pays right enough,' said he. 'But I don't put my money on my back,
governor, I put it into a bit of public-house property when I get the
chance.'

'It may pay,' said Sir Jee. 'But it is wrong. It is very anti-social.'

'Is it, indeed?' Smith returned dryly. 'Anti-social, is it? Well, I've
heard it called plenty o' things in my time, but never that. Now, I
should have called it quite sociablelike, sort of making free with
strangers, and so on. However,' he added, 'I come across a cove once as
told me crime was nothing but a disease and ought to be treated as
such. I asked him for a dozen o' port, but he never sent it.'

'Ever been caught before?' Sir Jee inquired.

'Not much!' Smith exclaimed. 'And this'll be a lesson to me, I can tell
you. Now, what are you getting at, governor? Because my time's money,
my time is.'

Sir Jee coughed once more.

'Sit down,' said Sir Jee.

And William Smith sat down opposite to him at the table, and put his
shiny elbows on the table precisely in the manner of Sir Jee's elbows.

'Well?' he cheerfully encouraged Sir Jee.

'How would you like to commit a burglary that was not a crime?' said
Sir Jee, his shifty eyes wandering around the room. 'A perfectly lawful
burglary?'

'What ARE you getting at?' William Smith was genuinely astonished.

'At my residence, Sneyd Castle,' Sir Jee proceeded, 'there's a large
portrait of myself in the dining-room that I want to have stolen. You
understand?'

'Stolen?'

'Yes. I want to get rid of it. And I want--er--people to think that it
has been stolen.'

'Well, why don't you stop up one night and steal it yourself, and then
burn it?' William Smith suggested.

'That would be deceitful,' said Sir Jee, gravely. 'I could not tell my
friends that the portrait had been stolen if it had not been stolen.
The burglary must be entirely genuine.'

'What's the figure?' said Smith curtly.

'Figure?'

'What are you going to give me for the job?'

'GIVE you for doing the job?' Sir Jee repeated, his secret and
ineradicable meanness aroused. 'GIVE you? Why, I'm giving you the
opportunity to honestly steal a picture that's worth over a thousand
pounds--I dare say it would be worth two thousand pounds in
America--and you want to be paid into the bargain! Do you know, my man,
that people come all the way from Manchester, and even London, to see
that portrait?' He told Smith about the painting.

'Then why are you in such a stew to be rid of it?' queri