As he led me into the elevator by the arm he whispered “All right, Old Man, but why?  You know just as much as I about it.”

There was no chance to reply until he had selected his table and ordered two Scotches and soda.  “Yes, I know something about it,” I said at last; “everyone does apparently except Morrison.  I know that Sarafoff made the Coronal, but I don’t know who taught him how to make it, nor yet how Morrison was idiot enough to buy it, when anybody could have told him what it was, nor yet how Brush came to let it be sold.  These are the interesting parts of the story, and I’ll drink no drink of yours unless you tell.”

At the mention of idiocy in connection with Morrison Vogelstein shuddered and raised a massive deprecating hand.  The gesture was arrested by the entrance of Brush, who with a slight nod to us passed to a distant corner.  Suddenly Vogelstein’s expression had become one beaming, condescending paternalism.  “Good man but impracticable,” he muttered.  “Thinks knowing it is everything.  Knowing it is something, but selling it is the real thing.  Now I hardly know at all, not a tenth as much as Brush, not a half as much as you even, but so long as I can sell, I don’t really care to know.  What’s the use?”

“But you did know about the Balaklava Coronal and you sold it too,” I interrupted.  “How did you dare?”

“That’s my secret—­but here are our drinks.  A bargain’s a bargain.  How funny it is to be talking truth.  Why, much of it would make even your job difficult.”

“And yours impossible, but we’re not getting to the Coronal,” I insisted.

“As for that,” responded Vogelstein obligingly, “the first thing was of course the making.  You know all about Sarafoff yourself.  Well, he only did the work.  It was Schoenfeld who put in the brains.  You don’t know him?  Few do.  Great man though.  University professor of archaeology, trouble with a woman, next trouble with money, now one of us.  Yes Schoenfeld thought it out and saw it through.”

“And certainly made a good job of it,” I admitted.

“As you see, we wanted something unique—­something that could not be compared with anything in the museums.”

“Precisely,” I interposed, “Product of the local, semi-barbaric school of the Crimea.”

“You’ve hit it,” grinned Vogelstein.  “Scythian influence, to take the professors.  Schoenfeld said we must have that.  And that’s why it had to be found at Balaklava.”

“But it had to look Scythian too.  How did you manage that?”

“Oh, that was Sarafoff’s business.  He had been a servant and then a novice at one of the monasteries of Mount Athos.  Could make beautiful tenth-century Byzantine madonnas.  I’ve sold some.  Then he carved ikons in wood, ivory, silver, or what came.  His things really looked Scythian enough to those who didn’t know their modern Greece and Russia.  So we set him to work in a back alley of Vienna at three kroners a day—­double pay for him—­and Schoenfeld ran down from Petersburg now and then to coach him.”