Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/6

2 all the other old masters a millionaire might desire, they all became as dead sea fruit when his mind dwelt on the unattainable one.

David Belford, proprietor of Belford's Big Department Store, owned the Skagpole Venus, so called because it once hung in the ancestral halls of the sixth Lord Skagpole, now deceased, before being sold to Belford, in order that the seventh Lord Skagpole might raise the necessary wherewithal to marry Letty Allerby of the Gaiety Theatre.

The Skagpole Venus, though still a beauty, was certainly beginning to show her age, if cracked varnish may be taken as evidence, yet these little matters dimmed not the soul within to her present owner, David Belford, in whose vast gallery she occupied the place of honor, despite frequent bids for her favor by John Thomas Derrington, who, up to the present hour, had offered as high as $50,000 for the square of canvas whereon she reclined.

To return to Miss Anita Maloney, who, by this time, had arrived at Belford's Big Department Store, deposited her outer wraps in the basement locker, and stood behind a crystal jewelry counter, clothed in trim black, with snowy collar and cuffs, prepared to dispense those guaranteed $90 diamond rings, this day only at $49.98. Though the month was July and the temperature hovered about the nineties, Miss Anita, appearing as cool, comfortable and perfect as the proverbial cucumber, was arranging a stray lock of her perfect coiffure, when her fellow salesgirl, Miss Levy, spoke in a guarded undertone:

"Get onto your job, Maloney, here comes that old snuffer to look at them emeralds again."

A "snuffer," in behind-the-counter parlance, is a shopper who goes purseempty about from store to store, merely for the pure joy of looking—or perhaps in the interest of some rival concern—with no thought whatever of actual investment.

True, the gentleman coming had been in twice before to inspect an emerald necklace priced at $987.49, yet he was no snuffer, being none other than John Thomas Derrington, he of the fifty millions.

Next to priceless old masters, John Thomas loved perfect gems, and he had it in mind to present his only daughter, Alice, on her early arriving birthday, with an emerald necklace; but, being a very thrifty old gentleman—as you may gather from the fact of those fifty millions—he never invested until he had carefully weighed all matters pro and con.

Miss Anita Maloney assumed her very sweetest "charge customer" smile, while John Thomas coughed a sort of polite but perfunctory "Hem!" fumbled for his pince-nez, found the black ribbon, adjusted the lenses and spoke:

"I hesitate to trouble you again, young lady, but, if you do not mind, I should like to glance just once more at an emerald necklace you have, priced, I believe, at $887.49."

From pure force of habit, John Thomas subtracted a hundred dollars from what he well enough remembered to be the real price of the necklace. Miss Anita Maloney, rather taking to the thin, Punch-like face