"Gave the first to Udo Blankenfels," growled Anton. "But I don't complain."
In the rear of the shop there was barking and whimpering.
Gustav went over. He turned, carrying by the scruff of the neck two little terriers, in the left a black and white, in the right a reddish brown.
Imperceptibly the hand with the reddish brown twitched.
I looked at him: yes.
It was a lovely, playful little thing.
Straight legs, square body, oblong head, intelligent and cheeky.
Gustav let them both go.
"Funny little bastard," said he and pointed to the reddish brown. "Where did you get him?"
Anton had him, so he said, from a lady who had gone to South America.
Gustav burst into incredulous laughter.
Offended, Anton produced a pedigree that went back to Noah's Ark.
Gustav made a gesture of refusal and interested himself in the black and white.
Anton asked a hundred marks for the red-brown one.
Gustav offered five.
He didn't like his great-grandfather. There was something wrong with his tail. And his ears weren't right, either.
The black and white though—he was tip-top.
I stood in the corner and listened.
Suddenly something reached for my hat.
Surprised, I turned round.
A little monkey was sitting in the corner on his perch, slightly huddled, with a yellow skin and melancholy face.^He had black, round eyes and the troubled lips of an old woman.
Around his belly he had a leather girdle to which was fixed a chain.
The hands were small, black, and shockingly human.
I stayed where I was and kept perfectly still.
Slowly the monkey edged nearer along his perch.
As he did so he watched me steadily, not distrustfully, but with an extraordinarily wary gaze.
Cautiously he at last stretched out his hand.
I offered him a finger.
He drew back, then took it.
It was queer to feel the cool, childish hand—how it gripped my finger.
It was as if some poor, dumb human being, pent up in the crooked body, were trying to free and save itself.
One could not look long into those deathly sad eyes.
Snorting Gustav emerged again from a forest of genealogical trees.
"Agreed then, Anton; you get one of Hertha's Dobermann pups in exchange.
The best deal you ever did." Then he turned to me. "Do you want to take him with you now?"
"What does he cost, then?"
"Nothing.
Exchanged for the Dobermann I gave you before.
Yes, you must let Gustav have his way.
Gustav is the boy."
We arranged that I should fetch the dog later when I was through with the taxi. "Do you know what you've got there?" Gustav asked me when we were outside. "Something really rare: an Irish terrier.
Primissima. Without a blemish.
And a pedigree to him, my hat, that you had better not look at or you will have to bow every time you want to speak to the little blighter."
"Gustav," said I, "you have done me a great favour.
Come, let's have a drink together of the oldest cognac we can dig up."
"Not to-day," declared Gustav. "I must have a steady hand to-day.
I'm playing skittles at my club to-night.
Promise me you'll come along sometime.
There are all sorts of big guns there, a postmaster even."
"I'll come," said I. "Even if the postmaster isn't there."