wallet? Good Lord, he must have left it at a friend’s, not far away. He shall go and obtain his wallet forthwith! But here, mine host, says Abraham, take this old fiddle of mine for security. It’s old, as you can see, but it’s how I make my living.”
Wednesday’s smile when he saw the waitress approaching was huge and predatory. “Ah, the hot chocolate! Brought to me by my Christmas Angel! Tell me, my dear, could I have some more of your delicious bread when you get a moment?”
The waitress—what was she, Shadow wondered: sixteen, seventeen?—looked at the floor and her cheeks flushed crimson. She put down the chocolate with shaking hands and retreated to the edge of the room, by the slowly rotating display of pies, where she stopped and stared at Wednesday. Then she slipped into the kitchen, to fetch Wednesday his bread.
“So. The violin—old, unquestionably, perhaps even a little battered—is placed away in its case, and our temporarily impecunious Abraham sets off in search of his wallet. But a well-dressed gentleman, only just done with his own dinner, has been observing this exchange, and now he approaches our host: could he, perchance, inspect the violin that honest Abraham left behind?
“Certainly he can. Our host hands it over, and the well-dressed man—let us call him Barrington—opens his mouth wide, then remembers himself and closes it, examines the violin reverentially, like a man who has been permitted into a holy sanctum to examine the bones of a prophet. ‘Why,’ he says, ‘this is—it must be—no, it cannot be—but yes, there it is—my lord! But this is unbelievable!” and he points to the maker’s mark, on a strip of browning paper inside the violin—but still, he says, even without it he would have known it by the color of the varnish, by the scroll, by the shape.
“Now Barrington reaches inside his pocket and produces an engraved business card, proclaiming him to be a preeminent dealer in rare and antique musical instruments. ‘So this violin is rare?’ asks mine host. ‘Indeed it is,’ says Barrington, still admiring it with awe, ‘and worth in excess of a hundred thousand dollars, unless I miss my guess. Even as a dealer in such things I would pay fifty—no, seventy-five thousand dollars, good cash money for such an exquisite piece. I have a man on the West Coast who would buy it tomorrow, sight unseen, with one telegram, and pay whatever I asked for it.’ And then he consults his watch, and his face falls. ‘My train—’ he says. ‘I have scarcely enough time to catch my train! Good sir, when the owner of this inestimable instrument should return, please give him my card, for, alas, I must be away.’ And with that, Barrington leaves, a man who knows that time and the train wait for no man.
“Mine host examines the violin, curiosity mingling with cupidity in his veins, and a plan begins to bubble up through his mind. But the minutes go by, and Abraham does not return. And now it is late, and through the door, shabby but proud, comes our Abraham, our fiddle-player, and he holds in his hands a wallet, a wallet that has seen better days, a wallet that has never contained more than a hundred dollars on its best day, and from it he takes the money to pay for his meal or his stay, and he asks for the return of his violin.
“Mine host puts the fiddle in its case on the counter, and Abraham takes it like a mother cradling her child. ‘Tell me,’ says the host (with the engraved card of a man who’ll pay fifty thousand dollars, good cash money, burning in his inside breast pocket), ‘how much is a violin like this worth? For my niece has a yearning on her to play the fiddle, and it’s her birthday coming up in a week or so.’
“‘Sell this fiddle?’ says Abraham. ‘I could never sell her. I’ve had her for twenty years I have, fiddled all over the country with her. And to tell the truth, she cost me all of five hundred dollars back when I bought her.’
“Mine host keeps the smile from his face. ‘Five hundred dollars? What if I were to offer you a thousand dollars for it, here and now?’
“The fiddle player looks delighted, then crestfallen, and he says, ‘But lordy, I’m a fiddle player, sir, it’s all I know how to do. This fiddle knows me and she loves me,