"Stranded?" he asked, and the man nodded sulkily.
"Want a few days' work?"
The chauffeur's dissipated face brightened.
"Yes, sir," said he, "I do."
"Wait here, then," said Slyne, and went inside.
"Well," he asked the salesman, "have you thought it over? What's the last word?"
"Fifteen thousand lire, milor—not a soldo less," declared the dapper, frock-coated salesman, in a tone of final decision which Slyne's sharp ears judged unfeigned. "The car is worth twice as much. Indeed, I could not let it go at such a ruinous loss were it not—But, ecco! The owner himself. He would probably be very ill pleased to hear it was actually sold at that ridiculous price."
Slyne looked round at the grey-haired, portly, prosperous-looking individual threading his way through the agglomeration of cars in the background, and his half-parted lips snapped together again.
He wanted that particular car and had made up his mind to buy it, rash though such an investment might prove, but he had surmised from a lynx-like glance at the seller that he might be able to get it for even less than the salesman was authorised to accept. And, since his own pockets were so poorly lined for the expensive part he was playing, he, who despised chaffering, was yet bent on making the very best bargain he could.
"It's more than I've got about me," he told the salesman in a very audible voice, as the fat man in the fur coat halted indeterminately a few paces away. And at the words the new-comer's puffy face lighted up, as if with relief, behind the pince-nez he was wearing. He came forward and spoke.