The Duke had long since found it bullet-proof.
"They showed me some rather good things in New York," he went on, "but really the things you have here seem to be awfully good things." Indeed, the Duke was truly pleased with the pictures, for something in their composition, or else in the soft, expensive light that shone on them, enabled him to see in the distant background of each a hundred thousand sterling.

And that is a very beautiful picture indeed.
"When you come to our side of the water, Fyshe," said the Duke, "I must show you my Botticelli." Had Mr.Fyshe, who knew nothing of art, expressed his real thought, he would have said, "Show me your which ?" But he only answered, "I shall be delighted to see it." In any case there was no time to say more, for at this moment the portly figure and the great face of Dr.Boomer, president of Plutoria University, loomed upon them.

And with him came a great burst of conversation that blew all previous topics into fragments.

He was introduced to the Duke, and shook hands with Mr.Furlong, and talked to both of them, and named the kind of cocktail that he wanted, all in one breath, and in the very next he was asking the Duke about the Babylonian hieroglyphic bricks that his grandfather, the thirteenth Duke, had brought home from the Euphrates, and which every archaeologist knew were preserved in the Duke's library at Dulham Towers.

And though the Duke hadn't known about the bricks himself, he assured Dr.Boomer that his grandfather had collected some really good things, quite remarkable.
And the Duke, having met a man who knew about his grandfather, felt in his own element.