“Well, you can’t till this evening, for the joinings will not be firmly set till then. I will send it for you to the Yard. It will be quite safe here.”
“Very well. But don’t send it; one of our men will call for it. Yes, you have made a very good job of it and I congratulate you. I know something about art.”
“You?” said Antonides, contemptuously, pocketing the notes. “And what branch of art do you know something about?”
“Cookery. I am going over to the Itala to have some breakfast; come with me.”
“You pay?”
“Yes.”
Antonides grinned, wriggled out of the gabardine he wore, got into an old frock coat that was hanging from a nail on the wall, put on an old top-hat, led the way downstairs, set the Jew boy to clean some bronzes, locked him into the shop, and, pocketing the key, followed Freyberger across the way to the restaurant.
During breakfast he talked and Freyberger listened. He talked of the bargains he had made, of the sales he had attended, of the men he had seen swindled, omitting, by some lapse of memory, the men he had swindled. He talked of modern and ancient art. “Sculptors,” he said; “the race has vanished. Except the unknown man who chiselled that bust I have just repaired, I know of no living sculptor.”
“You knew Sir Anthony Gyde well?” asked Freyberger.
“I knew him for years,” replied the art dealer, through whose brains the fumes of the chianti he had drunk were pleasantly straying; “for years; and mark you this, Mr Freyberger, I don’t believe that man could have committed a murder, unless he went mad.”