"Yes, sir. You feel that it would be most graceful on your part if you could bring this little blue vase down to Santa Barbara with you tonight. You have to have it tonight, because if you wait until the store opens on Monday the vase will reach your hostess twenty-four hours after her anniversary party."
"Exactly, Bill. Now, I've simply got to have that vase. If I had discovered it yesterday I wouldn't be asking you to get it for me today, Bill."
"Please do not make any explanations or apologies, Mr. Ricks. You have described the vase--no you haven't. What sort of blue is it, how tall is it and what is, approximately, its greatest diameter? Does it set on a base, or does it not? Is it a solid blue, or is it figured?"
It's a Cloisonné vase, Bill--sort of old Dutch blue, or Delft, with some Oriental funny-business on it. I couldn't describe it exactly, but it has some birds and flowers on it. It's about a foot tall and four inches in diameter and sets on a teak-wood base."
"Very well, sir. You shall have it."
"And you'll deliver it to me in stateroom A, car 7, aboard the train at Third and Townsend Streets, at seven fifty-five tonight?"
"Yes, sir."
"Thank you, Bill. The expense will be trifling. Collect it from the cashier in the morning, and tell him to charge it to my account." And Cappy hung up.
At once Mr. Skinner took up the thread of the interrupted conference, and it was not until three o'clock that Bill Peck left his house and proceeded downtown to locate Cappy Rick's blue vase.
He proceeded to the block in Sutter Street between Stockton and Powell Streets, and although he walked patiently up one side of the street and down the other, not a single vase of any description showed in any shop window, nor could he find a single shop where such a vase as Cappy had described might, perchance, be displayed for sale.