LITMIR.BIZ

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These, I found out afterwards, were dealers and amateurs. They were a kindly-faced set of people, and I took a liking to them.

      The whole place was quaint and pleasant, especially by contrast with the horrible London fog outside. Squeezing my small person into a corner where I was in nobody’s way, I watched the proceedings for a while. Suddenly an agreeable voice at my side asked me if I would like a look at the catalogue. I glanced at the speaker, and in a sense fell in love with him at once—as I have explained before, I am one of those to whom a first impression means a great deal. He was not very tall, though strong-looking and well-made enough. He was not very handsome, though none so ill-favoured. He was just an ordinary fair young Englishman, four or five-and-twenty years of age, with merry blue eyes and one of the pleasantest expressions that I ever saw. At once I felt that he was a sympathetic soul and full of the milk of human kindness. He was dressed in a rough tweed suit rather worn, with the orchid that seemed to be the badge of all this tribe in his buttonhole. Somehow the costume suited his rather pink and white complexion and rumpled fair hair, which I could see as he was sitting on his cloth hat.

      “Thank you, no,” I answered, “I did not come here to buy. I know nothing about orchids,” I added by way of explanation, “except a few I have seen growing in Africa, and this one,” and I tapped the tin case which I held under my arm.

      “Indeed,” he said. “I should like to hear about the African orchids. What is it you have in the case, a plant or flowers?”

      “One flower only. It is not mine. A friend in Africa asked me to—well, that is a long story which might not interest you.”

      “I’m not sure. I suppose it must be a Cymbidium scape from the size.”

      I shook my head. “That’s not the name my friend mentioned. He called it a Cypripedium.”

      The young man began to grow curious. “One Cypripedium in all that large case? It must be a big flower.”

      “Yes, my friend said it is the biggest ever found. It measures twenty-four inches across the wings, petals I think he called them, and about a foot across the back part.”

      “Twenty-four inches across the petals and a foot across the dorsal sepal!” said the young man in a kind of gasp, “and a Cypripedium! Sir, surely you are joking?”

      “Sir,” I answered indignantly, “I am doing nothing of the sort. Your remark is tantamount to telling me that I am speaking a falsehood. But, of course, for all I know, the thing may be some other kind of flower.”

      “Let me see it. In the name of the goddess Flora let me see it!”

      I began to undo the case. Indeed it was already half-open when two other gentlemen, who had either overheard some of our conversation or noted my companion’s excited look, edged up to us. I observed that they also wore orchids in their buttonholes.

      “Hullo! Somers,” said one of them in a tone of false geniality, “what have you got there?”

      “What has your friend got there?” asked the other.

      “Nothing,” replied the young man who had been addressed as Somers, “nothing at all; that is—only a case of tropical butterflies.”

      “Oh! butterflies,” said No. 1 and sauntered away. But No. 2, a keen-looking person with the eye of a hawk, was not so easily satisfied.

      “Let us see these butterflies,” he said to me.

      “You can’t,” ejaculated the young man. “My friend is afraid lest the damp should injure their colours. Ain’t you, Brown?”

      “Yes, I am, Somers,” I replied, taking his cue and shutting the tin case with a snap.

      Then the hawk-eyed person departed, also grumbling, for that story about the damp stuck in his throat.

      “Orchidist!” whispered the young man. “Dreadful people, orchidists, so jealous. Very rich, too, both of them. Mr. Brown—I hope that is your name, though I admit the chances are against it.”

      “They are,” I replied, “my name is Allan Quatermain.”

      “Ah! much better than Brown. Well, Mr. Allan Quatermain, there’s a private room in this place to which I have admittance. Would you mind coming with that——” here the hawk-eyed gentleman strolled past again, “that case of butterflies?”

      “With pleasure,” I answered, and followed him out of the auction chamber down some steps through the door to the left, and ultimately into a little cupboard-like room lined with shelves full of books and ledgers.

      He closed the door and locked it.

      “Now,” he said in a tone of the villain in a novel who at last has come face to face with the virtuous heroine, “now we are alone. Mr. Quatermain, let me see—those butterflies.”

      I placed the case on a deal table which stood under a skylight in the room. I opened it; I removed the cover of wadding, and there, pressed between two sheets of glass and quite uninjured after all its journeyings, appeared the golden flower, glorious even in death, and by its side the broad green leaf.

      The young gentleman called Somers looked at it till I thought his eyes would really start out of his head. He turned away muttering something and looked again.

      “Oh! Heavens,” he said at last, “oh! Heavens, is it possible that such a thing can exist in this imperfect world? You haven’t faked it, Mr. Half—I mean Quatermain, have you?”

      “Sir,” I said, “for the second time you are making insinuations. Good morning,” and I began to shut up the case.

      “Don’t be offhanded,” he exclaimed. “Pity the weaknesses of a poor sinner. You don’t understand. If only you understood, you would understand.”

      “No,” I said, “I am bothered if I do.”

      “Well, you will when you begin to collect orchids. I’m not mad, really, except perhaps on this point, Mr. Quatermain,”—this in a low and thrilling voice—“that marvellous Cypripedium—your friend is right, it is a Cypripedium—is worth a gold mine.”

      “From my experience of gold mines I can well believe that,” I said tartly, and, I may add, prophetically.

      “Oh! I mean a gold mine in the figurative and colloquial sense, not as the investor knows it,” he answered. “That is, the plant on which it grew is priceless. Where is the plant, Mr. Quatermain?”

      “In a rather indefinite locality in Africa east by south,” I replied. “I can’t place it to within three hundred miles.”

      “That’s vague, Mr. Quatermain. I have no right to ask it, seeing that you know nothing of me, but I assure you I am respectable, and in short, would you mind telling me the story of this flower?”

      “I don’t think I should,” I replied, a little doubtfully. Then, after another good look at him, suppressing all names and exact localities, I gave him the outline of the tale, explaining that I wanted to find someone who would finance an expedition to the remote and romantic spot where this particular Cypripedium was believed to grow.

      Just as I finished my narrative, and before he had time to comment on it, there came a violent knocking at the door.

      “Mr. Stephen,” said a voice, “are you there, Mr. Stephen?”

      “By Jove! that’s Briggs,” exclaimed the young man. “Briggs is my father’s manager. Shut up the case, Mr. Quatermain. Come in, Briggs,” he went on, unlocking the door slowly. “What is it?”

      “It is a good deal,” replied a thin and agitated person who thrust himself through the opening door. “Your father, I mean Sir Alexander, has come to the office unexpectedly and is in a nice taking because he didn’t find you there, sir. When he discovered that you had gone to the orchid sale he grew furious, sir, furious, and sent me to fetch you.”

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