the overcoats he examined carefully, holding them up to the light for holes or threadbare patches, feeling the linings, turning the sleeves inside out.
"Good English cloth," mentioned Boyde. "Hardly used at all."
"A dollar each," said the man, laying them down as though the deal was finished. He turned to make out the tickets. He had not looked at us once yet.
Boyde picked them up and turned to go. "Two dollars," he said flatly, "I can get five in 4th Avenue."
"Go ged it," was the reply, the man's back still turned on us.
Boyde gave a cheery laugh. "Make it three dollars for the two," he suggested in an off-hand manner, "with another couple for the cups. They're prizes. We wouldn't lose them for worlds."
The man looked at us for the first time; we were fairly well dressed, obviously English, three hulking customers of a type he was not used to. Perhaps he really believed we might redeem the cups one day. "Worth less than nozzing," he said in his Yiddish accent. The keen, appraising look he gave us made me feel even less than that.
"Worth a lot to us, though," came Boyde's quick comment.
"Name?" queried the man, bending over a table with his back turned again.
"John Doe," came promptly, and a moment later, with the ticket, the Jew handed out four dirty dollar bills and fifty cents in coin. The interest was twelve per cent. per month, and the articles could be redeemed any time up to the end of a year.
"Never ask more than you really need at the moment," was Boyde's advice as we came out into the street. "I could have raised him a few dollars probably, but, remember, you'll have to get the coats out again before long."
When we got back to the room a Western Union telegram lay on the table for him; it was from Davis:
"Please call to-morrow 3 o'clock without fail re Rock-
