He determined on his own responsibility to take it to the man he knew direct.
“I wish to take this drawer and its contents with me,” he said to the woman who stood looking on. “I am quite prepared to give you a receipt for it and, what is more, I will place in your hands the value of the piece of furniture I have taken it from.”
“Well,” said the woman, “I suppose I can’t stop you, seeing what’s happened. I ain’t of the having sort, but that chest of drawers cost me a sovereign—item, eleven shillings in the Tottenham Court Road—and without the drawer it ain’t worth tuppence.”
Freyberger took out his pocket-book, wrote a receipt, and placed it, with a sovereign and a five-shilling piece, in her hand.
“There’s a sovereign,” he said, “and the five shillings is for a sheet to wrap the thing up in. I’ll take a sheet off the bed, if you’ll let me; get me some string, too, as much as you have got in the house.”
She fetched the string, and between them, they did the thing up securely, then carrying it in his arms as tenderly as if it were a baby, he left the house, got into the cab, and gave the man an address in Old Compton Street, Soho.
CHAPTER XVI
THE cab drew up at the address in Old Compton Street given by Freyberger to the driver. It was a small shop, filled with antiques, old china, statuettes, renovated pictures.
Here the art of Japan drew a sword or flirted a fan at you; the Middle Ages spoke through the mouthpiece of a battle-dented morion.