"But any criticism you might make of the weapons, of course!" said Lady Brayle, deliberately avoiding the issue and raising her eyebrows. The cold, shrewd grey eyes expressed astonishment "This cute little dagger, now, with the sheath!" she broke off. "Perhaps that might appeal to dear Ricky, Jennifer. Or here, better still…"
Martin gritted his teeth. His glance wandered past her into the main auction-hall. For the most part the spectators, either in chairs or standing up, had pressed close to the long horseshoe table below the rostrum. In the cleared space outside and beyond them, approaching slowly and at a lordly pigeon-toed walk, moved a figure which sent Martin Drake's hopes soaring up. "It's the Old Man," he breathed.
Chapter 3
The auctioneer's voice was small, thin, and at this distance all but inaudible.
"Lot 55… A fine Queen Anne table, grained mahogany, drawers richly gilt, date circa 1721, originally… "
The figure Martin had seen was a large, stout, barrel-shaped gentleman in a white linen suit His spectacles, usually pulled down on his broad nose, were now in place because he held his head up. On his head was a Panama hat, its brim curiously bent, and in his mouth he clamped an unlighted cigar.
As he advanced, his corporation majestically preceding him, there was on his face such a lordly sneer as even the Dowager Countess could never have imitated. Indeed, a close friend of Sir Henry Merrivale would have noticed something a little odd in his behaviour. The brim of the Panama hat, to an imaginative observer, might have been arranged so as to carry sweeping plumes. As he rolled the cigar round in his mouth to get a better grip, his left hand rested negligently in the air as though on the pommel of an imaginary sword. Aloof, disdainful, he sauntered towards the armour-room.
"Or this, for instance!" cried Lady Brayle.
Martin drew his gaze back. Into the room, unobserved, had slipped another figure: the tiny old man, with the white moustache, whom he had seen hunched over a catalogue in the outer room.
From the table Lady Brayle had fished up a heavy iron shield — round, convex, its outer side scored with dull embossments — and balanced it on the edge of the table.