“When? By whom?”
Mussewer Duponny might well ask by whom! It had been stolen by the girl who did the housework—the old man could not bring himself, in such circumstances, to speak of her as his niece—and he had not the least doubt in his own mind that the youth who helped him in the business who, at that moment, was in the next room polishing chairs, had put her wise in the matter, and was standing in with her.
S. Gedge Antiques, still in a frenzy of frustration, was hardly able to realize the gravity of this charge. Had he been in full command of himself, he must have weighed such a statement very carefully indeed before it was made. But remorselessly driven by his greed, he threw discretion to the wind.
The disgruntled purchaser was quick to seize upon the accusation. To his mind, at least, its import was clear. Even if the seller did not perceive its full implication, the buyer of the Van Roon had no difficulty in doing so.
“We must call in ze police, hein?”
The words brought the old man up short. He proceeded to take his bearings; to find out, as well as his rage would let him, just where he stood in the matter. Certainly the police did not appeal to him at all. It was not a case for publicity, because the picture was not his: that was to say, having now reached a point where the law of meum and tuum had become curiously involved, it might prove exceedingly difficult and even more inconvenient to establish a title to the Van Roon. No, he preferred to do without the police.
M. Duponnet, however, unfettered by a sense of restraint, argued volubly that the police be called in. The assistant was guilty or he was not guilty; and in any event it would surely be wise to enlist the help of those who knew best how to deal with thieves. Nothing could have exceeded the buyer’s conviction that this should be done, yet to his chagrin he quite failed to communicate it to S. Gedge Antiques.
From that moment, a suspicion began to grow up in the Frenchman’s mind that the seller was not laying all his cards on the table. Could it be that he was telling a cock and bull story? According to Mr. Thornton, who was acting as a go-between, this old man had long had the name of a shifty customer. Undoubtedly he looked one this morning. Jules Duponnet had seldom seen a frontispiece he liked less; and the theory now gained a footing in his mind that the old fox wanted to go back on his bargain.
There were two drawbacks, all the same, to M. Duponnet’s theory. In the first place, as no money had yet changed hands, it would be quite easy for S. Gedge Antiques to undo the bargain by a straightforward means; and further, beyond any shadow of doubt, the old man was horribly upset by his loss.
“Let us go to ze bureau, Meester Gedge,” he said, as conviction renewed itself in the light of these facts.