“Sixteen-sixteen-sixteen-sixteen-sixteen–worth three hundred– sixteen-sixteen-sixteen-sixteen-sixteen–ought to bring five hundred–sixteen-sixteen-seventeen-seventeen-eighteen-eighteen- nineteen-nineteen-nineteen.” He stopped and eyed the worshippers with a glittering and reproachful eye. They had, it seemed, disappointed him. His lips curled, and he waved a hand towards a grimly uncomfortable-looking chair with insecure legs and a good deal of gold paint about it. “Gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen! You are not here to waste my time; I am not here to waste yours. Am I seriously offered nineteen dollars for this eighteenth-century chair, acknowledged to be the finest piece sold in New York for months and months? Am I–twenty? I thank you. Twenty-twenty-twenty- twenty. YOUR opportunity! Priceless. Very few extant. Twenty-five- five-five-five-thirty-thirty. Just what you are looking for. The only one in the City of New York. Thirty-five-five-five-five. Forty- forty-forty-forty-forty. Look at those legs! Back it into the light, Willie. Let the light fall on those legs!”
Willie, a sort of acolyte, manoeuvred the chair as directed. Reggie van Tuyl, who had been yawning in a hopeless sort of way, showed his first flicker of interest.
“Willie,” he observed, eyeing that youth more with pity than reproach, “has a face like Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy, don’t you think so?”
Archie nodded briefly. Precisely the same criticism had occurred to him.
“Forty-five-five-five-five-five,” chanted the high-priest. “Once forty-five. Twice forty-five. Third and last call, forty-five. Sold at forty-five. Gentleman in the fifth row.”
Archie looked up and down the row with a keen eye. He was anxious to see who had been chump enough to give forty-five dollars for such a frightful object. He became aware of the dog-faced Willie leaning towards him.
“Name, please?” said the canine one.
“Eh, what?” said Archie. “Oh, my name’s Moffam, don’t you know.” The eyes of the multitude made him feel a little nervous “Er–glad to meet you and all that sort of rot.”
“Ten dollars deposit, please,” said Willie.
“I don’t absolutely follow you, old bean. What is the big thought at the back of all this?”
“Ten dollars deposit on the chair.”
“What chair?”
“You bid forty-five dollars for the chair.”
“Me?”
“You nodded,” said Willie, accusingly. “If,” he went on, reasoning closely, “you didn’t want to bid, why did you nod?”
Archie was embarrassed. He could, of course, have pointed out that be had merely nodded in adhesion to the statement that the other had a face like Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy; but something seemed to tell him that a purist might consider the excuse deficient in tact. He hesitated a moment, then handed over a ten-dollar bill, the price of Willie’s feelings. Willie withdrew like a tiger slinking from the body of its victim.
“I say, old thing,” said Archie to Reggie, “this is a bit thick, you know. No purse will stand this drain.”
Reggie considered the matter. His face seemed drawn under the mental strain.
“Don’t nod again,” he advised. “If you aren’t careful, you get into the habit of it. When you want to bid, just twiddle your fingers. Yes, that’s the thing. Twiddle!”
He sighed drowsily. The atmosphere of the auction room was close; you weren’t allowed to smoke; and altogether he was beginning to regret that he had come. The service continued. Objects of varying unattractiveness came and went, eulogised by the officiating priest, but coldly received by the congregation. Relations between the former and the latter were growing more and more distant. The congregation seemed to suspect the priest of having an ulterior motive in his eulogies, and the priest seemed to suspect the congregation of a frivolous desire to waste his time. He had begun to speculate openly as to why they were there at all. Once, when a particularly repellent statuette of a nude female with an unwholesome green skin had been offered at two dollars and had found no bidders–the congregation appearing silently grateful for his statement that it was the only specimen of its kind on the continent–he had specifically accused them of having come into the auction room merely with the purpose of sitting down and taking the weight off their feet.
“If your thing–your whatever-it-is, doesn’t come up soon, Archie,” said Reggie, fighting off with an effort the mists of sleep, “I rather think I shall be toddling along. What was it you came to get?”