Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/170

Rh impatiently. "Silver is 2s. 2d. this morning. Try him with 2s. 6d. the ounce."

"Stop a bit, though," replied Lester, coming down at once to the realms of pure business. "It's no use being wasteful. If we tell him that this is very bad silver he may jump at much less."

"Well, it's your affair," remarked the other, "and one thing is certain: if there are hundreds or thousands of this particular coin coming into the market, the price goes all to pieces."

Mr. Lester winked cunningly. "Leave that to me, my boy," he replied. "If we collar the lot the trade needn't never know nothing. We can spread it over as many years as we like. Quite a few can go to New York and Philadelphia with solid pedigrees, and one or two to Edinburgh. Then the private cabinets will take ever so many direct, and when they're filled up we can begin to work a sprinkling discreetly into the London sales. Besides, you don't imagine that they're all alike, do you? This poor jay Clay don't know a Saxon sceatta from a trouser-button, of course, but there are certain to be dozens of types, and most likely from several reigns."

"Get them first," hinted the material Scott.

"I'm coming to that, Scott. Indeed it was on the tip of my tongue," protested Lester. "Heavens! What machines of business this London of ours turns us into. No romance. What do we live for, after all? My ambition is to make a million, and to be able to call a duchess 'Dear lady' without being kicked out. Yours is to make two millions, and to have a medal struck in your honour as the endower of a national Yiddish theatre. It's all vanity, Joey. This morning a lark was singing outside my bedroom window"

"In Maida Vale!" said Scott contemptuously.

"Well, it was a tom-tit, or a sparrow, or something.