The Eighth Commandment Read Online Free Page B

and trihemiobols, and a standing charioteer leaning forward to goad four elegant horses. What kind of dreams were those for a normal, healthy American female? Feh!
    I met my self-imposed deadline, and delivered to Felicia Dodat a handsomely typed appraisal that included estimated reserve and top values on twenty-two lots and fourteen individual coins ($350,000 for the Demaretion). I left it up to Dodat, god, and the accountants to figure out an offer to make to Archibald Havistock if he wanted to sell his collection outright.
    “Thanks,” Felicia said briefly, tossing my manuscript aside.
    “When do you think we might have an answer?” I ventured.
    “When we get it,” she said shortly, and I had a brief, violent desire to wire-brush her seamed pantyhose. That woman brought out the worst in me.
    Nothing happened for almost two weeks. I gloomed around the office, hardly able to answer my correspondence or do appraisals on the little bits and pieces of large estates that came across my desk. Hobie counseled patience, patience, and more patience.
    “The one thing you don’t want to do,” he told me, “is to bug Madam Dodat. Treat it casually. Make her think that appraising a two-million-dollar collection is just routine, and you couldn’t care less if Grandby’s gets it or not. Play it cool, Dunk.”
    But I couldn’t play it cool; the Havistock coins meant too much to me. Especially that gorgeous Demaretion. I found myself gallivanting madly all over town for distraction, to movies, art galleries, new restaurants. Then coming home to sip a big shot of raspberry-flavored brandy so I could sleep at night.
    Finally, into the third week, on a bright, sunshiny May afternoon, crisp and clear, I took Hobie’s and my coffee mugs into the ladies’ room, hoping to scour them clean of their accumulated crud.
    Felicia Dodat was standing before one of the mirrors, preening, touching her raven hair, stroking her eyebrows with a fingertip.
    I put the two coffee mugs into a sink and ran hot water into them. Soaked a paper towel and started to scrub them out.
    “I understand they call you ‘Dunk,’ ” Felicia said, still staring at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that.
    “That’s right.”
    “Dunk,” she repeated. “What an odd name.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    She raised her skirt to tug up her pantyhose. I would never do that in front of anyone, woman or man. Then she smoothed down her skirt and inspected herself again. I swear she nodded with approval.
    “Dunk,” she said again, and laughed.
    She started out, then paused at the door.
    “Oh, by the way…” she said, as if she had suddenly recalled a detail of no importance. “Did I tell you we got the Havistock Collection?”

4
    N EW PROBLEMS NEVER ENCOUNTERED before: the logistics of moving the Havistock Collection from the owner’s apartment on East 79th Street to the basement vault of Grandby & Sons on Madison Avenue. Stanton Grandby had signed the auction contract, but I got the donkeywork.
    I met four times with Mr. Havistock, Mr. Vanwinkle, a representative of the insurance company carrying a policy on the collection, and a burly gentleman from the armored truck service that was to make the actual transfer. We finally agreed on a plan and assignment of responsibilities that seemed to please everyone.
    The move would be effected in this manner:
    Archibald Havistock would seal the thirteen display cases holding his collection with strips of masking tape on all four sides, plus a blob of sealing wax near the lock which he would imprint with a heavy silver signet ring he sometimes wore.
    I made a mild objection to this form of sealing, fearing it would mar the surface of those lovely teakwood cases. But Mr. Havistock stated he would have no need for the cases after his collection was sold, and in any event they could easily be refinished.
    I would stand by, a witness to the sealing process to insure that each case contained the requisite number of