"I wrote you that I'd drop in sometime this week. The note was directed to your father. I did not know he was not living."
"You are the Mr. Desboro who owns the collection of armour?" she asked.
"I am that James Philip Desboro who lives at Silverwood," he said. "Evidently you have heard of the Desboro collection of arms and armour."
"Everybody has, I think."
He said, carelessly: "Museums, amateur collectors, and students know it, and I suppose most dealers in antiques have heard of it."
"Yes, all of them, I believe."
"My house," he went on, "Silverwood, is in darkest Westchester, and my recent grandfather, who made the collection, built a wing to contain it. It's there as he left it. My father made no additions to it. Nor," he added, "have I. Now I want to ask you whether a lot of those things have not increased in value since my grandfather's day?"
"No doubt."
"And the collection is valuable?"