I professed to be examining the works with the closest attention, but I was only resolving on my plan of future action. I was playing with my prey—an angler with his “catch,” a cat with a mouse. This was the man who had broken into Golden Birch Villa, and walked off with the pick of the property. An ingenious burglar, who was an expert in clocks, and—I smiled grimly at the joke—who had actually put the article into my own hands again in perfect order. I could have imagined that it was a duplicate copy of mine, and in better condition altogether, had it not been for my private mark, which I was focussing now through a single-barrelled magnifier. I could talk to the man better in this fashion; had I looked him straight in his brazen chaps, my virtuous indignation would have betrayed me. And my policy was to dissemble, like the man in a melodrama.
“You have had this a long time in the family, I suppose?” I said quietly—very quietly—but tentatively.
“It’s not new. Any fool can see that it is a Louis Seize clock, and of considerable value.”
“It’s a valuable thing in its way, no doubt, but it would suit a West End house better than my establishment.”
“I know that, sir, as well as you do,” was the testy reply, “but I haven’t got the time to run to the other side of the water, and I want money in a hurry—in a great hurry, or I should not have come to you,” he added bluntly.
“Are you living in this neighbourhood?”
“What business is that of yours?” he cried. “What—yes, I do live in the neighbourhood—round the corner in Tan Yard Road—if you want to know. No. 239 is my address, if it is likely to do you any good, and my name is Youson. I see you have your doubts as to my rightful possession of the article; pawnbrokers are all alike, have exactly the same tricks of the trade. I know their ways, no one better, and I know what you are going to say to me next.”
“I really do not think that is possible.”
“You’ll tell me it is unsaleable—that not one in ten thousand would think of buying such a thing—that at the price of the metal it will be worth to you—well, what the devil is it worth? You have been staring at it long enough to know now.”
“I am sorry you are in such a tremendous hurry,” I said, nettled a little by his unceremonious deportment.