"I hadn't thought of that." He grinned widely. "What I should do," he said, "is put aside both of these articles and make you a present of them when the two of you get married. I'd have to find something suitable for you as well, Bernard, though wedding presents are really for the bride, don't you think? What about it, Carolyn? Shall I put these away?"

"You'd have a long wait, Abel. We're just good friends."

"And business associates, eh?"

"That too."

He chuckled heartily and sat back and folded his hands once again on his belly, an expectant look on his face. I let him wait. Then he said, "You said you had three items."

"Two earrings and a watch."

"Ah, my mistake. I thought the earrings counted as a single unit. Then the total sum is twenty-five hundred dollars."

"Well, there is something else you might want to look at," I said carelessly, and from the attaché case I produced a brown kraft envelope two inches square. Abel shot me a look, then took the envelope from me. Inside it was a hinged Plexiglas box just small enough to fit into the envelope, and inside that was a wad of tissue paper. Abel opened the tissue paper very deliberately, his fingers moving with the precision of one accustomed to handling rare coins. When a nick or a scratch can reduce a coin's value substantially, when a finger mark can begin the hateful process of corrosion, one learns to grasp coins by their edges and to hold them gently but securely.

The object Abel Crowe held gently but securely between the thumb and index finger of his left hand was a metallic disc just under seven-eighths of an inch in diameter-or just over two centimeters, if you're into metrics. It was, in short, the size and shape of a nickel, the sort of nickel that's the price of the good cigar this country is purported to need. It was the color of a nickel, too, although its frosted features and mirrorlike field were a ways removed from anything you'd be likely to have in your pocket.

By and large, though, it looked like a nickel. And well it might, for that was precisely what it was.

All it lacked was Thomas Jefferson's head on the one side and his house on the other. The side Abel looked at first showed a large V within a wreath open at the top, the word Cents inscribed directly beneath the V. Circling the wreath were the issuing nation's name and motto-United States of America above, E Pluribus Unum below.

Abel flicked me a glance from beneath upraised eyebrows, then deftly turned the coin in his fingers. Its obverse depicted a woman's head facing left, her coronet inscribed Liberty . Thirteen stars circled Miss Liberty, and beneath her head was the date.

"Gross Gott!" said Abel Crowe. And then he closed his eyes and said another long sentence that I didn't understand, possibly in German, possibly in some other language.

Carolyn looked at me, her expression quizzical. "Is that good or bad?" she wanted to know.

I told her I wasn't sure.

CHAPTER Four

He didn't say anything else until he'd looked long and hard at both sides of the coin through his jeweler's loupe. Then he wrapped the coin in tissue paper, returned it to the Plexiglas box and tucked the box into the kraft envelope, which he placed on the table beside him. With an effort he heaved himself out of his chair to fetch another slab of nutritionist's nightmare and a fresh cup of coffee mil schlag. He sat down, ate for a while, set his plate down half finished, sipped the coffee through the thick whipped cream, and glared at me.

"Well?" he demanded. "Is it genuine?"

"I just steal them," I said. "I don't authenticate them. I suppose I could have dropped in on Walter Breen or Don Taxay for a professional opinion, but I figured it was late."

His glance moved to Carolyn. "You know about this coin?"

"He never tells me anything."

"A Liberty Head Nickel," he said. "Nickel five-cent pieces were first issued in this country in 1866. The original design showed a shield. In 1883 the government switched to this design, although the initial run of coins lacked the word cents on the reverse. There was thus some confusion as to the coin's denomination, and it was cleverly compounded by those who filed the edge of the coin to simulate the milling on a gold coin, then plated it lightly with gold and passed it as a five-dollar gold piece."

He paused and had himself a sip of coffee, used a napkin to blot a thin line of whipped cream from his upper lip. "The coin was issued without interruption through 1912," he continued. "In 1913 it was replaced by the Buffalo Nickel. The Mint had problems with that issue, too, in the first year. Originally the mound on which the bison stands was in excessive relief and the coins would not stack properly. This was corrected, but the dates of these coins tended to wear off prematurely. It was a poor design.

"But I am telling you more than you would care to know. The last Liberty Head Nickels, or V-Nickels, as they are sometimes called, were struck in Philadelphia and Denver and San Francisco in 1912." He paused again, breathed in, breathed out. "The specimen you were so kind as to bring me tonight," he said, "is dated 1913."

"That must make it special," Carolyn said.

"You might say that. Five specimens of the 1913 V-Nickel are known to exist. They are clearly a product of the U.S. Mint, although the Mint has always denied having produced them.

"It is fairly clear what must have happened. Dies for a 1913 V-Nickel must have been prepared before the decision to switch to the buffalo design was finalized. Possibly a few pieces were struck as the trials; alternately, an enterprising employee may have produced these trial pieces on his own initiative. In any event, five specimens left the Mint by the back door."

He sighed, removed one of his slippers, massaged his arch. "I carry too much weight," he said. "It is alleged to endanger the heart. My heart makes no objection but my feet protest incessantly.

"But no matter. Let us return to the year 1913. At the time, a gentleman named Samuel Brown worked at the Mint in Philadelphia. He left shortly thereafter and next emerged in North Tonawanda, a suburb of Buffalo, where he placed advertisements seeking to buy 1913 Liberty Head Nickels-which of course no one had heard of at the time. He subsequently announced that he had managed to purchase five such nickels, and those are the only five which were ever to see the light of day. Perhaps you can guess how he happened to get them."

"He walked out of the Mint with them," I said, "and the ads were his way of explaining his ownership of the coins."

Abel nodded. "And his way of publicizing them in the bargain. You are familiar with the name of E. H. R. Green? Colonel Edward Green? His mother was Hetty Green, the notorious witch of Wall Street, and when her son came into his money he was able to indulge his eccentricities, one of which was numismatics. He did not wish merely one specimen of a rarity; he wanted as many as he could lay hands on. Accordingly, he bought all five of Samuel Brown's 1913 V-Nickels.

"They remained in his possession until his death, and I trust he enjoyed owning them. When he died his holdings were dispersed, and a dealer named Johnson wound up with all five of the nickels. I believe he lived in the Midwest, St. Louis or perhaps Kansas City."

"It doesn't matter," I said.

"Probably not," he agreed. "In any event, Mr. Johnson sold them off one at a time to individual collectors. While he was doing this, a dealer in Fort Worth by the name of B. Max Mehl was busy making the 1913 V-Nickel the most famous rare coin of the century simply by offering to buy it. He placed advertisements everywhere offering fifty dollars for the coin, with the implication that one might come across it in one's pocket change. He did so in order to attract customers for a rare coin catalog he was peddling, and I don't doubt he sold a great many catalogs, but in the course of it he assured the future of the 1913 nickel. No American coin ever received so much publicity. Americans who knew nothing else about coins knew a 1913 V-Nickel was valuable. Virtually everyone knew this."