“It is set with jewels,” Florence spoke slowly, “but there is something more. I am sure of it. Perhaps something quite terrible. I saw it in his eyes. He’d kill some one to possess that knife, if necessary. I am quite sure of that.”
“Then, oh my Florence, you must be careful!”
“We will be careful. But we shall have the knife. It belongs to us. We bought it.”
“Yes,” Jeanne agreed, “we bought it.”
As Jeanne closed her eyes she could see the place of purchase, a long, low auction house blue with tobacco smoke; a bald-headed auctioneer shouting:
“Three dollars. Who’ll make it three-fifty?”
A Chinaman in an obscure corner was bidding against her for that chest with a blue dragon on the cover.
Sudden confusion. Three men dragging the protesting Chinaman away.
“What did it all mean?” she asked herself.
“Anyway,” she sighed, “we got the chest.”