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“In almost anything that is rare and beautiful,” confided Craig, looking Jacot squarely in the eye and adding, “and not particular about the price if he wants a thing, either. But I–I am particular–about one thing.”

Jacot looked up inquiringly.

“A rebate,” Kennedy went on insinuatingly, “a commission on the bill–you understand? The price is immaterial, but not my–er–commission. Comprenez-vous?”

“Parfaitement,” smiled the little Frenchman. “I can arrange all that. Trust me.”

We spent an hour, perhaps, wandering up and down the long aisles of the store, admiring, half purchasing, absorbing facts about this, that and the other thing that might captivate the fictitious Mr. Morehouse.

Not satisfied with what was displayed so temptingly in the front of the store, Kennedy wandered back of a partition apparently in search of some more choice treasures, before Jacot could stop him. He turned over a painting that had been placed with its face toward the wall, as if for protection. I recognized the subject with a start. It was Watteau’s Fete!

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Kennedy in well-feigned ecstasy, just as Jacot came up.

“Ah, but, M’sieur,” interposed the art dealer, “that is only a copy–and not for sale.”

“I believe my friend, Mr. Faber, has a copy,” ventured Craig.

“By a Miss Fleming?” asked Jacot quickly, apparently all interest now.

Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. Was Jacot hinting at something known in the trade?

“Might I photograph some of the things here to show Mr. Morehouse?” asked Craig a moment later. “I see several things in which I think he might be interested.”

“Surely,” answered Jacot, then, after consideration, in which his beady eye seemed to size up Kennedy, he added, sotto voce, craftily, “Would Mr. Morehouse be–er–interested in Watteau’s Fete?”

My heart almost stopped beating. Were we really on the right track at last?

Jacot leaned over confidentially to Kennedy and added, “Why not sell as an original, not this, but another copy–a–a–what you call it?–a fake?”

I understood. Kennedy, having invited crooked dealing by his remark about the rake-off, was being approached about another crooked deal.

“A fake Watteau?” he asked, appearing to meet Jacot halfway.

Jacot nodded. “Why not? You know the same Botticelli belongs to collectors in Philadelphia and Boston; that is, each has a picture and if one is genuine the other must be a fake. Possibly the artist painted the same picture twice. Why, M’sieur, there are Rubens, Hals, Van Dycks, Rembrandts galore in this country that hang also at the same time abroad.” Jacot smiled. “Did you never hear of a picture with a dual personality?”

Kennedy seemed to consider the idea. “I’ll think it over,” he remarked finally, as we prepared to leave, “and let you know when I come back to snap some of the things for my principal.”

“Well–of all brazen crooks!” I sputtered when we had gained Fifth Avenue.

Kennedy shook his head. “We can’t be sure of anything in this game. Does it occur to you that he might perhaps think he was playing us for suckers, after all?”

My mind worked rapidly. “And that that picture of Faber’s is the real original, after all?” I asked. “You mean that somehow a copy by Miss Fleming has come really to Jacot with instructions to palm it off on some gullible buyer?”

“Frankly, Walter,” he said, as we walked along, “I don’t know what to think. You know even the greatest experts sometimes disagree over questions like this. Well, Walter, art is long and time is fleeting. If we are ever to settle where that real Watteau is, we shall have to resort to science, I think.”

That afternoon after a trip up to the laboratory, where Craig secured a peculiar and cumbersome photographic outfit, we at last found ourselves around at Faber’s private gallery. Faber was out, but, true to his promise, he had left word with his man, who admitted us.

Kennedy set to work immediately, before the painting, placing an instrument which certainly was not like a regular camera. I was further astonished, moreover, when Craig set up something back of the canvas, which he moved away from the wall. As nearly as I could make it out it consisted of a glass bulb of curious shape. A moment later he attached the bulb to a wire that connected with a little rheostat or resistance coil and thence, in turn, to an electric-light socket.