Kling dropped his glasses from his forehead to the bridge of his flat nose.  “Vell!  Dot is a funny-looking book, Tim.  Dot is awful old, you know.”

“Yes, seventeenth century, I think,” replied Tim.

“Vot you tink, Mr. O’Day?  Ain’t dot a k’veer book?  Oh, you don’t have met my new clerk, have you, Tim?  Vell dot’s funny, for he lives over at Kitty’s.  Vell, dis is him—­Mr. Felix O’Day.  Tim Kelsey is an olt friend of mine, Mr. O’Day.  You must have seen dot k’veer shop vich falls down into de cellar from de sidevalk—­ vell, dat’s Tim’s.”

Felix smiled good-naturedly, bowed to Kelsey, and taking the huge, brass-bound volume in his hands, passed his fingers gently across the leather and then over the heavy clamps, turning the book to the light of the window so as to examine the chasing the closer.  Tim, who had been watching him, remarked the ease with which he handled the volume and the care with which he ran his eye along the edges of the inside of the back before. paying the slightest attention to the quality of the vellum or to the title-page.

“Did you say you thought it was seventeenth century, Mr. Kelsey?” Felix asked thoughtfully.

“Yes, I should say so.”

“I would put it somewhat earlier.  The binding is wholly tool-work, much older than the brasses, which, I think, have been renewed—­at least the clamps—­ certainly one of them is of a later period.  The vellum and the illuminated text”—­again he scrutinized the title-page, this time turning a few of the inside leaves—­ “is before Gutenberg’s time.  Handwork, of course, by some old monk.  Very curious and very interesting.  And you say there are two others like this one?”

The hunchback, whose big, shaggy head reached but a very little above the case over which the colloquy was taking place, stretched himself upon his toes as if to see Felix the better.  “You seem to know something of books, sir,” he remarked in a surprised tone.  “May I ask where you picked it up?”

Again Felix smiled, a curious expression lurking around his thin lips—­a way with him when he intended to be non-committal.  He was now more interested in the speaker than in the object before him, especially in the big dome head and sunken eyes, shaded by bushy eyebrows, the only feature of the man which seemed to have had a chance to grow to its normal size.  He had caught, too, a certain high-pitched note, one of suffering running through the hunchback’s speech—­often discernible in those who have been robbed of their full physical strength and completeness.

“Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Kelsey.  There are, as you know, but few old clamp books like this in existence.  There are some in the Bibliotheque in Paris, and a good many in Spain.  I remember handling one some years ago in Cordova.  When you have seen a fine example you are not apt to forget it.  Why do you sell it?”

Kelsey settled down upon his heels—­the upper half of his misshapen body telescoping the lower—­and shoved both hands into his pockets.  “I did not come here to sell it”—­there was a touch of irony in his voice—­ “I came to find out whether Kling could sell it.  Do you think you could?”