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Martino was shown in, the man was introduced by Mr. Sheer as Mr. Brown of Abernethie’s. The vaudevillian then explained to her in a Keith-time version of a fox-hunting dialect that the bronze had indeed been sold “to an old and valued client,” who “settled his accounts” only once a year, “the English system, you know; we can’t hurry a man like that. Mrs. Martino, who was Spanish, was powerfully impressed, and it was six months before she went back to Abernethie’s to question Mr. Brown again. Then Mr. Sheer was obliged to pay up instantly, but the next day he borrowed back half the money from Mrs. Martino’s husband.
    Bierman must have been real, however, for in the interview Mr. Sheer projected it was I who was to pretend to be someone else.
    He had borrowed some diamonds from Bierman, he said, to show to a friend, a playboy named Carew. But Carew, who was considering buying them for a chorus girl he was keeping, had disappeared with the diamonds before coming to any decision. It was a criminal offense to let jewelry that you had taken on consignment go out of your possession, so Bierman would have to be kept from legal action until Carew could be found. Now supposing I were to go to Bierman and say that I was a rich widow who had bought the diamonds from Mr. Sheer but would be unable to pay until my next dividend fell due….
    “But what if he should ask to see them?” I said.
    “Tell him you sent them home to Pittsburgh to have them reset.”
    “But I don’t look like a rich widow—”
    “You married young,” said Mr. Sheer. “Do you want me to go to Sing Sing?”
    In the end I persuaded him that my impersonation of this character would only evoke catcalls from Bierman. But I would go to him in my own person, I said, tell him the truth, and beg him to wait a little. I could go, Mr. Sheer finally conceded, if I promised not to mention Carew. I should merely say that the stones had been sent out for resetting and there had been an unavoidable delay.
    Just as I was leaving, Mr. Sheer had an afterthought. I was to tell Bierman, he said, that if anything should go wrong, Mr. Sheer would make good because his mother had a diamond that was worth more than all of Bierman’s stones put together, and he would be glad to wire his mother in California to send this diamond for Bierman to hold as security.
    “But does your mother really have a diamond?” I asked, and indeed I was surprised to hear that Mr. Sheer really had a mother.
    “Of course,” he replied impatiently. But he never spoke of it again. Whether it was out of respect for Mr. Sheer’s mother or out of respect for Mr. Sheer’s imagination, I do not know, but neither Bierman nor I, whatever the provocation, was ever so tactless as to remind him of this promise.
    In a little office back of a jewelry store I told Bierman, a small, all-gray man, the story Mr. Sheer had prepared for me, including, at the end, the vision of the fabulous diamond in California. I did not expect him to believe me. But when I finished he seemed convinced. It was not so much that he believed in a literal sense what I was saying (he could hardly have been so naïve), but he appeared to trust what was behind what I was saying, the intention to make things right. It occurred to me after this episode that Mr. Sheer was fond of me and sometimes paid my salary, not, as I sometimes thought, out of snobbism because he believed me to be a lady, nor out of cultural aspiration because he believed me to be educated, but simply because I was the only one of his retinue who had an honest face.
    Already I had fobbed off the city marshal, now I had pacified Bierman, and it was not long before I was being sent on errands of the most dubious nature, leaving Mr. Sheer behind in the Savile Galleries, secure in his confidence that my good faith would not be questioned. After this, it was I who was sent to get credit from tradesmen, I who cashed checks, I who would walk down Madison Avenue