Knowing, as I did, that his one object was to recover the articles before their identity could be obliterated, I could see the rare intellectual skill with which he gave the necessary matter and held back all else, though without seeming to do so.
"Truly," thought I, "this man has learned the lesson of the Eastern bazaars; and with Western intellect has improved upon his masters!" He quite conveyed his idea to the Detective, who, after thinking the matter over for a few moments, said: "Pot or scale?
that is the question." "What does that mean ?" asked the other, keenly alert.
"An old thieves phrase from Birmingham.

I thought that in these days of slang everyone knew that.

In old times at Brum, which had a lot of small metal industries, the gold- and silver-smiths used to buy metal from almost anyone who came along.

And as metal in small quantities could generally be had cheap when they didn't ask where it came from, it got to be a custom to ask only one thing--whether the customer wanted the goods melted, in which case the buyer made the price, and the melting-pot was always on the fire.

If it was to be preserved in its present state at the buyer's option, it went into the scale and fetched standard price for old metal.
"There is a good deal of such work done still, and in other places than Brum.