is so often denied to the investor in gold mines and other Selected
Investments. Yet as the days wore on and the old coat grew no
younger, nor any more wonderful, nor the least useful, but more and
more like an ordinary old coat, Peters began once more to doubt his
astuteness. Before the week was out his doubts had grown acute. And
then one morning, Santiago returned. A man, he said, had just arrived
from Spain, a friend unexpected all of a sudden in Paris, from whom he
might borrow money: and would Peters resell the coat for thirty
thousand pounds?

It was then that Peters, seeing his opportunity, cast aside the
pretence that he had maintained for so long of knowing something about
the mysterious coat, and demanded to know its properties. Santiago
swore that he knew not, and repeatedly swore the same by many sacred
names; but when Peters as often threatened not to sell, Santiago at
last drew out a thin cigar and, lighting it and settling himself in a
chair, told all he knew of the coat.

He had been on its tracks for weeks with suspicions growing all the
time that it was no ordinary coat, and at last he had run it to earth
in that auction room but would not bid for it more than twenty pounds
for fear of letting every one into the secret. What the secret was he
swore he did not know, but this much he knew all along, that the
weight of the coat was absolutely nothing; and he had discovered by
testing it with acids that the brown stuff of which the coat was made
was neither cloth nor silk nor any known material, and would neither
burn nor tear. He believed it to be some undiscovered element. And
the properties of the coat which he was convinced were marvellous he
felt sure of discovering within another week by means of experiments
with his chemicals. Again he offered thirty thousand pounds, to be