Firefly Gadroon Read Online Free PDF Page B

better.’
    Germoline is his donkey. I watched his match flare between puffs. ‘Then what’s missing?’ I honestly couldn’t see.
    ‘Fire, son. In you.’ He rose sadly and gave me the stool. ‘Listen, Lovejoy. There’s no such thing as weakness, getting tired, making a mistake. It does itself.’ He opened the door. ‘When you’ve got the fire in you, the Reverse Gadroon does itself.’ He gave a slow grin. I was so mad I didn’t smile back.
    ‘But—’
    ‘You’ve got it for antiques, son. Not for new things.’ His gaze saddened me. ‘Got a motif?’
    I spoke without thinking. ‘A firefly,’ I said. Why I said that I’ll never know.
    ‘Fireflies? Never heard of a firefly gadroon, but why not?’ He nodded and made to go. ‘Might as well ruin a firefly pattern as any other, mate.’
    We parted after that, still friends, but me in low spirits.
    ‘Look, Drummer,’ I began at the gate. ‘Er, I’m a bit strapped . . .’
    He chuckled. ‘The money? Forget it, Lovejoy.’ I give him a quid every lesson when I can. I said I’d owe it. ‘I don’t need any fare. Joe’s picking me up at the chapel.’
    ‘Cheers, Drummer.’
    He gets a lift from a chap called Joe Poges, our coastguard on Drummer’s bit of coast, who comes into the village to see his sister. Her husband’s one of these characters mad on racing pigeons. Drummer sets them free on the river and they fly home again. Have you ever heard of such wasted effort?
    I stood until Drummer’s small figure had vanished upthe lane. Then I went back into the garage and tried and tried on a new sheet of iron. All I did was make it look like a clinker. After an hour I sagged to a stop, sweating and exhausted.
    It had been a hell of a day. First losing the firefly cage like that. Then crossing Devlin and antagonizing Inspector Maslow. Then losing out with Maud. And last but not least getting the elbow from Drummer. Well, I thought in my cretinous innocence, it couldn’t get much worse, could it?
    I gave the day up and went back to reading Hayward on fakes.

Chapter 4
    I’m not one of these constant blokes, urbane from cockshout to midnight. By the time the pubs opened I’d cheered up. Life is variation, after all, and I’m up and down with the best of them. Late that afternoon Tinker rang in with word of an inlaid early Victorian knifebox going cheap at Susan Palmer’s antique shop on the wharf. And he’d sent Lemuel after a set of Shibayama knife-handles in Dedham but didn’t sound very optimistic. Neither was I, to put it bluntly, because Lemuel knows more about astrophysics than antiques. Anyway, the horse-racing at York never finishes till five and I knew he’d lose the bus fare on some nag because he always does. The good sets are real ivory with inlays, the rare Shibayama being a composite of bronze and iridescent stones. (Always check that it is ivory and not synthetic ivorine; and the more varied the inlays – insects, birds, butterflies – the more pricey.)
    ‘I’ll bet,’ I told him sardonically over the blower.
    ‘Straight up, Lovejoy,’ he croaked. ‘Brad’s going over tomorrow.’
    Oho, I thought. Brad’s mostly flintlock weapons and lately Japanese militaria, but he never goes anywhere without good reason.
    I decided after a quick think. ‘Okay, Tinker. Suss it.’
    He caught me before I could hang up. ‘Lovejoy, she come after you today.’
    ‘She?’
    ‘That sexy souper, the one with the big bristols.’ He cackled evilly. ‘You’ll be all right with her, Lovejoy—’
    ‘Shut it,’ I told him. He did, but I could still feel his gappy grin down the wire. ‘What did you tell her?’
    ‘White Hart, eightish. That all right?’
    I let him go, feeling much chirpier. Maybe she’d seen sense and wanted to sell me the firefly cage after all. Perhaps it wasn’t what she’d expected. People commonly make this sort of mistake, assume some trinket box has secret compartments crammed with jewellery. You have to learn that