“I am not English.  I was born near Boston.”

“Oh, you were, were you?  You blanked bone-headed, bean-eating boob!” cried Mr. Peters, frothing over quite unexpectedly and waving his arms in a sudden burst of fury.  “Then if you are an American why don’t you show a little more enterprise?  Why don’t you put something over?  Why do you loaf about the place as though you were supposed to be an ornament?  I want results—­and I want them quick!

“I’ll tell you how you can recognize my scarab when you get into the museum.  That shameless old green-goods man who sneaked it from me has had the gall, the nerve, to put it all by itself, with a notice as big as a circus poster alongside of it saying that it is a Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty, presented”—­Mr. Peters choked—­“presented by J. Preston Peters, Esquire!  That’s how you’re going to recognize it.”

Ashe did not laugh, but he nearly dislocated a rib in his effort to abstain from doing so.  It seemed to him that this act on Lord Emsworth’s part effectually disposed of the theory that Britons have no sense of humor.  To rob a man of his choicest possession and then thank him publicly for letting you have it appealed to Ashe as excellent comedy.

“The thing isn’t even in a glass case,” continued Mr. Peters.  “It’s lying on an open tray on top of a cabinet of Roman coins.  Anybody who was left alone for two minutes in the place could take it!  It’s criminal carelessness to leave a valuable scarab about like that.  If Lord Jesse James was going to steal my Cheops he might at least have had the decency to treat it as though it was worth something.”

“But it makes it easier for me to get it,” said Ashe consolingly.

“It’s got to be made easy if you are to get it!” snapped Mr. Peters.  “Here’s another thing:  You say you are going to try for it late at night.  Well, what are you going to do if anyone catches you prowling round at that time?  Have you considered that?”

“No.”

“You would have to say something, wouldn’t you?  You wouldn’t chat about the weather, would you?  You wouldn’t discuss the latest play?  You would have to think up some mighty good reason for being out of bed at that time, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Oh, you do admit that, do you?  Well, what you would say is this:  You would explain that I had rung for you to come and read me to sleep.  Do you understand?”

“You think that would be a satisfactory explanation of my being in the museum?”

“Idiot!  I don’t mean that you’re to say it if you’re caught actually in the museum.  If you’re caught in the museum the best thing you can do is to say nothing, and hope that the judge will let you off light because it’s your first offense.  You’re to say it if you’re found wandering about on your way there.”

“It sounds thin to me.”

“Does it?  Well, let me tell you that it isn’t so thin as you suppose, for it’s what you will actually have to do most nights.  Two nights out of three I have to be read to sleep.  My indigestion gives me insomnia.”  As though to push this fact home, Mr. Peters suddenly bent double.  “Oof!” he said.  “Wow!” He removed the cigar from his mouth and inserted a digestive tabloid.  “The lining of my stomach is all wrong,” he added.