FREYBERGER was up betimes next morning, and having called at the Yard and found his chief not yet arrived, and no further news concerning the Gyde case, he betook himself to Old Compton Street, Soho.

In Old Compton Street you may buy a French newspaper or a German sausage. You can get anything in an Italian way, from a pound of macaroni to a knife in your back, if you know the right way to look for it. It is a street of many nations and its kerb is trodden by all sorts of celebrities, from the new tenor at the Italian opera in furs, to Enrico Malatesta in rags.

A dingy looking Hebrew boy was just taking down the shutters of Antonides’ dusty-looking shop, when Freyberger arrived a few minutes after nine.

The boy asked him to be seated, whilst he apprised his master of the presence of a customer.

“He ain’t down yet,” said the youth. “Never comes into the shop till half after eleven. I’m lockin’ the shop door on you whilst I go up, for Mr Antonides said no one was to be left alone in the shop, unless the door was locked on them, for fear they’d be carryin’ off sumefin.”

He locked the door, went upstairs and presently returned, saying that Mr Antonides would be down in a minute.

Freyberger sat looking about him at the various objects of art, the cracked china, the dingy pictures, the dented armour.

The old Greek did not make much money out of these things; his fortune was derived from the occasional great deal that his genius was able to bring off. The Hermes, dredged up from the sea by fishermen off Cape Matapan, and now in possession of Droch, the German manure-millionaire of Chicago, passed through the hands of Antonides and left three thousand pounds in his pocket. Half a dozen broken pieces of marble, bought from a fellow Greek for a few pounds, and restored, had resulted in an almost perfect bust of Clytie, worth—the value of the cheque it brought him is unknown.

He was the prince of restorers, whether in marble or canvas.

As Freyberger sat looking around him, he suddenly became aware of a new object in his purview, that was not an object of art.

Through the half-opened door leading from the shop to the house, a long, lean, claw-like hand was beckoning to him.

He arose and came towards it. It was the hand of Antonides, and Antonides himself was waiting for him in the passage beyond the door.

The passage was dark, and so were the stairs up which Antonides led him.

“It’s done,” said the old man, pausing in the middle of the stairs and speaking backwards over his shoulder at Freyberger. “I have completed it.”

“I’m glad to hear that, but don’t stop; this staircase of yours is not cheerful.”

Antonides went up two more steps and stopped again.

“I think you said fifteen guineas, Mr Freyberger?”

“Pounds.”

“Guineas.”

“Pounds.”

“Mr Freyberger!”

“Go on—I don’t mean go on talking, go on up the stairs. I’m not going to give you a penny more than the fifteen pounds.”

“Why, God bless my soul!” shouted the old fellow, falling into one of his simulated rages, “guineas were what I bargained for, guineas were in my head; they kept me alive all last night working for you, and now you say pounds.” Then, suddenly falling calm, “Never mind; wait till you see it and you won’t say ‘pounds.’”

He led the way across a dingy and dimly lit landing into a room that was simply packed with all sorts of lumber. Canvases, six deep, with their faces turned to the wall, a torso just restored, a lay figure, masks and moulds, a huge mass of plasticine on a board, strange-looking instruments, and, on a bench near the window, something over which a cloth was thrown.

“That’s it,” said Antonides, pointing to the object under the cloth. “I have covered it that the plaster of the joinings may not dry too quickly. You are on the Gyde case, Mr Freyberger?”

“How did you know that?”

“I’ll tell you soon, and I’ll tell you something more.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve lost fifteen shillings by making me that answer. You should have answered me, ‘What makes you think that?’ That would have been non-committal. You have as good as told me you are on the Gyde case; never give information away for nothing, Mr Freyberger, unless it is false.”

“Or useless.”

“True information is never useless—see, here, there’s my work.”

He took the covering from the object on the table and disclosed to view the bust of a man.

It was an extraordinarily fine piece of work, full of life and vigour. It represented a bearded man of about fifty.

Even a person who had never seen the original would say, on looking at it: “That must be a good portrait.”

It had individuality.

That is to say, it had, what nearly all modern sculpture lacks, Life.

In portraiture there is only one real medium—marble. Paint, photography, Berlin woolwork, all are pretty much on the same level when compared to marble, cut by the chisel of a master.

Whoever has seen the statue of Demosthenes, by Praxiteles, has heard Demosthenes speak; has seen him as he once stood in the Agora.

A man’s face is individuality, expressed by a million curves; in a portrait these curves are suggested; in a bust they are reproduced.

This bust, reconstructed and unveiled by Antonides, was a triumph of art.

“Ah!” said the old Greek, forgetting even gold for a moment and staring at the thing he had unveiled. “What Philistine smashed it? If he wanted to use his hammer why did he not wait for the next opening of the English Royal Academy? But if he had done that, of course, he would not have been a Philistine, but a lover of art.”

“It is a fine piece of work,” said Freyberger, “and you have done the restoration not badly.”

“Which reminds me of my fifteen shillings,” replied the other.

“How?”

“This way. Detective Freyberger brings me a bust to reconstruct. Now, detective officers, however clever, do not as a rule call upon me with busts to be reconstructed without a motive. Do you know whom that piece of marble represents?”

“No.”

Antonides rubbed his hands together. “Would you give me fifteen shillings to learn?”

“I would.”

“Well, I already know that you are on the Gyde case, which is in all the papers.”

“Who told you?”

“That bust, and you confirmed my knowledge by admitting the fact.”

“It may be a speaking likeness of some one, but I doubt if it is so full of speech as that.”

“Oh, yes, it is; now do you know whom it represents?”

“I tell you again, No.”

“It is a bust of Sir Anthony Gyde.”

“Hum,” said Freyberger, concealing the satisfaction that this confirmation of his already formed suspicion gave him. “And how do you know that?”

“Good Lord,” said Antonides. “How do I know that? Why, he has been in my shop twenty times, if once.”

“Here’s your fifteen shillings,” said the detective.

“And how about my fifteen pounds?”

“Here they are.”

“Thanks, and remember the words of an old man. If you had kept your mouth shut, it might have saved you fifteen shillings, if I hadn’t known for a certainty that you were on the Gyde case. Then I would have said, ‘Oh, he knows whom the thing represents,’ and I would have talked about it and given information for nothing. You wish to take the thing away?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you can’t till this evening, for the joinings will not be firmly set till then. I will send it for you to the Yard. It will be quite safe here.”

“Very well. But don’t send it; one of our men will call for it. Yes, you have made a very good job of it and I congratulate you. I know something about art.”

“You?” said Antonides, contemptuously, pocketing the notes. “And what branch of art do you know something about?”

“Cookery. I am going over to the Itala to have some breakfast; come with me.”

“You pay?”

“Yes.”

Antonides grinned, wriggled out of the gabardine he wore, got into an old frock coat that was hanging from a nail on the wall, put on an old top-hat, led the way downstairs, set the Jew boy to clean some bronzes, locked him into the shop, and, pocketing the key, followed Freyberger across the way to the restaurant.

During breakfast he talked and Freyberger listened. He talked of the bargains he had made, of the sales he had attended, of the men he had seen swindled, omitting, by some lapse of memory, the men he had swindled. He talked of modern and ancient art. “Sculptors,” he said; “the race has vanished. Except the unknown man who chiselled that bust I have just repaired, I know of no living sculptor.”

“You knew Sir Anthony Gyde well?” asked Freyberger.

“I knew him for years,” replied the art dealer, through whose brains the fumes of the chianti he had drunk were pleasantly straying; “for years; and mark you this, Mr Freyberger, I don’t believe that man could have committed a murder, unless he went mad.”

“Why not?”

“He had not the eyes of a murderer, the cheek bones of a murderer, or the thumbs of a murderer.”

“Oh, you are evidently a dilettante in murder.”

“No, I am not, but I am a man of the world, and I have seen much of people. Sir Anthony Gyde—God help me! I sold him a Corot once that was—well, no matter. What was I saying? Oh yes! murderers, as a rule, are men with blue eyes, pale blue eyes. A murderer ought to have broad, flat cheekbones, it’s a desperate bad sign in a man; Gyde had neither of these points, nor the thumbs. Tropmann had enormous thumbs, but it is not so much the size of the thumb as the character of it. I can’t describe a brutal thumb no more than I can describe a beautiful face, but I know it when I see it. A glass of Benedictine, please. Murderers come into my shop, I won’t say every day, but often. My dear friend, the world is full of them. You will ask, if that is so why are so comparatively few murders committed? For this reason, very few people have the motive for slaying a fellow m............