Cat O'Nine Tales: And Other Stories (17 page)

“But how can
you be so sure of its provenance?”

“That’s what I
do for a living,” said Max with confidence. “But you can always have the piece
carbon-dated, and if I’m proved wrong, you won’t have to pay for it.”

“Can’t ask for
more than that,” said Lord
Kennington
, “so I suppose
I’ll have to fly to America and bid for the piece myself,” he added, thumping
the arm of the leather chair. A cloud of elderly dust rose into the air.

“I wonder if
that would be wise, my lord,” said Max, “after all...”

“And why not?” demanded
Kennington
.

“It’s just
that, if you were to fly to the States without explanation, it might arouse
unnecessary curiosity among certain members of your family,” Max paused, “and
if you were then spotted in an auction house...”

“I take your
point,” said
Kennington
, and looking across at Max
added, “so what do you
advise
, old boy?”

“I would be
only too happy to represent your lordship’s interests,” said Max.

“And what would
you charge for such a service?” Lord
Kennington
inquired.

“One thousand
pounds plus expenses,” said Max, “against two and a half percent of the hammer
price, which I can assure you is standard practice.”

Lord
Kennington
removed his checkbook from an inside pocket and
wrote out the figure £1,000. “How much do you estimate the piece might fetch?”
he asked casually.

Max was pleased
that Lord
Kennington
had raised the subject of price,
as it would have been his next question. “That will depend on whether anyone
else is privy to our little secret,” said Max.

“However, I
would suggest that you place an upper limit of fifty thousand dollars on the
piece.”

“Fifty
thousand?” spluttered
Kennington
in disbelief.

“Hardly
excessive,” suggested Max, “remembering that a complete set could fetch more
than a million...” he paused...”or nothing, were your brother to acquire the
red king.”

“I take your
point,” repeated
Kennington
. “But you still might be
able to pick it up for a few hundred dollars.”

“Let’s hope
so,” said Max.

Max Glover left
White’s Club a few minutes after three, explaining to his host that he had
another appointment that afternoon, which indeed he did.

Max checked his
watch and decided he still had enough time to stroll through Green Park and not
be late for his next meeting.

Max arrived in
Sloane Square a few minutes before four, and took a seat on a bench opposite
the statue of Sir Francis Drake. He began to rehearse his new script. When he
heard the clock on a nearby tower chime four times, he leaped up and walked
briskly across to
Cadogan
Square. He stopped at No
16, climbed the steps, and rang the doorbell.

James
Kennington
opened the door and greeted his guest with a
smile.

“I rang earlier
this morning,” explained Max. “My name’s Glover.”

James
Kennington
ushered him through to the drawing room and
offered Max a seat by an unlit fire. The younger brother took the seat opposite
him.

Although the
apartment was spacious, even grand, there were one or two clear outlines on the
walls to suggest where pictures had once hung. Max suspected that they were not
being cleaned or reframed. Gossip columns regularly referred to the Hon.
James’s drinking habits and hinted at several unpaid gambling debts.

When Max came
to the end of his tale, he was well prepared for the Hon.

James’s first question.

“How much do
you imagine the piece will fetch, Mr. Glover?”

“A few hundred
dollars,”

Max replied.
“That’s assuming your brother doesn’t find out about the auction.” He paused,
sipped his tea, and added, “In excess of fifty thousand, if he does.”

“But I don’t
have fifty thousand,” said James, something else Max was well aware of. “And if
my brother were to find out,” James continued, “there would be nothing I could
do about it. The terms of the will couldn’t be clearer–whoever finds the red
king inherits the set.”

“I’d be willing
to put up the necessary capital to secure the piece,” said Max, not missing a
beat, “if in turn you would then agree to sell me the set.”

“And how much
would you be willing to pay?” asked James.

“Half a
million,” said Max.

“But Sotheby’s
have already valued a complete set at over a million,” protested James.

“That may well
be the case,” said Max, “but half a million is surely better than nothing,
which would be the outcome if your brother were to learn of the red king’s
existence.”

“But you said
that the red king might sell for a few hundred...”

“In which case,
I would require only a thousand pounds in advance, against two and a half
percent of the hammer price,” said Max for the second time that afternoon.

“That’s a risk
I am quite willing to take,” said James with the smile of someone who believes
he has gained the upper hand. “If the red king should sell for less than fifty
thousand,” he continued, “I’d be able to raise the money myself. If it goes for
more than fifty thousand, you can purchase the piece and I’ll sell you the set
for half a million.” James sipped his tea, before adding, “I can’t lose either
way.”

Neither can I,
thought Max, as he extracted a contract from an inside pocket.

James read the
document slowly. He looked up and said, “You obviously felt confident that I
would fall in with your plan, Mr. Glover.”

“If you
hadn’t,” said Max, “my next visit would have been to your brother, which would
have left you with nothing.

At least now,
to quote you, you can’t lose either way.”

“Presumably I
will have to travel to New York,” said James.

“Not
necessary,” replied Max. “You can bid for the piece by phone, which has the
added advantage that no one
else
will know who’s on
the other end of the line.”

“But how do I
go about that?” asked James.

“It couldn’t be
easier,” Max assured him. “The New York sale begins at two in the afternoon,
which will be seven o’clock in the evening in London. The red king is lot
twenty-three, so I’ll arrange for Phillips to place a call through to you once
they reach lot twenty-one. Just be sure you’re sitting by the phone, with no
one else blocking the line.”

“And you’ll
take over, if it goes above fifty thousand?”

“You have my
word,” said Max, looking him straight in the eye.

Max flew to New
York the weekend before the sale was due to take place. He booked himself into
a small hotel on the East Side and settled for a room not much larger than our
cell, but then he only had enough money left over to cover the endgame.

Max rose early
on the Monday morning. He hadn’t been able to sleep because of an orchestra of
New York traffic and police sirens. He used the time to go over and over the
different permutations that might occur once the sale began. He would be on
center stage for less than two minutes and, if he failed, would be back on the
next plane to Heathrow, with nothing to show for his efforts other than an
overdrawn bank account.

He grabbed a
bagel on the corner of Third and 66th, before walking another few blocks to
Phillips. He spent the rest of the morning at a manuscript sale that was being
held in the room where the Chinese auction would take place. He sat silently at
the back of the room, watching how the Americans conduct an auction, so that he
wouldn’t be wrong-footed later that afternoon.

Max didn’t eat
any lunch, and not just because his meager funds were already stretched to
their limit. Instead, he used the time to make two overseas calls; the first to
Lord
Kennington
, to confirm that he still had his
authority to take the bidding for the red king up to fifty thousand dollars.
Max assured him that, the moment the hammer fell, he would call to let him know
what sum the piece had sold for. A few minutes later Max made a second call,
this time to the Hon. James
Kennington
at his home in
Cadogan
Square. James picked up the phone after one
ring, clearly relieved to hear Max’s voice on the other end of the line. Max
made the Hon. James
Kennington
exactly the same
promise.

Max replaced
the phone and made his way across to the bidding counter, where he gave an
assistant the details of James
Kennington’s
telephone
number in London and told her of his intention to bid for Lot 23.

“Leave it to
us, sir,” the assistant replied. “I’ll make sure we’re in touch with him well
in time.”

Max thanked the
assistant, made his way back to the saleroom and took his favored place on the
end of the eighth row, just to the right of the auctioneer.

He began to
turn the pages of the catalog, checking on items in which he had no interest.
While he sat around, impatiently waiting for the auctioneer to invite bids for
lot number one, he tried to work out who were the dealers, who the serious
bidders and who the simply curious.

By the time the
auctioneer climbed the steps of the rostrum at five minutes to two, the
saleroom was full of expectant faces. At two o’clock the auctioneer smiled down
at his clientele.

“Lot number one,” he declared, “a delicately crafted ivory
fisherman.”

The piece sold
for $850, giving no hint of the drama that was about to follow.

Lot 2 reached
$1,000, but it wasn’t until Lot 17, the figure of a mandarin bent over a desk
reading a ledger, that the $5,000 mark was achieved.

One or two
dealers whose only interest was clearly in later lots began to drift into the
room, while a couple of others left, having failed or succeeded in acquiring
the items they’d been after. Max could hear his heart pounding, although it
would still be some time before the auctioneer reached Lot 23.

He turned his
attention to the row of phones on a long table by the side of the room. Only
three were manned. When the auctioneer called Lot 21, an assistant started to
dial. A few moments later, she cupped a hand over the mouthpiece and began to
whisper. When Lot 22 was offered, she spoke briefly to her client again. Max
assumed that she must be warning James
Kennington
that the red king would be the next item to come under the hammer.

“Lot
twenty-three,” declared the auctioneer glancing down at his notes.
“An exquisitely carved red king, provenance unknown.
Do I
have an opening bid of three hundred dollars?”

Max raised his
catalog.

“Five hundred?”
inquired the auctioneer turning to face the assistant on the phone. She
whispered into the mouthpiece and then nodded firmly. The auctioneer turned his
attention back to Max, who had raised his catalog even before a price had been
suggested.

“I have a bid
of a thousand dollars,” said the auctioneer, returning to face the telephone
bidder. “Two thousand,” he ventured, surprised to see the assistant nod so
quickly.

“Three
thousand?” he suggested as he looked back at Max. The catalog shot up again,
and several dealers at the back of the room began chatting among themselves.

“Four
thousand?” inquired the auctioneer, staring in disbelief at the assistant on
the phone. $5,000, $6,000,

$7,000, $8,000,
$9,000 and $10,000 were overtaken in less than a minute.

The auctioneer
tried desperately to look as if this was exactly what he had anticipated as the
murmurs in the room grew louder and louder. Everyone seemed to have an opinion.
One or two dealers abandoned their favored places and quickly walked to the
back of the room, hoping to find an explanation for the bidding frenzy
Some
were already beginning to make assumptions, but were in
no position to bid under such pressure, especially as the amounts were now going
up in leaps of $5,000.

Max raised his
catalog in response to the
auctioneers
inquiry,
“Forty-five thousand? Are you bidding fifty thousand?” he inquired of the lady
on the telephone.

Everyone in the
room turned to see how she would respond. For the first time she hesitated. The
auctioneer repeated, “Fifty thousand.” She whispered the figure into the phone
and, after a long pause, nodded, but not quite so enthusiastically.

When Max was
offered the piece for $55,000, he also hesitated, taking his time before he
finally raised his catalog.

“Sixty
thousand?” suggested the auctioneer to the assistant on the phone.

Max waited
nervously as she cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and repeated the figure.
Beads of sweat began to appear on Max’s forehead, as he wondered if James
Kennington
had managed to raise more than $50,000, in which
case he would just about clear his expenses on the whole exercise. After what
seemed like an eternity, but was, in fact, only twenty seconds, the assistant
shook her head. She put the phone down.

When the
auctioneer smiled in Max’s direction and said, “Sold to the gentleman on my
left, for fifty-five thousand dollars,” Max felt sick, triumphant, dazed and
relieved all at the same time.

Max remained in
his place, as he waited for the furor to die down. After a dozen more lots had
been disposed of, he slipped quietly out of the room, unaware of the suspicious
stares from dealers, who wondered who he was. He strolled across the thick
green carpet and stopped at the purchasing counter.