“I had a lot of trouble to get rid of him. Like so many dealers, he seemed to think it was all a question of money. He couldn’t realize that I’d never part with anything that went so well with the dull green wainscot of my boudoir unless, of course, they could prove to me that the ikon had been stolen or something of that kind.”
“Your dealer pal didn’t tell you the name of his client?” asked Desmond.
“I asked him, of course, but he said he was not at liberty to reveal it. But it didn’t matter any, for, about an hour later, he arrived in person.”
“Sure. A Russian, a certain Dr. Madjaroff. I was sick and tired of the whole thing, so I told the butler to say I was busy. But he said he’d wait till I was disengaged. So, just to get rid of him, I saw him. My dear, he was the most extraordinary-looking person, a vast man with a great bushy black beard and a clubfoot . . .”
There was a crash from the fender. Desmond Okewood had suddenly dropped the knee he had been hugging and overset the fire irons.
“He spoke in French,” Patricia Maxwell went on. “He said that, through a misunderstanding, Monsieur Saumergue, who had been bidding for him at Blackie’s yesterday, had failed to secure the ikon. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I am prepared to pay handsomely for the mistake. I will now write you my cheque for three thousand five hundred guineas!’ And he actually produced a cheque-book and a fountain pen!
“I told him I didn’t want to sell. But do you think he’d take ‘no’ for an answer? Not on your life! ‘Would I name my own figure?’ he said, and when I stood up and repeated that I meant to keep the ikon and that he was wasting his time, he offered me first five thousand guineas and at last, by stages, six thousand five hundred.
“You know, that man rather frightened me. I’m supposed to be a pretty determined sort of person myself, but never in my life have I run up against such a dominating personality as this Dr. Madjaroff. He was so big and hairy with the vitality of some great animal like a buffalo or . . . or a rhinoceros.
“When I turned down his offer of six thousand five hundred guineas, he bent his dark bushy eyebrows at me.
“‘Miss Maxwell,’ he said, ‘I’ve set my heart on that ikon. You’ve got to let me have it.’