"You'll find them perfect, wonderfully perfect. But don't breathe into them if you can help it. It affects the waltz movement particularly."
[Illustration: "A TIMEPIECE FIT FOR A PRINCE."]
"Oh, does it, indeed?" I said, ironically.
I professed to be examining the works with the closest attention, but I was only resolving on my plan of future action. I was playing with my prey--an angler with his "catch," a cat with a mouse. This was the man who had broken into Golden Birch Villa, and walked off with the pick of the property. An ingenious burglar, who was an expert in clocks, and--I smiled grimly at the joke--who had actually put the article into my own hands again in perfect order. I could have imagined that it was a duplicate copy of mine, and in better condition altogether, had it not been for my private mark, which I was focussing now through a single-barrelled magnifier. I could talk to the man better in this fashion; had I looked him straight in his brazen chaps, my virtuous indignation would have betrayed me. And my policy was to dissemble, like the man in a melodrama.
"You have had this a long time in the family, I suppose?" I said quietly--very quietly--but tentatively.
"It's not new. Any fool can see that it is a Louis Seize clock, and of considerable value."
"It's a valuable thing in its way, no doubt, but it would suit a West End house better than my establishment."
"I know that, sir, as well as you do," was the testy reply, "but I haven't got the time to run to the other side of the water, and I want money in a hurry--in a great hurry, or I should not have come to you," he added bluntly.
"What business is that of yours?" he cried. "What--yes, I do live in the neighbourhood--round the corner in Tan Yard Road--if you want to know. No. 239 is my address, if it is likely to do you any good, and my name is Youson. I see you have your doubts as to my rightful possession of the article; pawnbrokers are all alike, have exactly the same tricks of the trade. I know their ways, no one better, and I know what you are going to say to me next."
"I really do not think that is possible."
"You'll tell me it is unsaleable--that not one in ten thousand would think of buying such a thing--that at the price of the metal it will be worth to you--well, what the devil is it worth? You have been staring at it long enough to know now."
