"Well?" Rickman's face expressed an utter inability to perceive the connection. Once the iron shutters had closed on Rickman's he felt that he was no more a part of it. Words could not express his abhorrence of the indecent people who insisted on talking shop out of shop hours. And Dicky never had any decency. "Well--it's practically on our hands, d'ye see? And if your people care to take over the whole lot, I can let you have it pretty reasonably." Rickman's face emptied itself of all expression whatever. "I say, you are a cool young cuss. Is this the way you generally do business?" "I'll think it over." "Wouldn't think too long if I were you. It ought to go by auction, and it might; only private contract's preferred." "Why preferred?" "Out of respect for the feelin's of the family." Rickman's eyes were wandering dreamily from the matter in hand. They had alighted on an enormous photograph of Miss Poppy Grace. For an instant thought, like a cloud, obscured the brilliance of Mr. Pilkington's face. "Anyhow I've given you the straight tip," said Pilkington. "Thanks. We'll send a fellow down to overhaul the thing." "He'd better hurry up then. It _may_ have to go by auction after all. But if you'd like the refusal of it, now's your chance." But Rickman betrayed no enthusiasm. "You'd better see the guv'nor about it." Mr. Pilkington looked Rickman up and down, and encountered an immovable determination in his gaze. "Right you are. I'll send him word to-night. Ta-ta!" He turned again in the moment of departing. "I say, he must send a good man down, you know. It'll take an expert. There's a lot of old things--Greek and Latin--that's something in _your_ line, isn't it?" But Rickman's line at present was the line of least resistance. It was ten past ten, and Poppy Grace was "on" from ten fifteen to ten forty. CHAPTER IX She was only an ordinary little variety actress, and he knew her little programme pretty well by heart. But her fascinations were independent of the glamour of the foot-lights. It was off the stage that he had first come to know her, really know her, a thing that at the first blush of it seems impossible; for the great goddess Diana is not more divinely secret and secluded than (to a young bookseller) a popular Dance and Song Artiste in private life. Poppy's rooms were next door to the boarding-house balcony, and it was the balcony that did it.