"Oh, r," said Edith.
"Aye," promised Bert.
Chapter 4
Leaning against a Chippendale chifferobe, Dortmunder watched two Japanese gentlemen bid against one another for a small porcelain bowl with a bluebird painted inside it. That is, he assumed it was the two Japanese gentlemen who were doing the bidding, since their slight head-nods were the only activity in the crowded room apart from the steady chanting of the impeccably dark-suited young auctioneer: "Seven twenty-five. Seven-fifty. Seven-fifty on my right. Seven seventy-five. Eight hundred. Eight twenty-five. Eight twenty-five on my left. Eight twenty-five? Eight-fifty. Eight seventy-five."
They'd started at two hundred, and Dortmunder had by now become bored, but he was determined to stay here in this spot long enough to find out just how much a rich Japanese would spend on a peanut bowl with a bird in it.
Here was one of the auction rooms at Parkeby-South, a large auctioneer-appraisal firm in Sackville Street, not far north of Piccadilly. Occupying a bewildering cluster of rooms and staircases in two adjacent buildings, the firm was one of the oldest and most famous in its line of work, with connections to similar companies in New York, Paris and Zurich. Under this roof – or these roofs – were miles of rare books, acres of valuable carpet, a veritable Louvre of paintings and statuary, a bull's dream of china and glass, and enough armoires, commodes, tallboys, chiffoniers, secretaries, wardrobes, rolltop desks and cellarets to fill every harem in the world. The place looked like San Simeon, with Hearst just back from Europe.
There were three kinds of rooms at Parkeby-South. There were half a dozen auction rooms filled with people seated on rows of wooden folding chairs as they bid incredible amounts for marble thises and crystal thats; there were display rooms crammed with everything from a life-size bronze statue of General Pershing's horse to a life-size blown-glass bumblebee; and finally there were rooms behind closed doors featuring the discreet notice: PRIVATE. Modest unarmed gray-haired guards in dark blue uniforms made no ostentatious display of themselves, but to Dortmunder's practiced eye they were everywhere, and when Dortmunder experimentally pushed open a PRIVATE door to see what would happen, one of these guards immediately materialized from the molding and said, with a helpful smile, "Yes, sir?"
"Looking for the men's room."
"That's up on the first floor, sir. You can't miss it."
They were already on the first floor. Dortmunder thanked him, collected Kelp from his mesmerized pose in front of a glass cabinet full of gold rings, and went on upstairs, where he was now watching a pair of Orientals struggle with one another for a jelly-bean bowl.
He was also brooding. There must be over a million dollars worth of goods in this building. Guards were all over the joint like flu in January, and so far as Dortmunder could see there were no burglar alarms on the windows. Which could only mean live guards in the place all night long.
"Eleven hundred," said the auctioneer. They were going by fifties now. "Eleven-fifty. That's eleven-fifty on my left. Eleven-fifty? No? Eleven-fifty on my left." Clack went the hockey puck in his left hand onto the top of his wooden rostrum. "Sold for eleven-fifty. Item number one fifty-seven, a pair of vases."
While a pair of gray-smocked employees held up the pair of vases – also porcelain, they featured one-footed flamingoes on their sides – Kelp whispered in disbelief, "They paid eleven hundred fifty dollars for that little bowl?"
"Pounds," Dortmunder whispered back. "English money."
"Eleven hundred fifty pounds? How much is that in cash?"
"More," said Dortmunder, who didn't know.
"Two grand?"
"Something like that. Let's get out of here."
"Two grand for a little bowl," Kelp said, following Dortmunder out to the hall. Behind them, the auctioneer had started the bidding on the vases at six hundred. Pounds, not dollars.
Out on the street, Dortmunder turned toward Piccadilly, but Kelp lagged behind, looking wistfully back. "Come on," Dortmunder said, but Kelp still dawdled, looking over his shoulder. Dortmunder frowned at him: "What's the matter?"
"I'd like to live there," Kelp said. He turned to grin wistfully at Dortmunder, but his expression changed almost immediately into a puzzled stare. He seemed to be looking now at something across the street.
Dortmunder, facing the same way, saw nothing. "What now?" he said. "You wanna live in that silver store?"
"I thought – No, it couldn't have been."
"You thought what?"
"Just for a second–" Kelp shrugged and shook his head. "There was a guy looked like Porculey," he said. "Fat like him. He went in one of those doors over there. You know the way people look like other people. Especially out of town."
"People look like other people out of town?"
"Couldn't have been him, though," Kelp said, and at last he moved briskly forward, leaving Dortmunder staring after him. Looking back, Kelp said, "Well? You coming?"
Chapter 5
"I'm discouraged," Dortmunder said.
Chauncey looked up from his brussels sprouts. "I'm sorry to hear you say that."
The four of them were at dinner in Chauncey's apartment, the meal prepared by Edith and served with many whispered r's by Bert. This was their first repast together since their arrival yesterday, the jet lag caused by the five-hour time difference having thrown them all off for a while. Chauncey had kept himself awake yesterday with Dexedrine and asleep last night with seconal and by this morning had become completely adjusted to British time. The others seemed to have fared less well, with Zane the most obvious sufferer. The man's bleached face was even more pallid and gaunt than usual, and his limp had progressed to a level of grotesquerie not seen in these parts since the days of the Black Death.
As for Dortmunder and Kelp, jet lag and a strange environment seemed merely to confirm both in their pre-existing personalities. Dortmunder was more dour, Kelp giddier, though Kelp this morning had briefly been in an extremely foul mood, apparently brought on by the ultimate arrangement of sleeping accommodations in the guest room. Zane, through a combination of medical necessity and native harshness, had occupied the double bed, alone, with Dortmunder taking the cot; leaving Kelp to sleep on an assemblage of pillows and comforters on the floor. The opened-out cot, however, having already taken up most of the available extra space, Kelp had been forced to recline with his head under the dresser and his feet under the bed, which had resulted in his doing himself some sort of injury when he'd awakened, startled, from a bad dream in the middle of the night.
Kelp's essential good humor had soon returned, however, and he'd seemed basically cheerful when he and Dortmunder left early this afternoon to look over the situation at Parkeby-South. Chauncey himself had gone out not long after, having tea with friends in Albert Hall Mansions, and had seen none of his guests until dinnertime, when his question to Dortmunder about the result of his visit to Parkeby-South had produced the word discouraged.
A word on which Dortmunder was willing to expand: "The place is full of rich stuff," he said. "And full of guards. And it looks to me like there's guards in there at night, when they're closed. I didn't see any alarm systems, but there could be."
"You mean you can't get in?"
"I can get in," Dortmunder said. "I can get in and out anywhere. That's not the problem."
"Then what is the problem?"
"The idea," Dortmunder reminded him, "is to switch these paintings without anybody knowing it. Now, you turn off a burglar alarm and you're home free, you can come and go and nobody the wiser. But you can't walk in and out of a place full of live guards without somebody seeing you."