Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/240

230 "That's rather a formidable list," he murmured weakly enough, for the whole thing still seemed incredible.

Here, in the obscure corner of a Canadian colony, he was threatened with stumbling across a collection that might be the envy of a national gallery. They were claiming to have Corot and Correggio, Decamps and Holbein, housed in this decrepid old homestead hidden away in its ruinous old garden.

His bewildered eye rested for a moment on the Tanagra figurines. Yet they only added to his disturbance, for the man who had captured them, he knew, had been a good picker; and nothing, after all, was too preposterous for such a house.

"When shall I come back?" he asked, with rather an anxious face.

"Will to-morrow at two be convenient?" he heard his hostess in rusty black inquiring.

"I'll be here at two," he said with a belated effort at professional impersonality. But it was an abortive effort, for he had become too actively conscious that he