"Going at sixty guineas, then."
"Sixty-five," a new bidder intervened.
The comedian, with his hammer already poised in the air, paused in some surprise. A clean-shaven man in dark grey clothes and a bowler hat, a man who had somehow the air of being a little out of his element in this galaxy of pleasure seekers, caught his eye.
"Sixty-five you said, sir. Very good. Going at sixty-five."
"Seventy," Jocelyn Thew bid.
"Seventy-five."
"Eighty."
"Eighty-five."
"Ninety."
"Ninety-five."