Johnston McCulley

“ Joe Carden told him. “I’m no more anxious to have the police overhear me than you are. Do you understand?”
“The police? I have nothing at all to do with the police,” old Razelus declared. “I think that you have made some sort of a mistake. I am an old antique dealer trying hard to make my living——”
“I can hear better comedy than that in a cheap vaudeville theater any day,” Joe Carden interrupted. “Suppose we get down to business.”
“But I do not understand——”
“Do you happen to know a tall man who squints his left eye all the time when he talks?” the crook comedian asked. ”

“ He was known to many wealthy collectors, some of them men who did not care how they obtained an object of art so long as they got it.
It was the shop of Razelus that the crook comedian was watching as he pretended to be loafing near the curb while enjoying his cigarette. Before the shop in the narrow street was a gorgeous limousine that took up almost half the width of the thoroughfare. Joe Carden knew that the car was the property of one Roger Belcher, a new millionaire regarding whose operations in the realm of business many nasty things were being said. ”

“ It is a famous vase, and every collector in the world knows it. The theft of it would get wide publicity. If I sold it to anybody and it was traced back to me——”
“You listen to me! I know a few things,” Joe Carden said. “I know, for instance, that Roger Belcher and Gordon Burlington are bitter enemies. Belcher hates Burlington because the latter has beaten him to a lot of art stuff and has made the remark that Belcher is ignorant and uncultured. And Burlington hates Belcher because he knows that Belcher is not a genuine art lover, but only a rich man trying to buy his way into select circles.” ”