Here--don't stand there with your eyes hanging out on your cheeks; look
on this--found it yesterday at Sighfor's. Isn't it a stunner? bottom
modern except the feet, but the top is Sixteenth Century. See the way
the tortoise-shell is worked in--lots of secret drawers, too, all
through it--going to keep my bills in one of 'em and lose the key. What
are you staring at, anyhow, Sam?"
"Well--but Jack--I don't see----"
"Of course you don't see! You think I robbed a bank or waylaid your
Moneybags. I did--took twelve hundred dollars out of his clothes in a
check on the spot--wrote it right there at that desk--for the Monet, and
sent it home to his Palazzo da Avenue. Then I took his dirty check,
indorsed it over to that one-eyed skinflint, got the balance in bills,
bought the cabinet for five hundred and eighty-two dollars cash--forgive
me, Samuel, but there was no other way--and here is just eighteen
dollars to the good"--and he pulled out some bank-notes--"or was before
I gave those two poor devils a dollar apiece for carrying up this
cabinet.
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