The next bid was four hundred marks.
Guido went to four fifty.
Then a pause.
The auctioneer called for other bids.
"No offers?
Going for the first time . . . going for the second time . . ."
The man by the taxi was standing with wide eyes and bowed head, waiting for the blow.
"One thousand," said Koster.
I looked at him.' "It's worth three," he muttered. "I'm not going to see the chap slaughtered."
Guido was signalling frantically.
He had forgotten the insult now it came to business.
"Eleven hundred," he bleated, winking at us with both eyes at once.
If he had had another one behind, he would have winked that as well.
"Fifteen hundred," said Koster.
"Fifteen hundred and ten," announced Guido perspiringly.
"Eighteen hundred," said Koster.
Guido touched bis forehead and abandoned the struggle.
The auctioneer was hopping with excitement.
Suddenly I thought of Pat.
"Eighteen fifty," said I without quite meaning to do so.
Koster turned his. head in surprise,
"I'll make up the fifty," said I hastily. "It's in aid of something—an investment."
He nodded.
The auctioneer knocked the car down to us.
Koster paid immediately.
"What did I tell you?" said Guido, coming over as if nothing had happened.
"We could have had it for a thousand marks.
We bluffed the third chap out pretty soon."
"Hello, dearie!" shrieked a brazen voice behind him— the parrot in the gilded cage.
"Twerp," I added.
Guido shrugged his shoulders and vanished.
I went across to the owner of the car.
A pale-faced woman was now beside him.
"Sorry . . ." said I.
"It's all right," he replied.
"We would sooner not have done it," said I. "But you would only have got less."
He nodded, twisting his hands.
"She's a good car," he burst out suddenly, tumbling over himself. "She's a good car, well worth the money, really she is; you haven't paid too much. It isn't the car so much —not at all. . . . It's . . ."
"I know," said I.
"And we don't get any of the money," said the woman; "it all goes."
"We'll soon come up again, Mother," said the man; "we'll come up again."
The woman did not answer.
"She grinds a bit changing from first to second," said the man, "but it's not a defect. She did that when she was new." He might have been talking of a child. "It's three years we've had her now, and she has never given the least trouble.
You see, I was ill and then a bloke let me down —a friend . . ."
"A villain," said the woman with a grim face.
"Now, Mother," said the man and looked at her. "I'll come up again soon, Mother, now won't I?"
The woman did not answer.
The man was wet with sweat.
"Give me your address," said Koster; "we may want a driver sometime, you never know."
The man wrote eagerly with his heavy, honest hands.