A face, half-remembered, drifted past and was lost Martin returned the greeting vaguely. He heard a fashionably dressed woman talking, with greed and not for antiquarian reasons, about the display of carpets. An old man with a. white moustache, obviously a dealer, stood hunched over his catalogue.
The main auction-room was long and high. Sunlight sparkled against its grimy glass roof. At the rear, blue-smocked attendants lounged or stood with arms folded in front of a line of ticketed exhibits. The auctioneer's desk, like a high-set rostrum, faced out over a very long horseshoe-shaped table, covered with green felt round which would gather the chairs of the eagerest bidders. Martin had loathed crowds — no matter how soft-voiced or shuffling — ever since that night on the train. The whole room seemed to hiss at him.
"Get it dirt-cheap if the dealers don't…"
"Jump in at the beginning! That's when people are cautious, and…"
No!
Just off the main hall, at the right, opened another showroom smaller and narrower than the others. Here were displayed the items for the next sale, which would be on Monday. Arms and armour, of course! That was why he was here!
On two tables along the narrow sides of the room, and a long one down the centre, they had thrown rapiers, daggers, hand-and-a-half swords, even two-handed swords. Many were tied in bundles, most of them. unpolished. Round the walls there hung, very highly polished, the more obvious of the choice items. The only other person in the room was a girl, at the other end of the centre table, her back towards him, searching through a handbag.
Martin looked round.
The walls glittered with steel in low, dim-burning electric light. Halberds and guisarmes with long light shafts and undulled points. A wicked-looking main-gauche. What seemed to be — he took a step forward — a Thomas cup-hilt This was Martin's hobby; he wished he had a Monday's catalogue.
Then the girt at the other end of the table turned round. And he saw that it was Jenny.