Several real collectors had turned up in the cafe and sat about saying their antiques were honest. We were all in brilliant humor, exchanging stories and gossip. Such a cheerful scene, everybody entering into the act and taking risks in deals. It was one of those marvelous times.
I told you I'm a believer in the gifts people have, and luck. Luck is partly made by oneself. Go out feeling lucky, make yourself behave lucky, and you will probably become lucky. Let yourself slip into the opposite frame of mind and you'll lose your shirt.
There'd been two flint collectors and one flint dealer in Jim's papers, and both collectors were in my files. The dealer, Froude, a pal of Harry's, wasn't bad, just cheap and useless, so I could forget him. The collectors were different mettle. One, a retired major called Lister, was a knowledgeable Rutland man who ran a smallholding in that delectable county. He knew what he was about. The second spelled even more trouble, had an enviable record in my card system as a dedicated and lucky collector given to sudden spurts of buying, often without relevance to the seasonal state of the market. Brian Watson was by all accounts one of those quiet-spoken northerners who seem quite untypical of the usual image people have of cheerful, noisy extroverts laughing and singing around pints in telly serials. I had almost all Watson's purchases documented, but though I'd never actually met him at sales, I'd heard he was hesitant, not given to confidences but gravitating with a true collector's instinct toward the quality stuff. A good collector, Watson, who'd spend what seemed about two years' salary in an hour, then vanish for up to a year back to his native Walkden. Also on Jim's list were Harry, Adrian, and Jane together, Margaret, good old Dandy Jack, Muriel's Holy Joe Lagrange, Brad, Dick from the boatyard, and Tinker Dill, among the dross. And Muriel.
Now, of all those people, Brian Watson was significant because he already had one of the pairs of Durs duelers, and so was Major Lister of Rutland, because he'd been making offers to Watson for them ever since Eve dressed. The field was getting pretty big, but I was cock-a-hoop. The pace was quickening. And as I talked in the arcade I smiled to myself at my secret. At the finishing post lay my beautiful unpaid-for Mortimers— loaded. I left the cafe and wandered through the arcade.
Tinker Dill was at my elbow full of news. We pretended to examine a phony Persian astrolabe. It was described by Harry Bateman as "medieval" and priced accordingly. My sneer must have been practically audible. Don't overestimate their value, incidentally. Eighteenth-century Continental ones are usually more pricey, though they're all in vogue, and certain firms in Italy make excellent copies.
"You're getting busy, aren't you, Lovejoy?"
"Whatever can you mean?" I was all innocent.
"Bending Jim like that." He enjoyed the thought of Jim's injuries almost as much as a sale.
"I'm quite unrepentant." I put the astrolabe down, feeling it unclean, and took Tinker back into the nosh bar, where we could talk.
I told him of my developing interest in Watson and Lister. He whistled.
"They're First Division, Lovejoy."
"And Froude."
"He's rubbish."
"I have this about the Field sale."
"Eh?"
Over tea I showed him Jim's lists.
He slurped in his cup. "They're nicked!"
"On loan. Jim's good-hearted." I let him recover. "Heard anything special about any of these names?"
He flipped slowly through the lot, shaking his head each time. "Except the two big ones, that sale was a right load of heave-ho."
"You buy anything, Tinker?"
It hurt him. "You know me, Lovejoy. Antiques aren't my business."
I grinned in great good humor.
"Neither of those bought anything? Try to remember, Tinker." He would. It's like being a football fan. Just as they can recall incidents from games seen twenty years past, so we can tick off auctions as if they'd been yesterday.
You might wonder why I didn't just look at the purchasers' names on the invoices. Well. Invoices, however complete, never tell it all. I wish I had time to tell you what goes on in an auction. For every ten lots sold by the auctioneer, another ten are sold among dealers. We buy a lot from the auctioneer sometimes, and even before he's moved on we've sold it to a fellow dealer. All the time it goes on. "Ringing" you already know about, I'm sure, where dealers get together and do not bid for a choice item, say a lovely French commode. When it goes to Dealer A for a paltry sum—i.e., when it's been successfully "ringed"—he'll collect his cronies and they'll auction it again privately in a pub nearby, only on this occasion Dealer A's the auctioneer and his mates are the congregation, so to speak.
You'll probably think this is against the law. Correct, it is. And you may be feeling all smug thinking it is rightly so because whoever's selling her old auntie's precious French antique is being diddled out of the fair auction she's entitled to. Well, I for one disagree. Nobody actually stops the public from bidding, do they? It comes back again to greed, your greed. And why? Answer: You want that valuable commode for a couple of quid, and not a penny more. If you were really honest you'd bid honestly for it. But you won't. How do I know? Because you never do. You go stamping out of auctions grumbling at the price fetched by whatever it was you were after and failed to get. So don't blame the dealer. He's willing to risk his every penny for a bit of gain, while you want medieval Florentine silver caskets for the price of a bus ride. You ring items by your greed. We do it by arrangement. Why your hideous but dead-obvious greed should be quite legal and our honesty illegal beats me.
"That Bible pistol," Tinker remembered. "Not too bad. I did drop a note in at your cottage, Lovejoy."
"I passed it up."
"Watson bought it."
"In his usual style?"
Tinker's eyes glowed with religious fervor. "You bet." He rolled a damp fag and struggled to set it afire. "It was in one of his buying sprees. You know him, quiet and hurrying. I reckon he should have been a cop. Busy, busy, busy."
I wrote a mental tick against Watson's name. He'd attended six auctions that week, and the date matched no fewer than eight postal purchases, all after a ten-month gap. Phenomenal.
"Major Lister buy, did he?"
"Yes, a set of masonic jewels for some museum." I knew about those and the Stevens silk prints he'd bought as well.
"All in all," I asked, "a quiet, busy little auction with more than the average mixture of good stuff?"
"Sure. And not a bad word uttered," Tinker said, puffing triumphantly.
I let his little quip pass impatiently. "Is that list of people complete? Think."
He thought. "As ever was." He shrugged. "The odd housewife, perhaps."
"Thanks, Tinker. Anything else?"
He told me of the Edwardian postcards from Clacton, the Regency furniture at Bishop's Stortford, that crummy load of silver being unloaded up in the Smoke, and the Admiralty autograph letters being put on offer in Sussex. I knew them all but slipped him a note.
"You got them Mortimers, then," he said as we parted.
"A hundred quid," I replied modestly. He was still laughing at the joke as I left to see Margaret's collection of English lace christening gowns.
"Sorry about everything, Lovejoy." She pecked my face and brewed up. There were a couple of customers hanging around, one after pottery, one after forgeries. (Don't laugh—collectors of forgeries will walk past a genuine Leonardo cartoon to go crazy over a forged Braque squiggle.) As they drifted out she hooked her "Closed" notice on the door.
"I've had a drink, Margaret, thanks."