The watch has
no very great value intrinsically, but the associations are such that I
want it back, and I will pay L200 for its recovery. I have no clew as to
who took it. It was numbered--'
"Here a happy thought struck me. In all my description of the watch I had
merely described my own, a very cheap affair which I had won at a raffle.
My visitor was deceiving me, though for what purpose I did not on the
instant divine. No one would like to suspect him of having purloined his
wife's tiara. Why should I not deceive him, and at the same time get rid
of my poor chronometer for a sum that exceeded its value a hundredfold?"
"Good business!" cried Shylock.
The stranger smiled and bowed.
"Excellent," he said. "I took the words right out of his mouth. 'It was
numbered 86507B!' I cried, giving, of course, the number of my own watch.
"He gazed at me narrowly for a moment, and then he smiled. 'You grow more
marvellous at every step. That was indeed the number. Are you a demon?'
"'No,' I replied. 'Only something of a mind-reader.'
"Well, to be brief, the bargain was struck. I was to look for a watch that
I knew he hadn't lost, and was to receive L200 if I found it. It seemed to
him to be a very good bargain, as, indeed, it was, from his point of view,
feeling, as he did, that there never having been any such watch, it could
not be recovered, and little suspecting that two could play at his little
game of deception, and that under any circumstances I could foist a
ten-shilling watch upon him for two hundred pounds.
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