When Sotheby's dropped Ritchie's as an auction partner this summer, the talk was that the ailing auction house would soon close. But the saga continues. Stephen Ranger, the firm's expert on Persian rugs, eventually its president and, this summer, on the losing side of a power struggle that has rocked the Canadian auction scene, hasn't given up. Ranger had been attempting to buy control of Ritchies from majority owner Ira Hopmeyer, talks that largely foundered because of an increasingly bitter dispute about the nature of at least $1 million that Hopmeyer had withdrawn from the company. Ranger wanted the money put back.