can sell, I don't
really care to know. What's the use?"

"But you did know about the Balaklava Coronal and you sold it too," I
interrupted. "How did you dare?"

"That's my secret--but here are our drinks. A bargain's a bargain. How
funny it is to be talking truth. Why, much of it would make even your job
difficult."

"And yours impossible, but we're not getting to the Coronal," I insisted.

"As for that," responded Vogelstein obligingly, "the first thing was of
course the making. You know all about Sarafoff yourself. Well, he only
did the work. It was Schoenfeld who put in the brains. You don't know him?
Few do. Great man though. University professor of archaeology, trouble
with a woman, next trouble with money, now one of us. Yes Schoenfeld
thought it out and saw it through."

"And certainly made a good job of it," I admitted.

"As you see, we wanted something unique--something that could not be
compared with anything in the museums."

"Precisely," I interposed, "Product of the local, semi-barbaric school of
the Crimea."

"You've hit it," grinned Vogelstein. "Scythian influence, to take the
professors. Schoenfeld said we must have that. And that's why it had to be
found at Balaklava."

"But it had to look Scythian too. How did you manage that?"

"Oh, that was Sarafoff's business. He had been a servant and then a
novice at one of the monasteries of Mount Athos. Could make beautiful
tenth-century Byzantine madonnas. I've sold some. Then he carved ikons
in wood, ivory, silver, or what came. His things really looked Scythian
enough to those who didn't know their modern Greece and Russia. So we
set him to work in a back alley of Vienna at three kroners a day--double
pay for him--and Schoenfeld ran down from Petersburg now and then to
coach him."

"You could trust him?" I inquired, recalling how Sarafoff had
subsequently won fame by confessing to his most famous forgery.

"As much as one can anybody. You see he doesn't speak any civilised
language, and at that time we couldn't tell that the Tiara would spoil
him as it did the entire deal."

"But Schoenfeld's coaching?" I suggested. Vogelstein here winked solemnly
and drank deeply from his tall glass. "First I want to tell you all about
Sarafoff," he persisted, "of course we had him watched all the same, and
whenever he got an evening off, which was seldom, we had him filled up
with schnapps. He was a quiet drunk which is an excellent thing, Sir." As
I nodde