"Certainly, certainly; ha, ha!" said Mr. Pope. "Very prudent to consult a collector of greater experience, what? Ah! the younger generation, eh, Lord Peter? Regular little business men already."
"Excuse us, then, for one moment," said Lord Peter, and drew his nephew into the dining-room.
"I say, Uncle Peter," said the collector breathlessly, when the door was shut, "need I give him my book? I don't think he's a very nice man. I hate people who ask you to decline nouns for them."
"Certainly you needn't, Gherkins, if you don't want to. The book is yours, and you've a right to it."
"What would you do, uncle?"
Before replying, Lord Peter, in the most surprising manner, tiptoed gently to the door which communicated with the library and flung it suddenly open, in time to catch Mr. Pope kneeling on the hearthrug intently turning over the pages of the coveted volume, which lay as the owner had left it. He started to his feet in a flurried manner as the door opened.
"Do help yourself, Mr. Pope, won't you?" cried Lord Peter hospitably, and closed the door again.
"What is it, Uncle Peter?"
"If you want my advice, Gherkins, I should be rather careful how you had any dealings with Mr. Pope. I don't think he's telling the truth. He called those wood-cuts engravings—though, of course, that may be just his ignorance. But I can't believe that he spent all his childhood's Sunday afternoons studying those maps and picking out the dragons in them, because, as you may have noticed for yourself, old Munster put very few dragons into his maps. They're mostly just plain maps—a bit queer to our ideas of geography, but perfectly straight-forward. That was why I brought in the Cracow monster, and, you see, he thought it was some sort of dragon."
"Oh, I say, uncle! So you said that on purpose!"