"That's my secret—but here are our drinks. A bargain's a bargain. How funny it is to be talking truth. Why, much of it would make even your job difficult."
"And yours impossible, but we're not getting to the Coronal," I insisted.
"As for that," responded Vogelstein obligingly, "the first thing was of course the making. You know all about Sarafoff yourself. Well, he only did the work. It was Schönfeld who put in the brains. You don't know him? Few do. Great man though. University professor of archaeology, trouble with a woman, next trouble with money, now one of us. Yes Schönfeld thought it out and saw it through."
"And certainly made a good job of it," I admitted.
"As you see, we wanted something unique—something that could not be compared with anything in the museums."
"Precisely," I interposed, "Product of the local, semi-barbaric school of the Crimea."
"You've hit it," grinned Vogelstein. "Scythian influence, to take the professors. Schönfeld said we must have that. And that's why it had to be found at Balaklava."
"But it had to look Scythian too. How did you manage that?"
"Oh, that was Sarafoff's business. He had been a servant and then a novice at one of the monasteries of Mount Athos. Could make beautiful tenth-century Byzantine madonnas. I've sold some. Then he carved ikons in wood, ivory, silver, or what came. His things really looked Scythian enough to those who didn't know their modern Greece and Russia. So we set him to work in a back alley of Vienna at three kroners a day—double pay for him—and Schönfeld ran down from Petersburg now and then to coach him."
"You could trust him?" I inquired, recalling how Sarafoff had subsequently won fame by confessing to his most famous forgery.