‘What’s the figure?’ said Smith curtly.

‘Figure?’

‘What are you going to give me for the job?’

‘Give you for doing the job?’ Sir Jee repeated, his secret and ineradicable meanness aroused.  ’Give you?  Why, I’m giving you the opportunity to honestly steal a picture that’s worth over a thousand pounds—­I dare say it would be worth two thousand pounds in America—­and you want to be paid into the bargain!  Do you know, my man, that people come all the way from Manchester, and even London, to see that portrait?’ He told Smith about the painting.

‘Then why are you in such a stew to be rid of it?’ queried the burglar.

‘That’s my affair,’ said Sir Jee.  ’I don’t like it.  Lady Dain doesn’t like it.  But it’s a presentation portrait, and so I can’t—­ you see, Mr Smith?’

‘And how am I going to dispose of it when I’ve got it?’ Smith demanded.  ’You can’t melt a portrait down as if it was silver.  By what you say, governor, it’s known all over the blessed world.  Seems to me I might just as well try to sell the Nelson Column.’

‘Oh, nonsense!’ said Sir Jee.  ’Nonsense.  You’ll sell it in America quite easily.  It’ll be a fortune to you.  Keep it for a year first, and then send it to New York.’

William Smith shook his head and drummed his fingers on the table; and then quite suddenly he brightened and said—­

‘All right, governor.  I’ll take it on, just to oblige you.’

‘When can you do it?’ asked Sir Jee, hardly concealing his joy.  ‘Tonight?’

‘No,’ said Smith, mysteriously.  ‘I’m engaged tonight.’

‘Well, tomorrow night?’

‘Nor tomorrow.  I’m engaged tomorrow too.’

‘You seem to be very much engaged, my man,’ Sir Jee observed.

‘What do you expect?’ Smith retorted.  ’Business is business.  I could do it the night after tomorrow.’

‘But that’s Christmas Eve,’ Sir Jee protested.

‘What if it is Christmas Eve?’ said Smith coldly.  ’Would you prefer Christmas Day?  I’m engaged on Boxing Day and the day after.’

‘Not in the Five Towns, I trust?’ Sir Jee remarked.

‘No,’ said Smith shortly.  ‘The Five Towns is about sucked dry.’

The affair was arranged for Christmas Eve.

‘Now,’ Sir Jee suggested, ’shall I draw you a plan of the castle, so that you can—­’

William Smith’s face expressed terrific scorn.  ‘Do you suppose,’ he said, ‘as I haven’t had plans o’ your castle ever since it was built?  What do you take me for?  I’m not a blooming excursionist, I’m not.  I’m a business man—­that’s what I am.’

Sir Jee was snubbed, and he agreed submissively to all William Smith’s arrangements for the innocent burglary.  He perceived that in William Smith he had stumbled on a professional of the highest class, and this good fortune pleased him.

‘There’s only one thing that riles me,’ said Smith, in parting, ’and that is that you’ll go and say that after you’d done everything you could for me I went and burgled your castle.  And you’ll talk about the ingratitude of the lower classes.  I know you, governor!’