Mr. Cecil looked at the device on the cover.
“Well, upon my word, that does seem a very sound hypothesis,” he said. “Really, if I had known----”
“You needn’t finish that sentence,” he said. “What is in your head is that you would never have shewn it me, if you had known that it came from Stanier.”
He sat down again, and, laying his hand on Mr. Cecil’s arm, summoned all the charm and persuasion of which he was master.
“I must have that book you know,” he said. “I should have tried to get you to let me buy it from you, anyhow, but now, I really have the right to acquire it, haven’t I?”
Now this reconstruction, so ably sketched by Colin, had considerably increased the pride of possession in Mr. Cecil. It gave an immense interest to the missal to know that it had once belonged to so historical a Faust as the first Earl of Yardley.
“I don’t see that there’s any question of right about it,” he said.
Colin bridled his impatience. Once the book was in his possession, he wanted no more of Mr. Cecil, who, for all he cared, could burrow in underground Naples to his heart’s content, until somebody knifed him.
“Perhaps ‘right’ is too strong a word,” he said. “Let’s say suitability. Surely it’s very suitable that the book should go back to Stanier. As for price, if you’ll tell me what you paid for it, I’ll give you five times what it cost you.”
“I fancy I bought it for five liras, say four shillings,” he said. “I don’t know that twenty-five liras would tempt me very irresistibly.”
“Five liras!” said Colin. “My goodness, I wish I had been shopping with you that day! Of course, that makes my offer ludicrous. But how about getting it valued by Quaritch or somebody who knows? I would then be delighted to pay you twice its estimated value.”
“I don’t really want to part with it,” he said. “Charmed to let you read it----”
“But I want to own it,” said Colin quietly. “In fact I must. After all, it is only a question of terms. Please name your terms.”
Mr. Cecil, for answer, merely put the book in the cupboard from which he had taken it, and turned the key on it. Colin’s insistence had increased his determination to keep the book; as a strong sub-current in his mind there was the notion that here was this enormously wealthy young man, who, for some reason of his own, intensely wanted the book. There was no harm in running up the price....