"I feel sure, my lady, that there has been an unfortunate accident." He made a slight gesture to the blue-smocked attendants. His voice grew thinly colourless. "Lot 71. Here we have …" And H.M. and Lady Brayle were left alone in a sort of closed ring, surreptitiously watched.
"Henry," the old lady said calmly.
"Uh-huh?"
"I am compelled to tell you something. For nine generations," declared Lady Brayle in a shaky voice, "your family have held the baronetcy in a direct line. Yet speak I must — Henry, you are not a gentleman."
"So I'm not a gentleman, hey?" inquired H.M., getting a firmer grip on the guisarme.
"No, you are not."
"Listen, Sophie," said H.M… tapping her on the shoulder. "I'm going to show you just how goddam gentlemanly I really am. I've had a reincarnation. Got it?"
Lady Brayle, whose confused mind evidently connected this with some sort of surgical operation, stared at him. Swiftly, silently, the bidding rippled round the table, followed by the tap of the hammer. It was the Words, "Lot 72," followed by a sudden loud murmur to drown out the next part, which galvanized Lady Brayle. The spectators, though interested, seemed reluctant to bid.
"Shall we start it at five pounds?… Five? … Will anyone say five?"
"I really," cried Lady Brayle, "cannot continue this childish discussion any longer." In haste and anxiety, which often happens at such moments, her contralto rang loudly. "Five pounds!"
"I was a Cavalier poet," said H.M. "TEN POUNDS!"
A horrible suspicion seemed to strike Lady Brayle as she whirled round.
"Henry, you are not bidding? — Twenty!"
"Lord love a duck, what d'ye think I'm here for? — Thirty!" "Henry, this is too much. —Forty!"
"It's no good gettin' mad, Sophie. — Fifty!"
Lady Brayle, instead of directing her bids at the auctioneer, advanced her face towards H.M.
"Sixty!" she hissed.
H.M. also advanced his own unmentionable visage. "Seventy!" he hissed back.
The buzz of voices, never before heard in such volume at Willaby's, rose like a locust-storm. Twisting and swaying, the crowd pressed forward to get a look at what was being' exhibited. It is recorded that one lady, maddened, climbed up on a stranger's back so that she could see. Martin, his own sight obscured, tugged at the great man's coat-tail.
"Listen, sir! Take it easy! You don't even know what it is!"
"I don't care what it is," yelled H.M. "Whatever it is, this old trout's not goin' to get it"
"This, is malice," said Lady Brayle. "This is insufferable. This is pure childishness. I will end it." Her voice rose in calm triumph. "One — hundred — pounds."
"Oh, Sophie!" grunted H.M. in a distressed tone. "You're playin' for monkey-nuts. Let's make it really interesting. — Two hundred pounds!"
"Gentlemen," observed a voice in the crowd, "here we go again."
"Two hundred and ten? Two hundred and ten?"
But Lady Brayle, a very shrewd woman, clamped her jaws. Undoubtedly she knew that the old sinner in front of her, whose cussedness was without depth or measure, would cheerfully have gone to a thousand. Catching the auctioneer's eye, she shook her head. Then she adjusted the rakish fashionable hat on her grey-white hair.
"Jennifer!" she called.
But Jenny did not reply, nor was she in sight
"You will meet me," her grandmother spoke carefully to the air, "at Claridge's for lunch. One o'clock." Then she turned for a final remark to H.M.
"I must tell you something else," she continued. Martin
Drake saw, for the first time, the very real ruthlessness of her mouth, and of the wrinkles round, mouth and eyes. "You, and in particular your friend Captain Drake, are going to regret. this for the rest of your lives."
And, drawing a pair of white gloves from her handbag, she marched slowly towards the outer room and the stairs.
There no longer appeared to be any comedy in this. Open war. All right!
Searching round for Jenny, Martin saw her signal. Along the long right-hand wall where stood exhibits overflowing from those at the back, Jenny looked out from between a high lacquered wardrobe and a row of gilt-and-satin chairs. He went to her, and they regarded each other in silence.
"I ought to be furious with you," Jenny said. "I ought to say I'd never speak to you again. Only…"
Again he saw the contrast between the placidness of her appearance and the extraordinary violence of her emotions. Ancient Willaby's was treated to the spectacle of a girl throwing her arms round a young man's neck, and the young man kissing her with such return violence as to endanger the equilibrium of the wardrobe.
But the spectators had returned intently to their bidding. Nobody saw them except an attendant of thirty-five years' service, who shook his head despondently.
"I do love you," said Jenny, detaching herself reluctantly. "But — however did you have the nerve to take that halberd or what-do-you-call-it, and…"
"I didn't," he admitted. "When your grandmother let out that yelp—"
"Darling, you shouldn't have done it." (This was perfunctory.)
"— when she yelped, and everybody looked round, I felt about two inches high with embarrassment Then I took one look at H.M., and I felt about nine feet high. There's something about the old ba… the old boy's personality. It's like an electric current."
The gentleman in question, having detached himself from the spectators, was now lumbering towards them in the aisle between bidders and wall From the arms-room he had retrieved his, Panama hat He carried the guisarme like a mighty man of war, thumping down its shaft at every step. But, when an attendant took it from him, it was with such a deferential, "If you please, sir," that H.M. only scowled. Then he surveyed Martin and Jenny.
"Not for the world," he said querulously, "would I show any curiosity. Oh, no. But burn me, I'd like to have some idea of what it is I paid two hundred quid for. They say it's back mere somewhere," he nodded towards the rear of the room, "and I can't get it till the end of the sale."
"Please," urged Jenny. "Lower your voice. I can tell you what it is."
"So?"
"It's a dock. A grandfather clock."
"Well… now!" muttered the great man, and scratched his chin. A vast load seemed lifted from him. "That's not bad. That’s not bad at all. I was sort of picturing myself goin' home with a fine big bit of needlework labelled, 'Jesus give you sleep.'"
"The clock," Jenny explained, "hasn't got any works inside it. There's only a skeleton, fastened upright to the back, with its skull looking out through the glass clock-dial"
The effect of this remark was curious.
Instead of showing surprise or even sarcasm, H.M.'s big face smoothed itself out to utter expressionlessness. His small, sharp eyes fastened on Jenny in a way that evidently disconcerted her. He did not even seem to breathe. The thin voice of the auctioneer sounded far away.
"A skeleton in a clock, hey? That's a bit rummy. Do you happen to know any more about it, my wench?"
"Only — only that they say it used to belong to a doctor in our neighborhood. Years ago he sold it, or gave it away, or something. Then he died."
"Uh-huh. Don't stop there. Go on."
"Well! Aunt Cicely, that's Lady Fleet, saw it in Willaby's catalogue. She thought it would be nice as a present for Dr. Laurier; he's the son of the old doctor, you see. Aunt Cicely is kind. But she's so vague, though she's still very pretty, that she asked grandmother to bid."