ght face wore an expression which such faces wear on such
occasions--an expression cheerfully insinuating that after all there is
no right and no wrong--or at least that many things which the ordinary
slave of convention would consider to be wrong are really right. So
Priam read the expression.

"The dirty rascal wants me to manufacture imitations of myself for him!"
Priam thought, full of sudden, hidden anger. "He's known all along that
there's no difference between what I sold him and the picture he's
already had. He wants to suggest that we should come to terms. He's
simply been playing a game with me up to now." And he said aloud, "I
don't know that I _advise_ you to do anything. I'm not a dealer, Mr.
Oxford."

He said it in a hostile tone that ought to have silenced Mr. Oxford for
ever, but it did not. Mr. Oxford curved away, like a skater into a new
figure, and began to expatiate minutely upon the merits of the Volterra
picture. He analyzed it in so much detail, and lauded it with as much
justice, as though the picture was there before them. Priam was
astonished at the man's exactitude. "Scoundrel! He knows a thing or
two!" reflected Priam grimly.

"You don't think I overpraise it, do you, _cher maitre?_ Mr. Oxford
finished, still smiling.

"A little," said Priam.

If only Priam could have run away! But he couldn't! Mr. Oxford had him
well in a corner. No chance of freedom! Besides, he was over fifty and
stout.

"Ah! Now I was expecting you to say that! Do you mind telling me at what
period you painted it?" Mr. Oxford inquired, very blandly, though his
hands were clasped in a violent tension that forced the blood from the
region of the knuckle-joints.

This was the crisis which Mr. Oxford had been leading up to! All the
time Mr. Oxford's teethy smile had concealed a knowledge of Priam's
identity!

* * * * *

CHAPTER X

_The Secret_

"What do you mean?" asked Priam Farll. But he put the question weakly,
and he might just as well have said, "I know what you mean, and I would
pay a million pounds or so in order to sink through the floor." A few
minutes ago he would only have paid five hundred pounds or so in order
to run simply away. Now he wanted Maskelyne miracles to happen to him.
The universe seemed to be caving in about the ears of Priam Farll.

Mr. Oxford was still smiling; smiling, however, as a man holds his
breath for a wager. You felt that he could n