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silver snuff-box. My … I … It … Well, this is it, and I wondered …”
    A dry, silvery hand came out of a beautifully starched cuff, picked up Pym’s box, and felt it. The old man cocked his head and stooped. He seemed to be smelling the box. At last he said: “I’m sorry.”
    “Sorry?”
    “I’m sorry. There really isn’t much I can say about this. It’s no use to me. I have a room full of them up there in the front. I’ve got more of these than I know what to do with.”
    “But you’ve got all sorts of things, not half as good as this, that you’re charging ten, fifteen, twenty pounds for! You’ve got them in the window! Come and see!”
    “Yes, I know what I’ve got in the window. But stop to consider how long I might have had them in the window. Simply ask yourself what people want with snuff-boxes now, things being as they are.”
    “Do you seriously mean to say that you actually don’t want this?” cried Pym.
    “I don’t want it.”
    “Are you seriously telling me that it isn’t worth, for instance, a fiver?”
    The old man smiled and said: “My goodness gracious, no, indeed!”
    “What would it be worth to you, then?” asked Pym, in a flat voice, stroking the engraved lid of the box.
    “As things are now it’s hardly worth making an offer for. Twenty years ago, yes. In twenty years’ time, perhaps. I’ll give you a pound for it, if you like.”
    “What! A pound? If I wanted to, I could pawn it for more than that,” said Pym.
    “I don’t think you could.”
    Pym licked his lips and said: “The fact of the matter is this. There’s an old man, a very old man, very sick—cancer. He’s got cancer, inoperable cancer of the stomach. All he’s got left is his silver—antique silver, some marvellous stuff. He asked me to find a dealer. This box of his is, as you might say, a kind of sample. He’s got tons of it—plates, dishes, candlesticks, teapots … snuff-boxes … all kinds of silver. And he said to me: ‘My boy, I have got to sell my silver. It has come to this, and there’s no getting away from it. I’ve always heard that Mr. Szisco is a good man to deal with. You go and see what Mr. Szisco gives you for this snuff-box, and if what he gives you is fair, I’ll sell him the rest of my silver.’ So you see …”
    “A pound is all I can offer.”
    There was a little silence. The old man pushed the box back across the counter.
    “I’ll take the pound,” said Pym.
    “Would you rather have change?” said the old man, putting down a new pound note.
    “No thanks—it isn’t for me.”
    “Of course; I quite understand that. Good day to you.”
    Pym tried to slam the door behind him, but even in that he was frustrated by a patent pneumatic brake that seemed to laugh under its breath. He stood on the kerb and waited for the traffic to stand still, feeling as he had felt once before when, having stopped to pick up a halfpenny, he rose and broke his head on the edge of a marble mantelpiece … shocked to stupefaction, hopelessly vulnerable, unforgettably foolish. He could almost feel the trickle of blood creeping under the back of his collar, and the strain of the shamefaced grin under his cheekbones.
    “Easy now—easy does it,” said Pym, breathing deeply. Before he crossed the road he compelled himself to take hold of certain loose strings inside himself. He gripped hard and pulled. His loose, astonished mouth closed tight. Then he got a grip on the slack, empty part of his will and twisted it with all hismight until he felt compact again—screwed down and reduced; knotty, taut and uncomfortable—clenched like a hand that becomes a fist to reassure itself that it is still all there.
    Hope, by God, was not lost! Nothing but a bubble was broken! The morning was not gone, and he had more than twenty-one shillings in his pocket. Pym walked resolutely northward, but he paused outside a respectable pawnshop near the Hampstead Road, and glanced at the display in the window.