Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/183

174 yesterday with young Walls to pay for them, we both carried loaded revolvers. We had much better have carried wax candles. An hour late, Clay reeled in blindly and offensively drunk. What with that, and with having only just time to catch the last up train, I simply cut the seals, opened the box—practically in the dark—and saw that they were intact."

"I still fail to understand your exact system of estimating the value of an important purchase," remarked Mr. Scott inflexibly.

"Go on; I don't blame you," said the unhappy man bitterly. "I shan't understand it myself in a month's time. But I do just now. It was the arcadian simplicity of the scene, the peaceful cottage interior, the fading light, the confiding rustic damsel, the toil-stained young labourer's return. If there had been a jarring note, a breath of suspicion—crash! But there wasn't."

"Who are they?"

Mr. Lester shook his head in miserable ignorance.

"I've been round to see Mercer's," he said. "The genuine coins were bought there a few weeks ago by a fashionably-dressed lady and gentleman. Mr. Mercer distinctly remembers the lady unconcernedly wrapping up the purchase in a sheet of his office notepaper, and putting it in one of his envelopes, as they sat in his private room. It's been a plant throughout, of course—the whole thing mapped out and worked beautifully to scale. I expect that she's an actress in real life, and he's probably someone whom you've let in over something at one time or another. Scott! in many things we are still as children groaning in this land of Egypt!"

"At all events," said Scott, rising, "if we have luck and the police are not more than normally obtuse, we may have the satisfaction of seeing someone go into the house of bondage over this."