The Skeleton in the Clock

'Mr. Auctioneer!'

Shaken but indomitable, Lady Brayle made her voice ring out

'Mr. Auctioneer!'

Up from a hidden cubicle, to the auctioneer's right, popped that bald-headed gnome who at Willaby's takes your cheque or bobs up at intervals to see whether you are one whose cheque may be taken. He and the auctioneer seemed to hold a flashing pince-nez conference.

'Mr. Auctioneer,' screamed Lady Brayle, and pointed dramatically, 'I demand that these two men be ejected from the room!'

The auctioneer's voice was very soft and clear. 'Have the gentlemen been guilty of unbecoming conduct my lady7' 'Yes, they have!'

'May I ask the nature of the conduct?'

Truth, stern truth, will not be denied.

'This old trout' bellowed Sir Henry Merrivale, snatching the weapon from Martin's hands, 'thinks we stuck her in the behind with a halberd.'

The meek little man with the white moustache, appearing at H.M.'s elbow, tapped him softly on the shoulder.

'No, no, no!' he protested. 'No, no, no, no!'

H.M. turned round an empurpled visage.

'What d'ye mean, no?' he thundered. 'Didn't you hear Beowulf’s Mother yellin’ for the chuckers-out?' 'Not a halberd, my good sir! Not a halberdl' 'Ain't it?'

'No, I assure you! A fine seventeenth-century guisarme.'

H.M., his feet wide apart, the shaft of the weapon planted on the floor like a noble Carolean soldier, now made the situation perfectly clear.

'This old trout,' he bellowed, 'thinks we stuck her in the behind with a seventeenth-century guisarme.'

Through the audience ran a sort of suppressed shiver. Martin Drake noted, with amazement and pleasure, that it was not a shiver of horror. It was the spasmodic tension of those who try, by keeping face-muscles rigid, to avoid exploding with mirth. One elderly man, with an eyeglass and withered jowls, had stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth. Another lay face downwards across the table, his shoulders heaving. Even with the auctioneer it was a near thing.

'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.'