Page:Stevenson - The Wrecker (1892).djvu/157

Rh the auctioneer, “one hundred dollars. No other gentleman inclined to make any advance? One hundred dollars, only one hundred dollars——”

The auctioneer was droning on to some such tune as this, and I, on my part, was watching with something between sympathy and amazement the undisguised emotion of Captain Trent, when we were all startled by the interjection of a bid.

“And fifty,” said a sharp voice.

Pinkerton, the auctioneer, and the boys, who were all equally in the open secret of the ring, were now all equally and simultaneously taken aback.

“I beg your pardon,” said the auctioneer. “Anybody bid?”

“And fifty,” reiterated the voice, which I was now able to trace to its origin, on the lips of a small, unseemly rag of human-kind. The speaker's skin was gray and blotched; he spoke in a kind of broken song, with much variety of key; his gestures seemed (as in the disease called Saint Vitus's dance) to be imperfectly under control; he was badly dressed; he carried himself with an air of shrinking assumption, as though he were proud to be where he was and to do what he was doing, and yet half expected to be called in question and kicked out. I think I never saw a man more of a piece; and the type was new to me; I had never before set eyes upon his parallel, and I thought instinctively of Balzac and the lower regions of the Comédie Humaine.

Pinkerton stared a moment on the intruder with no friendly eye, tore a leaf from his note-book, and scribbled a line in pencil, turned, beckoned a messenger boy, and whispered, “To Longhurst.” Next moment the boy had sped upon his errand, and Pinkerton was again facing the auctioneer.

“Two hundred dollars,” said Jim.

“And fifty,” said the enemy.

“This looks lively,” whispered I to Pinkerton.