He thought for a second, and then he smiled craftily and said: “All right, come on.”

Well, we haggled. The gun was the big thing—he wanted five thousand for that and he wouldn’t come down. The wheelbarrow he was willing to let go for five hundred. And the typewriter—he scowled at the typewriter as though it were contagious.

“What you want that for?” he asked suspiciously. I shrugged.

“Well—” he scratched his head—“a thousand?”

I shook my head.

“Five hundred?”

I kept on shaking.

“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “Look, you take the other things for six thousand—including what you got in your pockets that you don’t think I know about, see? And I’ll throw this in. How about it?”

That was fine as far as I was concerned, but just on principle I pushed him a little further. “Forget it,” I said. “I’ll give you fifty bills for the lot, take it or leave it. Otherwise I’ll walk right down the street to Gimbel’s and—”

He guffawed.