Читать книгу The Inquisitor. A Novel онлайн

23 страница из 52

'What's its history?' Klitch asked.

'I got it from a man in New Mexico. He said it came from Toledo. It's seventeenth-century Spanish all right though.'

'Probably stolen,' Klitch thought, and told himself to be careful.

The man went on: 'Now this is what I thought you might do. Let me have fifty pounds or so. Give me three months. If I can pay you back with interest in that time I take it back. If not, at the end of three months, you keep it. It's worth three or four hundred if it's worth a penny.'

'Staying in Polchester?' Klitch asked.

'Well, to be honest with you I don't know. Depends how I like my relations and how they like me. But you're safe enough any way. If I abscond in the night you've got the thing for keeps. I'll give you a paper saying that if I'm absent from this town a month without redeeming it it's yours. Nothing could be fairer than that.'

Yes, Klitch thought, that was fair enough. He knew where he could sell it to-morrow for a hundred. But he didn't want to sell it. The longer he looked at it the more he liked it. Fifty pounds was a lot of money, but he had done well that summer.