cret. What the secret was he
swore he did not know, but this much he knew all along, that the
weight of the coat was absolutely nothing; and he had discovered by
testing it with acids that the brown stuff of which the coat was made
was neither cloth nor silk nor any known material, and would neither
burn nor tear. He believed it to be some undiscovered element. And
the properties of the coat which he was convinced were marvellous he
felt sure of discovering within another week by means of experiments
with his chemicals. Again he offered thirty thousand pounds, to be
paid within two or three days if all went well. And then they started
haggling together as business men will.

And all the morning went by over the gardens of the Tuileries and the
afternoons came on, and only by two o'clock they arrived at an
understanding, on a basis, as they called it, of thirty thousand
guineas. And the old tail coat was brought out and spread on the
table, and they examined it together and chatted about its properties,
all the more friendly for their strenuous argument. And Santiago was
rising up to go, and Peters pleasantly holding out his hand, when a
step was heard on the stair. It echoed up to the room, the door
opened. And an elderly labouring man came stumping in. He walked
with difficulty, almost like a bather who has been swimming and
floating all morning and misses the buoyancy of the water when he has
come to land. He stumped up to the table without speaking and there at
once caught sight of the old brown coat.

"Why," he said, "that be my old coat."

And without another word he put it on. In the fierce glare of his
eyes as he fitted on that coat, carefully fastening the buttons,
buttoning up the flap of a pocket here, unbuttoning one there, neither
Peters nor Santiago found a word to say. They sat there wondering how
they had dared to bid for that brown tail coat, how they had dared to
buy it, even to touch it, they sat there silent without a single
excuse. And with no word more the old labourer stumped across the
room, opened wide the double window that looked on the Tuileries
gardens and, flashing back over his shoulder one look that was full of
scorn, stumped away up through the air at an angle of forty degrees.

Peters and Santiago saw him bear to his left from the window; passing
diagonally over the Rue de Rivoli and over a corner of the Tuileries
gardens; they saw him clear the Louvre, and thence they du