Ashen-faced, Leigh-Travers caught Slade’s glance across the length of the hall. Slade grinned and gave him another lascivious wink. That confirmed it. His vice-chairman had gone certifiably insane. He hurried from the hall to where the paddle girls sat, seized an internal phone and rang the chairman’s office, asking Phyllis to put him through to the Duke of Gateshead as a matter of urgency.
Before he got back to the hall, the bidding had climbed to £100,000 and still Mr Yamamoto would not back off. Slade was raising now in multiples of £10,000 and beginning to worry badly.
He alone knew that millions of pounds lay beneath the two partridge, so why was the Japanese bidding? Did he also know something? Impossible, the painting was a walk-in from Bury St Edmunds. Had Professor Carpenter shot his mouth off somewhere in the Far East? Equally impossible. Did Yamamoto simply like the painting? Had he no taste at all? Did he think the tycoons of Tokyo and Osaka were going to flock to his galleries to buy this rubbish at a profit?
Something had gone wrong, but what? He could not refuse to take the bids from Yamamoto, not in front of the entire hall, but knowing what lay beneath the partridge he could not indicate to Bertram to stop, either, and thus let the work head for Japan.
The rest of the bidders realized something extremely weird was afoot. None of them had ever seen anything like it. Here was an appalling daub on display that normally should never have appeared in anything above a car-boot sale, and two bidders were driving it through the roof. One was an old codger in a walrus moustache and the other was an implacable samurai. The first thought that occurred to all of them was ‘inside knowledge’.
They all knew that the art world was not for the squeamish and that some of the tricks of the trade would have made a Corsican knifeman look like a vicar. Every veteran in the hall recalled the perfectly true tale of the two dealers attending a miserable sale in a decrepit old manor house when one of them spotted a still life of a dead hare, hanging in the stairwell. Not even on display. But they backed a hunch and bought it. The dead hare turned out to be the last recorded painting ever done by Rembrandt. But surely old Harmenszoon on his deathbed and gripped by palsy could not have delivered those awful partridge? So they peered and peered, looking for the hidden talent, but could see none. And the bidding went on.
At £200,000 there was a disturbance in the doorway as people gave way and the wuthering height of the Duke of Gateshead slipped in. He stood against the back wall like a condor alert for a bit of living flesh to peck.
By £240,000 Slade’s self-control was beginning to disintegrate. A sheen of sweat beaded his forehead and reflected the glare of the lights. His voice had gone up several octaves. Something inside him screamed for this farce to stop, but he could not stop it. His carefully scripted scenario was completely out of control.
At a quarter of a million the tic near his left eye began to act up. Across the hall old Bertram saw the endless winking and just went on bidding. By this point Slade wanted him to stop, but Bertram knew his orders: one wink, one bid.
‘Against you, sir,’ Slade squawked at the pebble glasses from Tokyo. There was a long pause. He prayed the nightmare would finally end. In a clear voice Mr Yamamoto said, ‘Hai.’ Slade’s left eye was going like the front end of a speeding ambulance, so Bertram raised his paddle.
At £300,000 Leigh-Travers whispered furiously in the duke’s ear and the condor began to move purposefully down the wall towards his employee Bertram. In the silent hall all eyes were on the Japanese. He suddenly rose, placed his paddle on his seat, bowed formally to Peregrine Slade, and walked towards the door. The crowd parted as the Red Sea before Moses.
‘Going once,’ said Slade weakly, ‘twice.’
His gavel banged on the block and the room erupted. As always with the ending of unbearable tension, everyone wanted to say something to his neighbour. Slade recovered somewhat, wiped his brow, handed over the rest of the sale to Leigh-Travers and descended his podium.
Bertram, released from his duty, headed for his cubbyhole to brew a nice cup of tea.
The duke bent his head to his vice-chairman and hissed: ‘My office. Five minutes, if you please.’
‘Peregrine,’ he began when they were alone in the chairman’s suite. No more ‘Perry’ or ‘dear old bean’. Even the façade of amiability was gone. ‘May I ask exactly what the devil you thought you were doing down there?’
‘Conducting an auction.’
‘Don’t patronize me, sir. That appalling daub of two partridge, it was junk.’
‘At first sight.’
‘You were buying it in. For the House. Why?’
From his breast pocket Slade retrieved the two-page letter and report from Professor Carpenter at the Colbert.
‘I hope this explains why. I should have had it for £5,000, maximum. But for that lunatic Japanese, I would have.’
The Duke
of Gateshead read the report carefully in the sunlight from the window, and his expression changed. His ancestors had murdered and plundered their way to prominence, and, as with Benny Evans, old genes die hard.
‘Different complexion, old bean, entirely different complexion. Who else knows about this?’
‘No-one. I received the report at my home last month and kept it to myself. Stephen Carpenter, me, now you. That’s it. Fewer the better, I thought.’
‘And the owner?’
‘Some idiot Scot. To cover our backs, I offered him £50,000. The fool turned it down. I have my letter and the tape of his rejection. Now, of course, I wish he had taken it. But I could not foresee that crazy Japanese this morning. Damn near robbed us of it.’
The duke thought for several moments. A fly buzzed on the pane, loud as a chainsaw in the silence.
‘Cimabue,’ he murmured. ‘Duccio. Good God, we haven’t had one of those in the House for years. Seven, eight million? Look, settle up with this owner without delay. I’ll sanction. Who do you want for the restoration? The Colbert?’