Otto took the bundle and loosened the roll again.  “I got a little girl, Beesving—­dot was her dog make such foolishness—­who likes dese t’ings.  But dot is not business, for I doan sell it again once I gif it to her.  I joost put it around her shoulders for a New Year’s gift.  Maybe if you—­” He re-examined it closely, especially the tear, which had partly yielded to Lady Barbara’s deft fingers and tired eyes.  “Vell, I tell you vot I do, I gif you tventy tollars.”

“That, I am afraid, will not answer my purpose,” said Dalton.  “Perhaps, however, you will loan me thirty dollars on it and hold the lace for a week or so, and I will pay you back thirty-five when some money that is due me comes in?”

Otto looked at him from under his bushy eyebrows.  “Ve don’t do dot kind of business.  If I buy—­I buy.  If I sell—­I sell.  Sometimes I pay more as a t’ing is vorth.  Sometimes I pay less.  I have a expert vid me who knows vat dis is vorth, but he is busy vid a customer on de next floor, and I doan sent for him.  If you vant de tventy tollars you can have it.  If you doan, den take avay de lace.  I got a lot of t’ings to do more as to talk about it.  Ven you see Blobbs, you tell him vat I say.”

Dalton’s mind worked rapidly.  To take the money would clean off his debt and leave him a margin which he might treble before midnight.

“Give me the money,” he said.  “It is not one-third of its value, but I see that it is all I can do.”

Otto smiled—­the smile of a man who had hit the thing at which he aimed—­felt in his inside pocket, drew out a great flat pocketbook, and counted out the bills.

Dalton swept them up as a winner at baccarat sweeps up his coin, apparently without counting them, stuffed the crumpled bank-notes into his pocket, and started for the door.

Half-way down the long shop he halted opposite a sideboard laden with old silver and glass and, to show that he was not in a hurry, paused for an instant, picking up a cut-glass decanter with a silver top, remarking casually, as he laid it back, “Like one I have at home,” continuing his inspection by holding aloft a pipe-stem glass, to see the color the better.

As he resumed his walk to the door, Felix, with Masie and a customer ahead of him, was just descending the rear stairs from the “banquet hall” above.  He thus had a full view of the store below.  Something in the way with which the bubble-blown glass was handled attracted O’Day’s attention.  He had seen a wrist with a movement like that, the poised glass firmly held in an outstretched hand.  Where, he could not tell; at his own table, perhaps, or possibly at a club dinner.  He remembered the quick, upward toss, the slender receptacle held high.  He leaned far forward, and watched the nervous step and halting gait.  Had Masie and the customer not been ahead of him, he would have hurried past them and called to the man to stop—­not an unusual thing with him when his suspicions were aroused.  Instead, he waited until he was well down the stairs, then strolled carelessly toward the door, intending to make some excuse to accost the man on the sidewalk.  Not that he had any definite conviction regarding his likeness to the man he wanted; more to satisfy his conscience that he had permitted no clew to slip past him.