looking woman came to serve them. Harry did the ordering, quite as if he ate there every day, and once the beer had been brought and the woman had gone back into the kitchen, Harry leaned back and looked at his younger brother rather indulgently.
“Well, what do you want to know about diamonds?”
“Everything,” Barney said simply.
“You’ve come to the right man,” Harry said, and smiled. “I can tell you everything except how to make money in them.”
Barney smiled back. “And that’s the only part I’m interested in.”
Harry held up a hand. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “I can tell you how others make money in them. I just can’t tell you how you can make money in them. Or me,” he added a bit more quietly.
“Tell me how the others do it,” Barney said, and then held up his hand. “Wait. First, explain something to me. How many diamond mines are there around here?”
“Outside of the river diggings, which really aren’t mines, there are four,” Harry said promptly. “Kimberley, De Beers, Bultfontein, and Dutoitspan.”
“How about the Colesberg Kopje, the New Rush, the Old Rush, and all of those?”
Harry laughed. “You’ll need a bit of history,” he said. “Diamonds have been found on three farms around here, besides the river diggings at places like Pniel and Klipdrift. The three farms are Bultfontein, Dutoitspan, and Vooruitzigt. We’re on what was the Vooruitzigt farm right now; both the Kimberley mine and the De Beers mine are on it. Now, they call the original De Beers mine the Old Rush, because that’s where people first went to try their luck at finding diamonds, the original rush for them, so to speak. Then one night, a Cape colored named Damon, who was servant to a man named Rawstorne, got drunk and became a nuisance, so Rawstorne sent him out of the camp to keep him from disturbing the others — Rawstorne and his pals were playing cards — and Damon settled himself down on the hillock to sober up. And woke up in the morning to find he’d had a restless night because the pebbles he thought he’d been sleeping on turned out to be diamonds. He went back and like a good and faithful servant told Rawstorne. And the New Rush was on. At first Rawstorne called the place Colesberg Kopje — a kopje is simply a hill and nothing else, and a hill in this part of the country is anything higher than a small boy — simply because Rawstorne and his friends had originally come from a place called Colesberg in the Cape. But after the town was renamed Kimberley after the new Colonial Secretary, and since the mine is the biggest of all four, they now call it the Kimberley mine. So Kimberley, Colesberg Kopje, and New Rush are one and the same mine. The mine you were looking down into a while ago. Any questions?”
“And how far is Bultfontein?” And Fay? he thought.
“A few miles, no more. Why?”
“Nothing,” Barney said shortly. “Go on about diamonds. You were going to tell me how other people make money in them.”
Harry was studying his younger brother with an odd look on his face. “You talk differently,” he said. “You don’t sound so Cockney — so East End. Who is she?”
Barney reddened. “Who is who?”
“The one who apparently had more influence on you than your family.”
“Go on about the diamonds,” Barney said.
“I only hope I’m invited to the wedding,” Harry said sententiously. “At least that way I’ll meet the miracle worker.”
“The diamonds!”
Harry took a deep draft of his beer, touched his lips with the sleeve of his shirt, quite as if it were a lace handkerchief, and then leaned back again; Harry had class, Barney had to admit that. “Right-o,” Harry said. “Well, there are three ways to make money in the diamond business. First, of course, is by digging them. You can rent a claim for a few shillings a month, so it’s the one way you can start if you don’t have much money. Of course, you have to hire Kaffirs unless you’re willing to do all the digging yourself, but even then the earth has to be crushed and sorted, and that’s the sort of work a man likes to do himself if he doesn’t want to be robbed blind. So you either need partners or enough money to hire labor. Labor’s cheap, but it isn’t exactly free. Still, it’s Cheap Street to get started, digging is, and while it’s hard work, sometimes you hit it big, find a real stone, and end up with some money. But usually you’re working for enough to put food on the table. And that’s when you can trust your partners, which is far from always being the case.”
He paused and looked around the dining room. Even though by now it was dark outside and work at the mines had stopped, there were very few people in the place taking advantage of the Queen’s Hotel’s excellent cuisine.
“Look around. The place is empty,” Harry said. “A few more in the bar but not many, I’d wager. Any you see are probably traders or commercial travelers in to sell to the shops. Although most of the traders are probably at the Kimberley Club, where the really important people in town get together. But the diggers?” He shrugged. “Having a plate of beans outside their tents, that is, if they’re lucky.”
Barney frowned. “But the diggers — the ones I saw down there in the mine today — don’t tell me they was workin’ for fun!”
“Just about,” Harry said. “Sure, there’s always the hope that the next shovel you turn over will bring up another Star of Africa; and sure, the ones with enough of a stake can hold on to their stones and hope for better prices before having to sell, but those diggers are few and far between. Most of them have to sell at almost any price just to pay their help and eat.” He shook his head decisively. “No, renting a claim and digging and crushing and sorting is the hard way to make money here in Kimberley. Besides, all the decent claims are taken, and to buy a claim from the man who has the license for it — a claim that is producing well — costs money. And with the price of diamonds where it is today, at least here at the mine, it isn’t worth it. Even if you had the money. And to buy or rent a claim that isn’t producing, of course, is simply stupid.”
“Which claims are producing?”
“The ones where they get diamonds,” Harry replied. In the interest of accuracy, however, he added, “Usually the claims nearer the center of the mine. I don’t know why, but the ones near the edge, near the reef, don’t seem to produce as well.”
Harry paused as the waitress placed a bowl of thick, rich soup before each of them. He sampled it, waited for Barney’s equal approval, almost as if he had had something to do with its creation, and then began to eat wolfishly. It was obvious to Barney that his brother had been on short rations for some time. It was not until Harry had finished, wiped his plate with a bit of bread for the last drops, that he went back to his exposition.
“The second way to make money in this business,” he said, “is to become what is called a ‘kopje walloper.’ That’s a man who goes from claim to claim — actually, from sorting pile to sorting pile, where ninety per cent of the diamonds are found — buying the day’s find from the miners, offering as little as he can for their stones, and then selling them for as much as he can to the diamond traders on Main Street, or High Street. The profit margin is small, of course; enough to make it worth while for the traders not to waste their time going from sorting pile to sorting pile, or for the miners to spend their time going to the traders, often with stones the big traders aren’t interested in. The kopje walloper is sort of an itinerant middle man; the poor man’s trader. Sort of an old man Feldman with his horse and wagon buying rags and glass and then reselling them to the bigger yards. But to become a kopje walloper takes capital. Not a great deal, but enough to pay for what you buy and to be able to buy what you want, because it’s a cash business, of course.”