Quinneys 9

Quinneys 9

"It’s becoming harder every day, ma’am," he addressed Mrs. Biddlecombe,

"to get hold of the right stuff—cheap. I have agents everywhere. Old

Mr. Quinney was one. And now and again they hear of a real bargain.

Often as not the people who ’ave it won’t part. They would part, ma’am,

if they was offered the right price, but that wouldn’t be business. No.

Well, only the other day, I got hold of the sweetest table, genuine

Adam, and _hand-painted_! Paid a fiver for it!"

 

"Really, did you now?" murmured Mrs. Biddlecombe For all she knew a

"fiver" might be a large or a small price. Tomlin continued:

 

"Yes, ma’am, a fi’ pun note. It was this way. The table belonged to a

decayed gentlewoman, who’d seen better days, and needed money."

 

Mrs. Biddlecombe sighed; the anecdote had become almost personal, and

therefore the more interesting.

 

"That may happen to any of us," she murmured.

 

"She had inherited this table from her grandma," continued Tomlin, "and

my agent heard of it, and saw it. He offered the old lady four pun ten,

and she wouldn’t deal. Obstinate as a mule she was!"

 

"Sensible old dear, I call her," said Quinney.

 

"My agent was fairly boiled, and then inspiration struck him. He never

went near the old gal for a couple of months. Then he called with a

friend, a stout, red-faced man, bit of an amateur actor. My agent

introduced him as a collector of choice bits. Asked if he might show him

the little table. Old lady was willing enough, and of course the low

comedy feller crabbed it."

 

"Stale dodge that," remarked Quinney.

 

"Wait a bit. After crabbin’ it, he pretended to be interested in other

things; and then he began to act queer. He’d slipped a bit o’ soap into

his mouth, so as to froth proper."

 

"Gracious me! Why!" asked Mrs. Biddlecombe.

 

"Then he went into a regular fit, fell down, and as he fell grabbed the

little table, and broke off one of its pretty spindle legs. When he

come out of his fit, my agent said that the least thing a gentleman

could do was to buy the table he’d spoiled. The old lady took a fiver

as compensation, and jolly glad she was to get it. I sold that table to

an American millionaire for one hundred and twenty-five—guineas!"

 

Mrs. Biddlecombe rose majestically. She saw that her son-in-law was

laughing.

 

"Come, Susan, let us leave these _gentlemen_ to their wine."

 

Susan followed her out of the room. When the door was shut behind them,

Quinney said:

 

"Old man, that yarn was a bit too thick for ’em. See?"

 

Tomlin laughed boisterously.

 

"One more glass of port," he replied, "and I’ll tell you another."

 

He told several; and when the men returned to the small drawing-room,

Susan said timidly that her mother had gone back to Laburnum Row.

Later, when she was alone with her husband, she asked a sharp question:

 

"Joe, dear, you wouldn’t have done what Mr. Tomlin did, would you?"

 

"About what, Sue?"

 

"About that table. Mother and I thought it was horrid of him to take

advantage of a poor old lady."

 

Joe evaded the question cleverly:

 

"Look ye here, my girl, Tomlin is—well, Tomlin. Don’t you mix him up

with me."

 

"But, Joe, you are mixed up with him—in business."

 

"Temporary arrangement, my pretty, nothing more."

 

He kissed her, murmuring, "Blessed little saint you are!"

 

 

*II*

 

Melchester was profoundly interested in the new premises, and the other

dealers in genuine antiques went about, so Quinney affirmed, chattering

with rage, and predicting ruin.

 

"They’ll be ruined," said Quinney, chuckling and rubbing his hands.

"Nobody will buy their muck, and they know it."

 

He had very nice hands, with long slender fingers, manifestly fashioned

to pick up egg-shell china. Also in spite of his accent, which time

might reasonably be expected to improve, his voice held persuasive

inflections, and the resonant _timbre_ of the enthusiast, likely to ring

in the memories of too timid customers, the collectors who stare at

bargains twice a day till they are snapped up by somebody else. Quinney

despised these Laodiceans in his heart, but he told Susan that they did

well enough to practise upon.

 

"You want to get the patter," he told his wife, "and the best and

quickest way is to turn loose on the _think it overs_. See?"

 

It had long been arranged between them that Susan was to help in the

shop and acquire at first hand intimate knowledge of a complex business.

Quinney summed up the art of selling stuff in a few pregnant words.

 

"Find out what they want, and don’t be too keen to sell to ’em. Most

men, my pretty, and nearly all the women go dotty over the things

hardest to get. Our best stuff will sell itself, if we go slow. Old

silver is getting scarcer every day."

 

Susan smiled at her Joe’s words of wisdom. He continued fluently:

"We’ve a lot to learn; something new every hour. And we shall make

bloomin’ errors, again and again. All dealers do. Tomlin was had to

rights only last week over two Chippendale chairs; and he thinks he

knows all about ’em. I’ve been done proper over that coffee-pot."

 

He showed her a massive silver coffee-pot with finely defined marks upon

it.

 

"A genuine George II bit, Susie, and worth its weight in gold if it

hadn’t been tampered with by some fool later on. All that repoussé work

is George IV, and I never knew it. The worst fake is the half-genuine

ones."

 

"Gracious!" exclaimed his pupil.

 

"There are lots o’ things I don’t know, and don’t understand, my girl;

all the more reason to hold tight on to what I do know. And what I know

I’ll try to share with you, and what you know you’ll try to share with

me."

 

"I’m stupid about things," said Susan.

 

Quinney strolled across the room, and selected two jars more or less

alike in shape and paste and colour.

 

"Can you tell t’other from which?" he asked. "Look at ’em, feel ’em

inside and out."

 

Susan obeyed, but after a minute she shook her head.

 

"Ain’t they just alike, Joe?"

 

"Lord, no! One’s the real old blue and white, hand-painted, and worth

fifty pound. T’other is a reproduction, printed stuff, with a different

glaze. Look again, my pretty!"

 

"This is the old one, Joe."

 

"No, it ain’t. Slip your hand inside. Which is the smoother and better

finished inside?"

 

"Yes, I feel the difference, but I don’t see it. I wish I could see

it."

 

"You will. I’m going to put a little chipped bit of the best on your

toilet table. You just squint at it twenty times a day for one year,

and you’ll know something. That’s what I’m doing with the earlier

stuff, which is more difficult to be sure of, because it doesn’t look so

good. I wouldn’t trust my judgment to buy it. That’s Tomlin’s job."

 

Susan frowned.

 

"I don’t like Mr. Tomlin, Joe."

 

"Never asked you to like him, but we can learn a lot from Tomlin. See?

He’s an expert upon Chinese and Japanese porcelain and lac. We’ve got

to suck his brains."

 

"Ugh!" said Susan.

 

During these first few weeks she displayed great aptitude as a

saleswoman. Her face, so ingenuous in its __EXPRESSION__, her soft voice,

her pretty figure attracted customers. The price of every article in

the shop was marked in letters which she could turn into figures. But

this price was a "fancy one," what Quinney termed a "top-notcher."

Susan was instructed to take a third less. Quinney trained her to

answer awkward questions, to make a pretty picture of ignorance, to pose

effectively as the inexperienced wife keeping the shop during the

absence of her husband. He had said upon the morning of the grand

opening of _Quinneys’_, "I don’t want you to tell lies, Sue."

 

"I wouldn’t for the world," she replied.

 

He pinched her chin, chuckling derisively. "I know you wouldn’t; but I don’t want you to tell all the truth neither."