Gilead cogitated the matter, in fact, until he quite kindled to its possibilities. It looked trivial enough on the surface, to be sure; but by now he had had a sufficient experience of the tragedies often hidden under the blandest masks of commonplace. At the end of an hour he separated, folded, and put in his pocket the front page of the Daily Post, and, leaving the office, took a taxicab for the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, where he enquired for a certain assistant Keeper in the ornithological department, who happened to be a personal friend of his.
“Dereham,” he said abruptly, after an exchange of greetings, “please to tell me about the family of parrakeets, their names and their points.”
Mr Dereham laughed. He was accustomed, like many another of Gilead’s intimates, to regard the young plutocrat as the most courteous, admirable and lovable of cranks.
“O, certainly!” he said, and reeled off a string of names. “There are the Blue Mountain, the Crimson-fronted, the Jerryang, the Ground Parrot, the Dulang, the Coolich, the familiar Budgerigar, the King’s parrot, head, neck and body scarlet, tail shot black and green, the New Holland, with a yellow crest and grey-brown body, the Alexandrine, the rose-ringed, green, with a red collar and black stock, the—”
“Stop. That’s the one I want.”
“O, indeed?”
“Is it rare?”
“Not in the least.”
“I mean any reason for attaching an especial value to it, or to choice specimens of it?”
“None whatever. It’s a quite common species.”