High-minded as that sounded, the question has inevitably arisen in the art world whether Christie's disclosure to the Justice Department was calculated as a brilliant, if cutthroat, attempt to destroy its longtime rival, Sotheby's. Antitrust investigations are notoriously difficult to prove, and after three years of probing, the government's case seemed at a virtual standstill until the firm's dramatic January announcement.

Another theory propounded by a Christie's insider locates the blame in the troubled relationship between Davidge and Pinault. According to those who worked with him, Davidge was "this working-class guy who'd worked his way, through the dirty end of the business, to suddenly become Mr. La-di-da, I'm-Mr.-Head-of-Christie's."

Davidge, the employee continues, "whipped Christie's into shape and could take credit for the fact that it suddenly had a greater volume of business than Sotheby's. I have a feeling he did this as a fuck-you to Pinault. They had a terrible, terrible relationship because Pinault took over his company."

So this version of events gives Davidge the final rebellious gesture to the man who bought his company: "It wasn't his, but he was running it. And after all, he was very, very self-aggrandizing."

It's widely discussed in the London art world that the evidence supplied by Davidge last year in exchange for immunity from prosecution is a memo written to him by Sir Anthony Tennant, an old Etonian who exudes the patrician air of an admiral, who served as Christie's chairman from 1993 to 1996. That document is said to outline a telephone conversation that took place in the mid-nineties between Sir Anthony and Alfred Taubman, during which the two men debated the commissions charged by the two firms. Sources reported to have read the memo say that it could be interpreted as a price-fixing agreement.

David Price, Davidge's London-based lawyer, however, insists that his client's abrupt departure from Christie's was not prompted by the antitrust investigation or by a dispute with François Pinault. And spokesmen for Christie's, Taubman, and Morgan Stanley (where Sir Anthony currently serves as a senior adviser) declined to comment on the memo's existence.

Nevertheless, the blow to Sotheby's and Taubman has been considerable. From a high of $47 last year, the firm's shares plummeted two weeks ago to a meager $14.50 on February 22, effectively erasing some $1.3 billion of the firm's market value and essentially putting the company in play. Reports that cash-rich upstart eBay was negotiating to buy Sotheby's pushed the price up on March 1, but eBay promptly denied it was interested.

Christie's, meanwhile, is hardly off the legal hook. Following the initial thunderclap of revelations, a succession of class-action civil suits -- three dozen so far -- has been filed against Sotheby's and Christie's by clients enraged to hear that they may have been overcharged by tens of millions of dollars in commissions inflated by an illegal price-fixing scheme. If successful, the litigants could recover their losses threefold. The first lawsuit was filed on January 31 by Herbert Black, a maverick Canadian multi-millionaire scrap dealer who owns what is known as an "important" collection of Georgian furniture.

"If you break the law, you have to pay, you know what I mean?" Black says, calling on a cell phone from his car in Quebec. "They're not higher and above the law." Black clearly relishes the notoriety his lawsuit may bring him. "You've talked to people -- what's their attitude to Mr. Black?" he asks cheerfully. "Is Mr. Black a scumbag for doing that? . . . Okay, I might have lost a few friends and made a few enemies; so be it."

The current imbroglio is not Herbert Black's first war with Sotheby's. In 1994, he bought a pair of George III chairs at the firm's London salesroom for a record £851,000. Soon afterward, Black was understandably chagrined to discover that the chairs were worthless fakes, made in 1990 by deft miscreants who have since gone to jail. Sotheby's promptly fired the London experts who had failed to spot the fakers' handiwork and has since reached a settlement with Black, who insists that his latest suit is not motivated by revenge.