“Not a penny under twenty, not a brass farthing, not a denier under twenty—look at my rent, look at my income-taxes to be paid. Five hundred pounds they robbed me of this year in income-taxes alone.”
“Five hundred!”
“I mean fifty. I am a very poor man, Mr Freyberger—no, no, no, not a penny under twenty.”
“All right,” said Freyberger. “If you won’t do the job I know a man who will.”
He took the drawer and carried it to the door.
“Eighteen,” shrieked Antonides, as the detective fumbled with the door latch.
“I tell you what,” said Freyberger. “I’ll give you fifteen, and that’s my ultimatum.”
“Done,” said Antonides. As a matter of fact he would have done the job for five pounds—for nothing. He divined, from the pieces he had examined, that the thing was superexcellent and by a master’s hand, and he would have been satisfied to have put it together on spec if he were given a chance of purchasing it when completed.
Freyberger left the shop, and, getting into the cab, ordered the cab-driver to take him to the Yard.
The War Office sometimes nods, and the Admiralty has been known to indulge in reverie, but New Scotland Yard never sleeps.