It was a little square box of a room jammed with such a litter of
bric-a-brac as is to be picked up only on the boulevards--trifles in
Bohemian glass, a lizard stuffed with straw, carved fragments of jade
and ivory, a Sevres vase bearing the portrait of Du Barry, an Indian
chibook, a pink-cheeked Dresden shepherdess, a sabre of the time of
Napoleon, a leering Hindoo idol, a hideous dragon in Japanese bronze
grimacing furiously at a Barye lion--all of them huddled together
without order or arrangement, as they would have been in an auction room
or an antique shop. In one corner stood a low table of Italian mosaic,
bearing a somewhat battered statuette of Saint Genevieve plying her
distaff, and the walls were fairly covered with photographs--
photographs, for the most part, of women more anxious to display their
charms of person to an admiring world than to observe the rigour of
convention.
Rushford dropped into one of the two chairs, got out a cigar, lighted
it, and sat for some moments looking around at this wilderness of
gimcracks.
"Pelletan, you're a humbug," he said at last. "You came to me yesterday
and said your last franc was gone."
"Unt so it wass, monsieur."
"But this collection ought to be worth something."
"Monsieur means t'at it might pe sold?"
"Undoubtedly.
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