The stranger carefully picked up a mechanical toy displayed on a low table. "Gunthermann's perambulator… The lithographs look so fresh!"
He tripped the switch, and the baby whose head surfaced from the stroller shook his noisy rattle. "Charming, really!"
He set down the plaything and turned to face me. "Allow me to introduce myse: I am De aunay.
"Delaunay… wait-"
"The broker."
"Ah! So you're a real person?"
He smiled in amusement. "So it would seem."
My heart had begun foolishly to beat harder. Like everyone in the business, I'd heard of Delaunay. Rarely does a conversation among antique dealers end without some mention of his name. "And… to what do I owe the honor of your visit?"
He shrugged. "You must know that Raymann is dead."
"That's right, Raymann is dead! What a loss!"
Every guild has its notables. Raymann had been one of the richest and most influential of that roster to which I belonged. Rumor had it Delaunay worked exclusively for him.
"Doubtless. But here I am, without employ," said he prosaically. "I thought of you."
I must have blushed with pleasure. Delaunay had thought of me! At the same moment, however, I reproved myself in petto. I practice a difficult profession, in which I must sell at the highest possible price and buy at the lowest. By showing too much joy in his offer, I encouraged Delaunay to overestimate his services, and compromised any anticipated profits.
He must have read these thoughts on my face, for he made a soothing gesture.
"Raymann found it rewarding to work with me," he said with a little laugh. "You will, too-you'll see"
In the months that followed, I saw that Delaunay was indeed the king of brokers-the only one, at any rate, to furnish any object on demand in the shortest possible time, no matter how unusual, no matter how uncommon.
I knew-we all knew-that a mystery surrounded Delaunay. He was known in our little world, known to everyone in it. He rarely visited the auction rooms, he placed no want ads, nor did he rummage around flea markets. No one had ever been able to boast of having done business with him. No one had the slightest idea where he acquired his items. The objects he brought me seemed to have welled up from nothingness… or rather from the very desires of those who'd requested them. A client would come and speak to me about some trinket or a little piece of furniture that he'd glimpsed and missed his chance at in a sale once, or that he'd always loved in the living room of an old uncle now deceased, or which he'd simply dreamed of. I tried to get as precise and complete a description as possible of the item in question-shape, size, color, material; often I even made a sketch from the information given by the collector. I endeavored to ascertain how much he might be willing to spend. Then, without any absolute guarantees of satisfying his desire-for it would have been tactless to dull its edge-I did not rule out the possibility of hope.
I had only to give Delaunay the sketch and the description then. Eight to ten days later, he would bring me the coveted item. It always met in every way the wishes of the client who, overcome with joy, usually settled up without turning a hair. I grant you, our services cost a pretty penny. But for our regulars we procured what they had themselves described as marvels. It was only fitting that they pay marvelously dear.
Delaunay had his limits. He was not to be asked to track down a Norman wardrobe or an abbey table of solid wood. When I ventured to do so, at the beginning of our arrangement, he was adamant: "I won't carry large objects. Jewelry, paintings, silverware, lamps, small bronzes, old dolls, glass paperweights, books, albums, miniatures-any and as many of these as you want; light furniture at the most, a footrest, a pedestal, but nothing heavy or cumbersome. After all, you're not the one crossing the bar."
"Bar? What bar?"
"My point exactly," he muttered.
He was too valuable for me to run the risk of alienating him. My profits had tripled since he'd walked through my door. Nevertheless, my curiosity was keen. But each time I raised the question of his sources, he interrupted bluntly.
"Have you ever had a broker who let slip a word on the subject? You have the buyer, I have the item, together we sell it, and for a tidy sum! What more do you want?
As I'd returned yet again to the topic, he grew incensed. "I'll tell you this much: even if I revealed my suppliers, it wouldn't do you any good… Now back off or I'm gone!"
His behavior was understandable, but it infuriated me. I am curious; it's in my nature; I've chosen to spend my life in the business of curiosities. I sought neither to poach on Delaunay's territory nor to evict him from it. I only wanted to know. I suspected Raymann had died without knowing anything about his broker's secrets. The idea that the same thing might happen to me was intolerable. I brooded over this entire days at a time in my shop. That's how I am: a brooder, easily obsessed. Capricious, but persistent. Passionate! Now that I think back on it, was I perhaps in love with Delaunay? I'd understood at once that he wasn't part of my brotherhood, and I'd suffered too much in the past from such incompatibilities to expose myself once more to the inconveniences they occasioned. I'd committed myself, yet my entire temperament as an antique dealer urged me to discover what he hid from me. I had to make up for it somehow. It occurred to me that I might do him one better. I'd send the mighty hunter Nimrod on a wild-goose chase!
I took up pad and pencil, and gave my fancy free rein. The result was a snuffbox whose cover was adorned with an engraving that depicted neither a hunting scene nor a libertine tableau-motifs too common to try a sleuth of his talents-but instead a semaphore tower set atop a hill in the heart of a pleasant countryside. Such snuffboxes couldn't have been so common as to be easily located today. In any case, none had ever passed through my hands. To perfect my snare, I specified that my imaginary client wished the body of the object to be made of rowan wood and the lid of ivory or, failing that, horn. I wrote these desiderata beneath my drawing, added this to an actual order for a silver, helmet-shaped sauceboat, preferably on a pedestal base, signed Boulanger if possible, and had it all sent to Delaunay.
Delaunay called at the shop three or four times a month. He never came empty-handed. If he happened not to have located an item vet, he was diligent about bringing me a few charming or original baubles that always sold quickly and turned a nice profit. I'd sent him the messenger on Tuesday. He dropped by Saturday morning.
Delaunay opened his valise and removed a helmet-shaped sauceboat on a pedestal base, hallmarked pre-Empire, and signed Boulanger. I'd sold the piece for nine thousand francs, and counted out three thousand for him on the spot. I would settle with him later for the little knickknacks that rounded out his delivery: a toiletry bag from the time of Louis-Philippe and a gaily decorated billiard cue in its sheepskin sheath.
"Oh! I almost forgot!" he said, stuffing the money in his pocket.
He held out an object wrapped in newspaper. A feeling of unease overtook me. Even before undoing the paper, I knew what I'd find inside. At a certain level of insolence, luck no longer amazes us; it terrifies. I finished opening the package and took hold of the snuffbox with a trembling hand. It was indeed as I'd imagined and drawn. The body was of rowan wood. The rectangular lid of yellowed horn was embellished with an engraving of unsophisticated workmanship, depicting a semaphore atop a knoll in a rural setting.
"The scene is simple and the etching clumsy," said Delaunay. "Midnineteenth century, no doubt. But your client wanted a semaphore, and got one! The configuration of the arms on the tower means `T.' I suppose some Thenard or Tournier, in charge of a signal post, wished to keep some souvenir of his vacation."