Gordon Young

“ I said I would not consider less than thirty thousand dollars. He protested. I told him the price was now forty thousand dollars. He gasped. I assured him that the value of the box had gone up to fifty thousand. He almost shouted that I must be crazy. For the insult I added another ten thousand dollars. I always did think that I had the making of a financier in me. He offered forty thousand dollars but my price had jumped to seventy thousand dollars, and I was courteous enough to assure him—that every attempt to bicker or beat down my price would make it rise again. ”

“ He was a person of no importance, probably a cross between a lawyer and a private detective, and had been sent by Joseph Cornwall to buy the little black box. He acted as if he were being vastly generous in offering ten thousand dollars for the box. ”

“ He probably did not search them out as many city men do over the breakfast coffee, young brokers and clerks hoping to find themselves somehow identified as the man the “lady in blue with the Merry Widow hat wishes to meet again,” or some such romantic nonsense. ”