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driver, and she got out of the taxi and entered the shop.
    There was an enormous cat crouching on the counter eating fishheads out of a white saucer. The animal looked up at Mrs. Bixby with bright yellow eyes, then looked away again and went on eating. Mrs. Bixby stood by the counter, as far away from the cat as possible, waiting for someone to come, staring at the watches, the shoe buckles, the enamel brooches, the old binoculars, the broken spectacles, the false teeth. Why did they always pawn their teeth, she wondered.
    “Yes?” the proprietor said, emerging from a dark place in the back of the shop.
    “Oh, good evening,” Mrs. Bixby said. She began to untie the string around the box. The man went up to the cat and started stroking it along the top of its back, and the cat went on eating the fishheads.
    “Isn’t it silly of me?” Mrs. Bixby said. “I’ve gone and lost my pocket book, and this being Saturday, the banks are all closed until Monday and I’ve simply got to have some money for the weekend. This is quite a valuable coat, but I’m not asking much. I only want to borrow enough on it to tide me over till Monday. Then I’ll come back and redeem it.”
    The man waited, and said nothing. But when she pulled out the mink and allowed the beautiful thick fur to fall over the counter, his eyebrows went up and he drew his hand away from the cat and came over to look at it. He picked it up and held it out in front of him.
    “If only I had a watch on me or a ring,” Mrs. Bixby said, “I’d give you that instead. But the fact is I don’t have a thing with me other than this coat.” She spread out her fingers for him to see.
    “It looks new,” the man said, fondling the soft fur.
    “Oh yes, it is. But, as I said, I only want to borrow enough to tide me over till Monday. How about fifty dollars?”
    “I’ll loan you fifty dollars.”
    “It’s worth a hundred times more than that, but I know you’ll take good care of it until I return.”
    The man went over to a drawer and fetched a ticket and placed it on the counter. The ticket looked like one of those labels you tie on to the handle of your suitcase, the same shape and size exactly, and the same stiff brownish paper. But it was perforated across the middle so that you could tear it in two, and both halves were identical.
    “Name?” he asked.
    “Leave that out. And the address.”
    She saw the man pause, and she saw the nib of the pen hovering over the dotted line, waiting.
    “You don’t
have
to put the name and address, do you?”
    The man shrugged and shook his head and the pen nib moved on down to the next line.
    “It’s just that I’d rather not,” Mrs. Bixby said. “It’s purely personal.”
    “You’d better not lose this ticket, then.”
    “I won’t lose it.”
    “You realize that anyone who gets hold of it can come in and claim the article?”
    “Yes, I know that.”
    “Simply on the number.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “What do you want me to put for a description?”
    “No description either, thank you. It’s not necessary. Just put the amount I’m borrowing.”
    The pen nib hesitated again, hovering over the dotted line beside the word ARTICLE .
    “I think you ought to put a description. A description is always a help if you want to sell the ticket. You never know, you might want to sell it sometime.”
    “I don’t want to sell it.”
    “You might have to. Lots of people do.”
    “Look,” Mrs. Bixby said. “I’m not broke, if that’s what you mean. I simply lost my purse. Don’t you understand?”
    “You have it your own way then,” the man said. “It’s your coat.”
    At this point an unpleasant thought struck Mrs. Bixby. “Tell me something,” she said. “If I don’t have a description on my ticket, how can I be sure you’ll give me back the coat and not something else when I return?”
    “It goes in the books.”
    “But all I’ve got is a number. So actually you could hand me any old thing you