“And these are your valuables, I take it, Mr. Snawley,” said Pons.
“I own the finest collection of Dickens in London,” said our client. After another sip of wine, he added, “In all England.” And after two more sips, “If I may say so, I believe it to be the best in the world.” Then his smile faded abruptly, his face darkened, and he added, “There is another collector who claims to have a better-but it is a lie, sir, a dastardly lie, for he cannot substantiate his claim.”
“You have seen his collection?” asked Pons.
“Not I. Nor he mine.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, nor wish to. He wrote me three times in as little as ten days. I have one of his letters here.”
He pulled open a drawer in the table, reached in, and took out a sheet of plain paper with a few lines scrawled upon it. He handed it to Pons, and I leaned over to read it, too.
Mr. Ebenezer Snawley
Dear Sir,
I take my pen in hand for the third time to ask the liberty of viewing your collection of Dickens which, I am told, may be equal to my own. Pray set a date, and I will be happy to accommodate myself to it. I am sir, gratefully yours,
Micah Auber
“Dated two months ago, I see,” said Pons.
“I have not answered him. I doubt I would have done so had he sent a stamp and envelope for that purpose. In his case, stamps are too dear.”
He drank the last of his sherry, and at that moment Pip Scratch came in again, and stood there wordlessly pointing to the street.
“Aha!” cried our client “The fellow is back. A pox on him! Pip, remove the light for the nonce. There is too much of it-it reflects on the panes. We shall have as good a look at him as we can.”
Out went the light, leaving the study lit only by the flames on the hearth, which threw the glow away from the bay windows, toward which our client was now walking, Pons at his heels, and I behind.
“There he is!” cried Snawley. “The rascal! The scoundrel!”
We could hear him now, jingling his bells, and singing in a lusty voice which was not, indeed, very musical-quite the opposite. Singing was not what I would have called it; he was, rather, bawling lustily.
“Walnuts again!” cried our client in disgust. We could see the fellow now-a short man, stout, who, when he came under the streetlamp, revealed himself to be as much of an individualist as Snawley, for he wore buskins and short trousers, and a coat that reached scarcely to his waist, and his head was crowned with an absurd hat on which a considerable amount of snow had already collected. He carried a basket, presumably for his walnuts.
Past the light he went, bawling about his walnuts, and around the corner.
“Now, you will see, gentlemen, he goes only to the line of my property, and then back. So it is for my benefit that he is about this buffoonery.”
“Or his,” said Pons.
“How do you say that?” asked Snawley, bending toward Pons so that his slightly curved hawk-like nose almost touched my companion.
“In all seriousness,” said Pons. “It does not come from the sherry.”
“It cannot be to his benefit,” answered our client, “for I have not bought so much as a walnut. Nor shall I!”
Pons stood deep in thought, watching the streetsinger, fingering the lobe of his left ear, as was his custom when preoccupied. Now that all of us were silent, the voice came clear despite the muffling snow.
“He will keep that up for hours,” cried our host, his dark face ruddy in the glow of the fire. “Am I to have no peace? The police will do nothing. Nothing! Do we not pay their salaries? Of course, we do. Am I to tolerate this botheration and sit helplessly by while that fellow out there bawls his wares?”
“You saw how he was dressed?” inquired Pons.
“He is not in fashion,” replied Snawley, with a great deal of sniffing.
I suppressed my laughter, for the man in the street was no more out of the fashion than our client.
“I have seen enough of him for the time being,” said Pons.
Snawley immediately turned and called out. “Pip! Pip! Bring the lights!”
And Pip Scratch, as if he had been waiting in the wings, immediately came hurrying into the room with the candelabrum he had taken out at his employer’s command, set it down once more on the table, and departed.
“Mr. Snawley,” said Pons as we sat down again near the table, Pons half turned so that he could still look out on occasion through the bay windows toward the street-lamp, “I take it you are constantly adding to your collection?”
“Very cautiously, sir-ve-ry cautiously. I have so much now I scarcely know where to house it. There is very little-ve-ry little I do not have. Why, I doubt that I add two or three items a year.”
“What was your last acquisition, Mr. Snawley?”
Once again our client’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why do you ask that, Mr. Pons?”
“Because I wish to know.”
Snawley bent toward Pons and said in a voice that was unusually soft for him, almost as with affection, “It is the most precious of all the items in my collection. It is a manuscript in Dickens’s hand!”
“May I see it?”
Our client got up, pulled out of his pocket a keyring, and walked toward the locked cabinet I had previously noticed. He unlocked it and took from it a box that appeared to be of ebony, inlaid with ivory, and brought it back to the table. He unlocked this, in turn, and took from it the manuscript in a folder. He laid it before Pons almost with reverence, and stood back to watch Pons with the particular pride of possession that invariably animates the collector.
Pons turned back the cover.
The manuscript was yellowed, as with age, but the paper was obviously of good quality. Master Humphrey’s Clock was written at the top, and the signature of Charles Dickens meticulously below it, and below that, in the same script, began the text of the manuscript, which consisted of at least a dozen pages.
“Ah, it is a portion of The Old Curiosity Shop not used in the published versions of that book,” said Pons.
“You know it, sir!” cried our client with evident delight.
“Indeed, I do. And I recognize the script.”
“You do?” Snawley rubbed his hands together in his pleasure.
“Where did you acquire it?”
Snawley blinked at him. “It was offered to me by a gentleman who had fallen on evil days and needed the money-a trifle over a month and a half ago.”
“Indeed,” said Pons. “So you got it at a bargain?”
“I did, I did. The circumstances made it possible. He was desperate. He wanted five hundred pounds-a ridiculous figure.”
“I see. You beat him down?”
“Business is business, Mr. Pons. I bought it at two hundred pounds.”
Pons took one of the sheets and held it up against the candles.
“Take care, sir! Take care!” said our client nervously.
Pons lowered the sheet. “You have had it authenticated?”
“Authenticated? Sir, I am an authority on Dickens. Why should I pay some ‘expert’ a fee to disclose what I already know? This is Dickens’s handwriting. I have letters of Dickens by which to authenticate it. Not an i is dotted otherwise but as Dickens dotted his i’s, not a t is crossed otherwise. This is Dickens’s script, word for word, letter for letter.”
Offended, our client almost rudely picked up his treasure and restored it to box and cabinet. As he came back to his chair, he reminded Pons, “But you did not come here to see my collection. There is that fellow outside. How will you deal with him?”
“Ah, I propose to invite him to dinner,” answered Pons. “No later than tomorrow night-Christmas Eve. Or, rather, shall we put it that you will invite him here for dinner at that time?”