yellow hand slid out and in some distant part of the house the discreet tintinnabulation of a warning bell gave its understood message.
Inside the shop the visitor—no one could ever have mistaken him for a customer, unless, perhaps, qualified by ‘rum’—looked curiously about with the sharp and yet furtive reconnaissance of the habitual pilferer. But even so, he failed at the outset to discover the quiescent figure of Won Chou and he was experiencing a slight mental struggle between deciding whether it would be more profitable to wait until someone came or to pick up the most convenient object and bolt, when the impassive attendant settled the difficulty by detaching himself from the screening background and noiselessly coming forward. So quietly and unexpected indeed that Mr Chilly Fank, whose nerves had never been his strongest asset (the playful appellation ‘Chilly’ had reference to his condition when any risk appeared), experienced a momentary shock which he endeavoured to cover by the usual expedient of a weakly aggressive swagger.
‘’Ullo, Chink!’ he exclaimed with an offensive heartiness, ‘blimey if I didn’t take you for a ruddy waxwork. You didn’t oughter scare a bloke like that, making out as you wasn’t real. Boss in?’
‘Yes no,’ replied Won Chou with extreme simplicity and a perfect assurance in the adequacy of his answer.
‘Yes—no? Whacha mean?’ demanded Mr Fank, to whom suspicion of affront was an instinct. ‘Which, you graven image?’
‘All depend,’ explained Won Chou with unmoved composure. ‘You got come bottom side chop pidgin? You blong same pidgin?’
‘Coo blimey! This isn’t a bloomin’ restrong, is it, funny? I want none of yer chop nor yer pigeon either. Is old Joolby abart? If yer can’t speak decent English nod yer blinkin’ ’ed, one wei or the other. Get me, you little Chinese puzzle?’
‘My no sawy. Makee go look-see,’ decided Won, and he melted out of the shop by the door leading to the domestic quarters.
Left to himself Mr Chilly Fank nodded his head sagely several times to convey his virtuous disgust at this pitiable exhibition.
‘Tchk! tchk!’ he murmured half aloud. ‘Exploitation of cheap Asiatic labour! No wonder we have a surplus industrial population and the nachural result that blokes like me—’ but at this point the house door opened again, Won Chou having returned with unforeseen expedition, so that Mr Fank had to turn away rather hastily from the locked show-case which he had been investigating with a critical touch and affect an absorbing interest in something taking place in the street beyond until he suddenly became aware of the other’s presence.
‘Back again, What-ho? Well, you saffron jeopardy, don’t stand like a blinkin’ Eros. Wag yer ruddy tongue abart it.’
‘My been see,’ conceded Won Chou impartially. ‘Him belongy say: him you go come.’
‘My strikes! if this isn’t the nattiest little vade-mecum that ever was!’ apostrophised Mr Fank to the ceiling bitterly. ‘Look here, Confucius, forget yer chops an yer’ pigeon and spit it aht straightforward. The boss—Joolby—is he in or not and did he say me go or him come? Blarst yer, which—er—savvy?’
At this, however, it being apparently rather a subtler idiom than the hearer’s limited grasp of an alien vernacular could cope with, Won Chou merely relapsed into an attitude of studious melancholy, extremely trying to Mr Fank’s conception of the yellow man’s status. He was on the point of commenting on Won Chou’s shortcomings with his customary delicacy of feeling when the sound of hobbling sticks approaching settled the point without any further trouble.
As Mr Joolby was—ethnologically at all events—white, a person of obvious means, and in various subterranean ways reputedly powerful, Mr Fank at once assumed what he considered to be a more suitable manner and it was with an ingratiating deference that he turned to meet the dealer.
‘’Evening, governor,’ he remarked briskly, at the same time beginning to disclose the contents of an irregular newspaper parcel—fish and chips, it could have been safely assumed if he had been seen carrying it—that he had brought with him. ‘Remember me, of course, don’t you?’
‘Never seen you before,’ replied Mr Joolby, with an equally definite lack of cordiality. ‘What is it you want with me?’
To the ordinary business caller this reception might have been unpromising but Mr Fank was not in a position to be put off by it. He understood it indeed as part of the customary routine.
‘Fank—“Chilly” Fank,’ he prompted. ‘Now you get me surely?’
‘Never heard the name in my life,’ declared Joolby with no increase of friendliness.
‘Oh, right you are, governor, if you say so,’ accepted Fank, but with the spitefulness of the stinging insect he could not refrain from adding: ‘I don’t suppose I should have been able to imagine you if I hadn’t seen it. Doing anything in this way now?’
‘This,’ freed of its unsavoury covering, was revealed as an uncommonly fine piece of Dresden china. It would have required no particular connoisseurship to recognise that so perfect and delicate a thing might be of almost any value. Joolby, who combined the inspired flair of the natural expert with sundry other anomalous qualities in his distorted composition, did not need to give more than one glance—although that look was professionally frigid.
‘Where did it come from?’ he asked merely.
‘Been in our family for centuries, governor,’ replied Fank glibly, at the same time working in a foxy wink of mutual appreciation; ‘the elder branch of the Fanks, you understand, the Li-ces-ter-shire de Fankses. Oh, all right, sir, if you feel that way’—for Mr Joolby had abruptly dissolved this proposed partnership in humour by pushing the figure aside and putting a hand to his crutches—‘it’s from a house in Grosvenor Crescent.’
‘Tuesday night’s job?’
‘Yes,’ was the reluctant admission.
‘No good to me,’ said the dealer with sharp decision.
‘It’s the real thing, governor,’ pleaded Mr Fank with fawning persuasiveness, ‘or I wouldn’t ask you to make an offer. The late owner thought very highly of it. Had a cabinet all to itself in the drorin’-room there—so I’m told, for of course I had nothing to do with the job personally. Now—’
‘You needn’t tell me whether it’s the real thing or not,’ said Mr Joolby. ‘That’s my look out.’
‘Well then, why not back yer knowledge, sir? It’s bound to pay yer in the end. Say a … well, what, about a couple of … It’s with you, governor.’
‘It’s no good, I tell you,’ reiterated Mr Joolby with seeming indifference. ‘It’s mucher too valuable to be worth anything—unless it can be shown on the counter. Piece like this is known to every big dealer and every likely collector in the land. Offer it to any Tom, Dick or Harry and in ten minutes I might have Scotland Yard nosing about my place like ferrets.’
‘And that would never do, would it, Mr Joolby?’ leered Fank pointedly. ‘Gawd knows what they wouldn’t find here.’
‘They would find nothings wrong because I don’t buy stuff like this that the first numskull brings me. What do you expect me to do with it, fellow? I can’t melt it, or reset it, or cut it up, can I? You might as well
