memory.
There were only two people present, a couple, who looked as if they might be thrill-seekers. Quite proletarian in appearance, they were being watched with vague, discreet apprehension by the auctioneers, smooth men in business suits who looked as if they might just have flown in from New York. Mr. Thorn, catching a little of that watchfulness, observed the couple too.
At one end of the rear rank of folding chairs sat Mary Rogers. (Thorn was not to learn her name until a little later.) Mary's long hair was sand-colored, somewhat curly, and usually disheveled. Her age was twenty-one, her face freckled and attractive, her disposition choleric. Her body was all shapely strength, superbly suitable for work and childbearing, and would have made an ideal model for some artist's healthy peasant—though Mary would not have made a very good peasant, or peasant's wife, or, for that matter, a very good artist's model either. She planned to use her strength in different ways, in a dedicated lifelong selfless service of humanity. She always visualized humanity as young, I am quite sure, and as eternally oppressed. Well, there are billions of youth in the world, after all, more or less oppressed. Probably cases exist even in Scottsdale. But in that auction room, alas, were none at all; Mary had to have some other reason to be there.
The auctioneers, as I have said, were a bit uneasy about this young, comparatively poorly dressed couple. What bothered them was not the fact that Mary wore blue jeans—so did a couple of other women in that small crowd. But Mary's jeans were probably of the wrong brand, and their fadedness suggested not some manufacturer's process, but utilitarian wear. Successful experts in the world of fine art can be amazingly sensitive to subtle differences in color and texture, not only in the merchandise but in the customers.
But mainly I think it was that the faces of Mary and her escort stood out in that little gathering. Their countenances were not filled with thinly veiled greed for the treasures (so far only quite minor ones) displayed, nor with calculation as to how to bid on them. Oh, it was evident enough from Mary's face that she had
Whatever apprehensions the auctioneers may have developed regarding Mary—that she might be contemplating some mad attempt at robbery, or an even more hopeless effort at social protest—these doubts must have been at least somewhat allayed by the face and attitude of the young man seated at her side. He was a bearded young man, with his arms folded in his not very expensive checked sports shirt. His look was not one of fanaticism, but of uncomfortable loyalty. He was bracing himself, perhaps—but not for bullets, only for boredom or embarrassment.
Also present, to define the opposite end of the auctioneers' spectrum of respect, was Ellison Seabright. When Seabright entered the front door, a few minutes after Mr. Thorn, the salesmen gave him the warmest welcome they could manage without seeming to be effusive about it, without drawing possibly unwelcome attention to his presence: the greeting for a celebrity, but one who temporarily has more attention than he wants.
Seabright was about fifty years old. In general appearance, he reminded Mr. Thorn strongly of Rodrigo Borgia. Mr. Seabright weighed about three hundred pounds, Thorn judged, and if the tales of the family wealth were anywhere near accurate he might have balanced himself in gold and had enough left over to purchase any painting or sculpture that he might desire. According to the publicity that had begun to appear since his brother's kidnapping and strange death, it was a family trait to desire a good many.
Ellison Seabright, from where he stood in quiet conversation with the auctioneers, once or twice shot a hurried, grim glance in the direction of Mary Rogers—as if he knew her, which was interesting. Mr. Thorn, from his chair in the front row, could not tell how the young woman in the rear reacted to these glances, if at all.
The other potential bidders in the room all glowed in their not very distinctive auras of material wealth. The auctioneers, when they conferred privately (as they thought) among themselves in the next room, had voiced hopes that a local record was going to be set. They were daring to compare themselves tonight with Christie's, with Sotheby Parke Bernet. This time, even leaving aside such relatively minor treasures as Mimbres bowls and Chinese jade, this time they had a probably genuine Verrocchio to put on the block.
Mr. Thorn was doubtless among those they were counting on to run the bidding up when it officially began tomorrow night. Although they had never seen or heard of him before, it was surely apparent to such artistically expert eyes that Thorn's dark suit had been tailored at one of the best London shops, and that his shoes were a good match for the suit. He wore, on the third finger of his right hand, a worn-thin ring of ancient gold. His general appearance was at least as elegant as that of Mr. Seabright.
The height of the two men was about the same, somewhat above the average. Thorn's weight was considerably less—though not so very much less as it appeared to be. He looked to be Seabright's junior by ten or fifteen years, but that comparison was deceptive too. Their faces were both striking, in different ways: Seabright's for massive arrogance, Thorn's—in a way not nearly so massive. As for their relative wealth—but Mr. Thorn had not really come to Scottsdale to bid and buy.
'No, I'm sure it's going to go to Ellison,' Mary Rogers was whispering to her dour young companion with the sandy beard. 'The old bastard probably has more money than all these others put together. And he wants it, I know how he wants it. After what he's done already he's not going to let mere money stop him.'
There were several rows of chairs between Mary and Mr. Thorn. The room was abuzz with the noise of other conversations. And her whisper was really more discreet—that was the key word of the evening, up to now—than her misfit appearance promised. So Mary's words could be heard only by her friend seated beside her, and by Mr. Thorn, whose ears were wonderfully keen. Also it is a fact that Thorn was constitutionally unable to ignore either of the two women in the room he found genuinely attractive.
The second genuinely attractive woman was dark and slender, somewhere in her mid-thirties, and sheathed in a gown that you might think had been designed expressly to wear while inspecting expensive art. She was physically young for her years, but not as young as she wanted to be or tried to be. Probably to no one's surprise, she was clinging to Ellison Seabright's right arm. Certain subtleties of body language in her pose suggested to Thorn that she was clinging there in order to avoid having to swim elsewhere. At the moment her massive escort was standing at the right end of the front row of chairs, in conversation with the head auctioneer, and with one who must be a fellow collector, a bearded elderly gentleman wearing another New York suit. Seabright was turning his massive head, looking round him in irritation. 'Where's Gliddon?' he was inquiring of the world in general, though his voice was hardly more than whisper-loud. A voice not in the least Borgia, but thoroughly American. 'Got as far as the front door with me, and then . . .'
A bodyguard even taller than Seabright, and almost as wide, stood nearby teetering on his toes. He was not very obtrusive, handling at least the passive aspects of his job quite well. The dark woman clung to Seabright's arm, smiled brightly, and seemed to attend closely to his every word, meanwhile wistfully wishing that she were somewhere else. Mr. Thorn could tell. He had hopes of soon discovering her name.
'Then you might as well give up, hadn't you?' the young man at Mary Rogers's side was whispering into her ear. His tone was quietly despairing, that of one who knows full well that argument is folly, but feels compelled to argue anyway. 'You think he's going to listen to any kind of an appeal now?'
'No.' Mary's monosyllable was quietly ominous.
'Then why the hell did we come here? I thought . . .'
At that point every conversation in the room trailed into silence.
Through a curtained doorway at the front of the room, between the two large tables, two armed and uniformed men came into view, rolling a mobile stand between them. The stand was draped with a white cloth, completely covering the upright rectangle that was its cargo. The rectangle was about the size of the top of a card table, somewhat larger than Mr. Thorn had been expecting. Then he remembered the frame. According to the news stories and the sale catalogue, a frame had been added to the painting, probably sometime during the eighteenth century.
With the stand positioned on the dais between the tables, the two armed men stood still, alert, on either side of it. An auctioneer came to join them, placing his pale hand on the white cloth. He let his showman's hand stay there, motionlessly holding the cloth, while in a low voice he made a brief and scrupulously correct announcement.
'Ladies and gentlemen, as most of you know, Verrocchio has signed this piece. But in the time and place in
