A maid appeared with a table and a frosted cocktail shaker.
"You'll stop and lunch with us," said Clydesdale, filling two glasses. "Elena won't be very long. Don't know just what ails her, but she's nervous and run down. I guess it's the spring that's coming. Well, here's to all bad men; they need the boost and we don't. Prosit!"
He emptied his glass, set it aside, and from the open case beside him extracted an exquisite jar of the Kang-He, famille noire, done in five colours during the best period of the work.
"God knows I'm not proud," he said, "but can you beat it, Desboro?"
Desboro took the beautiful jar, and, carefully guarding the cover, turned it slowly. Birds, roses, pear blossoms, lilies, exquisite in composition and colour, passed under his troubled eyes. He caressed the paste mechanically.
"It is very fine," he said.
"Have you anything to beat it?"
"I don't think so."
"How are yours marked?" inquired the big man, taking the jar into his own enormous paws as lovingly as a Kadiak bear embraces her progeny. "This magnificent damn thing is a forgery. Look! Here's the mark of the Emperor Ching-hwa! Isn't that the limit? And the forgery is every bit as fine as the originals made before 1660—only it happened to be the fashion in China in 1660 to collect Ching-hwa jars, so the maker of this piece deliberately forged an earlier date. Can you beat it?"