inst the man. Up
and up went the price till the old coat was knocked down to him for
twenty pounds. As he went away with the coat he saw the other bidder
looking at him with an expression of fury.

That's as far as the story goes. But how, Mr. Ainslie asked me, did
the matter develop, and why that furious look? I at once made
enquiries at a reliable source and have ascertained that the man's
name was Peters, who thus oddly purchased a coat, and that he took it
to the Rue de Rivoli, to a hotel where he lodged, from the little low,
dark auction room by the Seine in which he concluded the bargain.
There he examined it, off and on, all day and much of the next
morning, a light brown overcoat with tails, without discovering any
excuse, far less a reason, for having spent twenty pounds on so worn a
thing. And late next morning to his sitting room looking out on the
Gardens of the Tuileries the man with the furious look was ushered in.

Grim he stood, silent and angry, till the guiding waiter went. Not
till then did he speak, and his words came clear and brief, welling up
from deep emotions.

"How did you dare to bid against me?"

His name was Santiago. And for many moments Peters found no excuse to
offer, no apology, nothing in extenuation. Lamely at last, weakly,
knowing his argument to be of no avail, he muttered something to the
intent that Mr. Santiago could have outbid him.

"No," said the stranger. "We don't want all the town in this. This
is a matter between you and me." He paused, then added in his fierce,
curt way: "A thousand pounds, no more."

Almost dumbly Peters accepted the offer and, pocketing the thousand
pounds that was paid him, and apologizing for the inconvenience he had
unwittingly caused, tried to show the stranger out. But Santiago
strode swiftly on before him, taking the coat, and was gone.

There followed between Peters and his second thoughts another long
afternoon of bitter reproaches. Why ever had he let go so
thoughtlessly of a garment that so easily fetched a thousand pounds?
And the more he brooded on this the more clearly did he perceive that
he had lost an unusual opportunity of a first class investment of a
speculative kind. He knew men perhaps better than he knew materials;
and, though he could not see in that old brown coat the value of so
much as a thousand pounds, he saw far more than that in the man's
eager need for it. An afternoon of brooding over lost opportuniti