“I had intended to take them round to the British Museum and show them to the keeper of the coins and medals, or one of his colleagues. But I think I will just ask a few questions and hear what he says before I produce the casts. Have you time to come round with me?”
“I shall make time. But what do you want to know about the coin?”
“It is just a matter of verification,” he replied. “My books on the British coinage describe the Charles the Second guinea as having a tiny elephant under the bust on the obverse, to show that the gold from which it was minted came from the Guinea Coast.”
“Yes,” said I. “Well, there is a little elephant under the bust in this coin.”
“True,” he replied. “But this elephant has a castle on his back, and would ordinarily be described as an elephant and castle, to distinguish him from the plain elephant which appeared on some coins. What I want to ascertain is whether there were two different types of guinea. The books make no mention of a second variety.”
“Surely they would have referred to it if there had been,” said I.
“So I thought,” he replied; “but it is better to make sure than to think.”
“I suppose it is,” I agreed without much conviction, “though I don’t see that, even if there were two varieties, that fact would have any bearing on what we want to know.”
“Neither do I,” he admitted. “But then you can never tell what a fact will prove until you are in possession of the fact. And now, as we seem to have finished, perhaps we had better make our way to the Museum.”
The department of coins and medals is associated in my mind with an impassive-looking Chinese person in bronze who presides over the upper landing of the main staircase. In fact, we halted for a moment before him to exchange a final word.