“We shall see, Mr. Auber, we shall see,” said Pons.
“I will pay a reasonable sum, sir, for its recovery-a reasonable sum.”
Pons seized hold of the knocker and rapped it sharply against the door. Almost at once our client’s voice rose.
“Pip! Pip! The door! The gentlemen are here.”
We could hear Pip Scratch coming down the hall, and then the door was thrown open. The only concession Pip had made to the occasion was a bracket of seven candles instead of three.
“A Merry Christmas to you, Pip,” said Pons.
“Thank you, sir. And to you, gentlemen,” said Pip in a scarcely audible whisper, as if he feared his master might hear him say it.
“Come in! Come in! Let us have done with it,” called our client from the study.
The table was laid in the study, and the wine glasses were filled to the brim. Snawley stood at its head, frock-coated, and wearing a broad black tie with a pin in it at the neck, though he was as grizzled as ever, and his eyes seemed to be even more narrowed as he looked past Pons toward Auber with no attempt to conceal his distaste.
“Mr. Snawley,” said Pons with a wave of his hand toward Auber, “let me introduce our lusty-voiced friend.”
“A voice not meant for singing,” put in our client.
“Mr. Auber,” finished Pons.
Snawley started back as if he had been struck. “Micah Auber?” he cried.
“The same,” said Auber, bowing, his bald head gleaming in the candlelight, and all in the same movement producing a monocle on a thing black cord, which he raised to one eye and looked through at our client, who was still so thunderstruck that he was incapable of speech. “Ye do me the honor to ask me to dine.”
All Snawley could think to say in this contretemps was, “To save five hundred pounds!”
“As good a reason as any,” said Auber urbanely.
At this juncture Pip Scratch made his appearance, bearing a large platter on which rested the goose Pons had had sent over that morning, all steaming and brown and done to a turn. He lowered it to the table and set about at once to carve it, while our host, recovering himself, though with as sour an expression as he could put upon his face, waved us to our seats.
Pons seized his glass of Amontillado and raised it aloft. “Let us drink to the success of your various enterprises!”
“Done,” said Auber.
“And to a Merry Christmas!” continued Pons.
“Humbug!” cried Snawley.
“I would not say so, Mr. Snawley,” said Auber. “Christmas is a very useful occasion.”
“Useful?” echoed our client. “And for whom, pray?”
“Why, for us all,” answered Auber with spirit. “It is a season for forbearance, perseverance, and usefulness.”
“Humbug!” said Snawley again. “If I had my way, I should have every Christmas merrymaker boiled in his own pudding!”
“Ye need a bit more sherry, Mr. Snawley. Come, man, this dinner cannot have cost ye that much!”
So it went through that Christmas Eve dinner, with the two collectors exchanging hard words, and then less hard words, and then softer words, mellowed by the wine for which Pons kept calling. The goose was disposed of in large part, and the dressing, and the potatoes, the carrots, the fruit, the green salad-all in good time, and slowly-and finally came the plum pudding, brought flaming to the table; while the hours went by, eight o’clock struck, then nine-and it was ten before we sat there at coffee and brandy, and by this time both Snawley and Auber were mellow, and Pip Scratch, who had cleared the table of all but the coffee cups and liqueur glasses, had come in to sit down away a little from the table, but yet a party to what went on there.
And it was then that Auber, calculating that the time was right for it, turned to our client and said, “And now, if ye’ve no mind, I’d like a look at your collection of Dickens, Mr. Snawley.”
“I daresay you would,” said Snawley. “I have the largest such in the world.”
“It is you who says it.”
“I wait to hear you say it, too!”
Auber smiled and half closed his eyes. “If it is all that matters to ye, I will agree to it.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Snawley, and got a little unsteadily to his feet and went over to his shelves, followed like a shadow by the faithful Pip, and with Auber’s eyes on him as if he feared that Snawley and his collection might escape him after all.
Snawley unlocked his cabinet and handed Pip a book or two, and carried another himself. They brought them to the table, and Snawley took one after the other of them and laid them down lovingly. They were inscribed copies of David Copperfield, Edwin Drood, and The Pickwick Papers. After Auber had fittingly admired and exclaimed over them, our client went back for more, and returned this time with copies of The Monthly Magazine containing Sketches by Boz, with interlineations in Dickens’s hand.
Pip kept the fire going on the hearth, and between this task and dancing attendance upon his master, he was continually occupied, going back and forth, to and fro, with the firelight flickering on his bony face and hands, and the candle flames leaping up and dying away to fill the room with grotesque shadows, as the four of us bent over one treasure after another, and the clock crept around from ten to eleven, and moved upon midnight. A parade of books and papers moved from the cabinet to the table and back to the cabinet again-letters in Dickens’s hand, letters to Dickens from his publishers, old drawings by Cruikshank and ‘Phiz’ of Dickens’ characters-Oliver Twist, Fagin, Jonas Chuzzlewit, Mr. Bumble, Little Amy Dorrit, Uriah Heep, Caroline Jellyby, Seth Pecksniff, Sam Weller, Samuel Pickwick, and many another-so that it was late when at last Snawley came to his recently acquired treasure, and brought this too to the table.
“And this, Mr. Auber, is the crown jewel, you might say, of my collection,” he said.
He made to turn back the cover, but Auber suddenly put forth a hand and held the cover down. Snawley started back a little, but did not take his own hands from his prized manuscript.
“Let me tell ye what it is, Mr. Snawley,” said Auber. “It is a manuscript in Dickens’s hand-a part of that greater work known as Master Humphrey’s Clock, and specifically that portion of it which became The Old Curiosity Shop. But this portion of it was deleted from the book. It is a manuscript of fourteen and a half pages, with Dickens’s signature beneath the title on the first page.”
Snawley regarded him with wide, alarmed eyes. “How can you know this, Mr. Auber?”
“Because it was stolen from me two months ago.”
A cry of rage escaped Snawley. He pulled the precious manuscript away from Auber’s restraining hand.
“It is mine!” he cried. “I bought it!”
“For how much?”
“Two hundred pounds.”
“The precise sum I paid for it a year ago.”
“You shall not have it,” cried Snawley.
“I mean to have it,” said Auber, springing up.
Pons, too, came to his feet. “Pray, gentlemen, one moment. You will allow, I think, that I should have a few words in this matter. Permit me to have that manuscript for a few minutes, Mr. Snawley.”
“On condition it comes back to my hand, sir!”
“That is a condition easy for me to grant, but one the fulfilment of which you may not so readily demand.”
“This fellow speaks in riddles,” said Snawley testily, as he handed the manuscript to Pons.
Pons took it, opened the cover, and picked up the first page of the manuscript, that with the signature of Dickens on it. He handed it back to Snawley.
“Pray hold it up to the light and describe the watermark, Mr. Snawley.”
Our client held it before the candles. After studying it for a few moments he said hesitantly, “Why, I believe it is a rose on a stem, sir.”