Da Costa looked thunders, and was about to speak, but Grobstock's eye sought his in frantic appeal. "Wait a minute; I will settle with you," he cried, congratulating himself on a phrase that would carry another meaning to Wilkinson's ears. He drew a breath of relief when the flunkey disappeared, and left them standing in the spacious hall with its statues and plants. "Is this the way you steal my salmon, after all?" demanded da Costa hotly. "Hush, hush! I didn't mean to steal it! I will pay you for it!" "I refuse to sell! You coveted it from the first--you have broken the Tenth Commandment, even as these stone figures violate the Second. Your invitation to me to accompany you here at once was a mere trick. Now I understand why you were so eager." "No, no, da Costa. Seeing that you placed the fish in my hands, I had no option but to give it to Wilkinson, because--because--" Grobstock would have had some difficulty in explaining, but Manasseh saved him the pain. "You had to give _my_ fish to Wilkinson!" he interrupted. "Sir, I thought you were a fine man, a man of honour. I admit that I placed my fish in your hands. But because I had no hesitation in allowing you to carry it, this is how you repay my confidence!" In the whirl of his thoughts Grobstock grasped at the word "repay" as a swimmer in a whirlpool grasps at a straw. "I will repay your money!" he cried. "Here are your two guineas. You will get another salmon, and more cheaply. As you pointed out, you could have got this for twenty-five shillings." "Two guineas!" ejaculated Manasseh contemptuously. "Why you offered Jonathan, the fishmonger, three!" Grobstock was astounded, but it was beneath him to bargain. And he remembered that, after all, he _would_ enjoy the salmon. "Well, here are three guineas," he said pacifically, offering them. "Three guineas!" echoed Manasseh, spurning them. "And what of my profit?" "Profit!" gasped Grobstock. "Since you have made me a middle-man, since you have forced me into the fish trade, I must have my profits like anybody else." "Here is a crown extra!" "And my compensation?" "What do you mean?" enquired Grobstock, exasperated. "Compensation for what?" "For what? For two things at the very least," Manasseh said unswervingly. "In the first place," and as he began his logically divided reply his tone assumed the sing-song sacred to Talmudical dialectics, "compensation for not eating the salmon myself. For it is not as if I offered it you--I merely entrusted it to you, and it is ordained in Exodus that if a man shall deliver unto his neighbour an ass, or an ox, or a sheep, or any beast to keep, then for every matter of trespass, whether it be for ox, for ass, for sheep, for raiment, or for any manner of lost thing, the man shall receive double, and therefore you should pay me six guineas. And secondly--" "Not another farthing!" spluttered Grobstock, red as a turkey-cock.