Free Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Michael McDowell Page B

the string loose, and emptied out a dozen pieces of heavy jewelry: three gold rings set with diamonds, a thick gold wedding band, a gold watch, chain and seals, five shirt studs with sapphires in them, and a sapphire stickpin. All the stones were of more than moderate size.
    In the gentle light of the oil lamp that Ella had lighted and set upon the table, Lena examined each piece carefully and without haste. Ella sat opposite her and looked at the jewels with almost as critical an eye as her grandmother’s but she touched nothing. Maggie Kizer paced the room with a light springy tread, her cloak wrapped closely about her, for the unheated room was cold.
    After three minutes had passed Lena Shanks, without looking up, and as she fingered one of the sapphire shirt studs, said: “Three hundred.”
    “Yes,” said the octoroon without hesitation, “just be sure we’re quickly rid of it.”
    Lena brushed all the jewels back into the green canvas bag, and said to her granddaughter: “Bring the lamp.” Ella lifted the lamp from the table and carried it behind the counter. She held it up before the safe as her grandmother turned the combination dial. In a few moments the safe was opened and a stack of ten-dollar bank notes extracted. Ella counted out three hundred dollars and handed the bills to Maggie.
    “Thank you, Lena,” said the octoroon. “It was important that this be done tonight. . . .”
    Lena nodded, and leaned forward heavily on her cane. “You’ll send the money?”
    “Tomorrow morning. But I’ll say to you, Lena: I hope never to see him again!”
    “ Das versteh’ ich ,” replied Lena gravely.
    “The watch has an inscription in the case—”
    “Melted down tonight—” Lena assured her. “ Wiederseh’n , Maggie.”
    After the octoroon had turned her back on them once more in order to secrete the money she had received, she nodded briefly and swept out the door with a sure and determined step.
    While Ella bolted the door after Maggie Kizer, Lena Shanks lumbered around to the back of the counter, heaved herself up onto the higher stool, and spread out a large sheet of brown paper. Upon this she emptied the bag of masculine jewelry.
    From a drawer in the counter, Lena took out a jeweler’s pick, and pried the sapphires from their gold settings. As these were removed, Ella placed them into an envelope taken from the open safe, which contained other stones indistinguishable from them. All the diamonds went into another envelope, and the gold settings were pushed aside into a little gleaming heap.
    Only the watch remained. It was a valuable piece—of Swiss manufacture—and on the inside of the case was engraved CYRUS WESTON BUTTERFIELD, FROM HIS DEVOTED WIFE. TEMPUS FUGIT, 1871 .
    Lena wound the watch with its key, turned its hands to the hour, and listened to the sweet melodic chimes. She smiled slightly, reset the watch, and played the chimes again, holding the watch close to Ella’s ear. Then she put the watch down upon the counter, and with a small iron mallet smashed the workings to bits. She pried the case loose and gave it, with the chain and seals and fob, to Ella. All the broken workings were swept into a brown envelope which she flung into a crate of trash in the corner.
    Ella assisted her grandmother down from her perch, and with the tiny horde of gold cupped in their hands, descended to the cellar. Here, from a bar that had been driven into the stonework of the large hearth hung two crucibles over a steadily burning coal fire. With tongs, Lena lifted the lid of the small one and Ella poured in the broken gold jewelry.
    Lena smiled, drew a key from her pocket and handing it to Ella, said, “Fetch me the silver box.”
    Ella disappeared around a jerry-built wall into the dark maze of rooms, closets, and cupboards that lay beneath Lena Shanks’s two houses. In a couple of minutes, shivering from the cold, she returned with a heavy wooden box that was a foot deep in plate: small vases,