“Here I am once more.”  He spoke with forced gaiety.

“What you want to buy now?”

“I don’t want to buy anything; I want to sell something.”

The pawnbroker’s interest in the visitor at once departed.

“I have everythings!  Everythings!” he grumbled.  “Nearly every one wants to sell.  I have no room for noddings more.  Good night!”

“But I’ve something special,” said Mr. Heatherbloom.  As he spoke he took from an inner pocket a little parcel in pink tissue-paper; he fingered it a moment, removing an ivory miniature from a frame, passed the paper quickly about the picture once more, and returned it to his pocket.  Then he handed the frame, over the case, to the pawnbroker.  “What do you think of that, my Christian friend?” he said with a show of jocularity that didn’t ring quite true.

The pawnbroker bent his dull face close to the article; it was gold.  A pretty trinket, set with a number of brilliants, it might have come from the Rue Royale or the Rue de la Paix.

“Cost about five hundred francs,” observed Mr. Heatherbloom, watching the other closely.  “One hundred dollars, without the duty.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“None of your business.”  With a smile.

The man moved toward a telephone at his back.  “Do you know what I’m going to do?”

“I am curious.”

“’Phone the police.”

“Is that an invitation for me to depart?  If so—­” Mr. Heatherbloom reached for the little gold frame.

“Oh, no,” said the man, retaining the graceful article.  “The police will find out who this belongs to.”

“Tut! tut!” observed Mr. Heatherbloom lightly.  Something on the edge of the showcase pointed over it; the hand the proprietor professed to raise toward the telephone fell to his side; he seemed about to call out.  “Don’t!” said the visitor.  “It’s loaded; you saw me put in the cartridges yourself.  Your little game is very passe; I had it worked on me once before, and placed you in your class—­a fourth-rater, with a crib for loot!”

The other considered; this customer’s manner was ominously quiet and easy; he didn’t like it.  A telepathic message that flashed from the gleaming gaze above the shining tube suggested an utterly frivolous indifference to tragic consequences.  The proprietor moved away from the telephone.

“Fifteen dollars,” he said.

“Twenty,” breathed Mr. Heatherbloom insinuatingly.

The man put his hand in his pocket and counted out the money.  The caller took it, said something in those same blithe significant accents about what would happen if the other made a move in the next two or three minutes, then vanished from the store.  He did not keep to the busy thoroughfare now, but shot into a side street.  Would the pawnbroker hide the frame and then call the police?  It was quite possible he might thus seek to get into their good graces and revenge himself at the same time.  Mr. Heatherbloom turned from dark byway to dark byway.  He knew there was a possibility that he might keep going throughout the night without being taken; but what would he attain by so doing, how would that profit him?