The Case of the Flying Donkey: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  That same evening brought another surprise. A letter came by the last post from a man with whose name he was wholly unacquainted, a Georges Braque. A trade card was enclosed, and a glance at it showed that Braque was a picture dealer, in partnership with a Bernard Cointeau, their shop or office being in the Boulevard Bastide.

  The letter was in English.

  PENTLAND HOTEL,

  February 13th.

  DEAR SIR,

  Mr. Blaine, the collector, informed me that you were in possession of a picture by Larne. I should esteem it a favour if I could inspect the picture at any time that was suitable for you, and if you will do me the honour of letting me know, I shall be greatly obliged. I shall be in London till the day after to-morrow.

  With very many thanks,

  Yours truly,

  GEORGES BRAQUE.

  He passed the letter across to Bernice, with: “This picture of ours seems to be coming into the limelight.”

  Bernice wondered how the French picture dealer could have known of its existence. Travers said that was easy to explain. Hereward Blaine, the famous connoisseur and art collector, had bought his Larne direct from the Salon, and therefore the dealer, Braque, knew very well where it was. When Braque saw the picture at Blaine’s house, Blaine mentioned Travers’s picture and that was that.

  “What are you going to do about the letter?” Bernice asked.

  “I’d rather like the dealer to see our picture,” he said. “Sheer vanity, perhaps, but there we are.”

  “But why shouldn’t you like people to admire your things?” Bernice said. “And when are you asking him to come?”

  “In the morning, I think. Except, of course, that you’re lunching out.”

  “It doesn’t matter about me,” Bernice said. “You can tell me afterwards what he says about the picture.” She gave a rather tentative look. “You don’t think he’ll want to buy it?”

  Travers laughed. “What you mean is, am I likely to sell it? But I don’t think we ought to sell, at the moment. It’s like realizing a first-class investment.”

  Travers usually did his thinking in the last few minutes before sleep, and that night he did happen to wonder if Braque could by any chance be the curious gentleman he had seen in that room at the Tate. Then he made up his mind that he would ring Hereward Blaine and get more information, and after breakfast the following morning he got hold of Blaine at his town house.

  “I’m very glad you rang me up,” Blaine said. “Has Monsieur Braque been to see you yet?”

  “I’ve just sent a message to his hotel,” Travers said, “and he’s coming at midday—at least, so I expect.”

  “Well, there’s something fishy,” Blaine went on. “The only thing he seemed to be interested in about my picture was what I gave for it. Said he might have a client for it if I was ever prepared to sell.”

  “And how did he strike you personally?”

  “Very specious. His English is pretty bad, by the way, but he had all the old clichés about art. Very little practical knowledge at all—I mean about the kind of things he saw here. Then he said that if I was in Paris in the near future, would I ring him up at his shop and he’d arrange for me to see some things he didn’t show to the ordinary buyer.” There was a chuckle over the phone. “I thought he was hinting at indecent postcards.”

  “Well, thanks very much,” Travers said. “I shall see how he strikes me this morning.”

  “Just a minute,” came Blaine’s voice. “One thing I ought to tell you. I was very suspicious about the man because he struck me as trying to be very much what he wasn’t, so I made enquiries in Paris. I got what I wanted this morning. This business of his is quite a third-rate one. You know what I mean. The kind of concern that does a fifty or hundred pound deal occasionally and thinks it’s doing dam’ well.”

  “Then what is this man Braque? A crook?”

  Blaine chuckled. “There’s still a law of libel. You see what you make of him for yourself.”

  It was a highly intrigued Travers who waited that morning for the arrival of Georges Braque, the man who was interested in the work of Henri Larne; the man who did a third-rate trade and was now mixing himself up with a branch of that trade which would involve the investing of thousands of pounds, and the delicate use of knowledge which, according to that shrewd judge, Hereward Blaine, he was very far from possessing.

  “What’s the game?” thought Travers to himself. “Is he trying to put fakes on the market? Faked Larnes, and is that why he’s having a look at every Larne he can find? Or is he a kind of thieves’ tout, and spying out the land ready for operations? Hardly that, though, or he wouldn’t have given a genuine address. Or should he be given the benefit of the doubt? Is he, for instance, a small man who wants to get on in his own line, and is trying to branch out into something big? After all, every big dealer had to start in a small way.”

  But as soon as Travers clapped eyes on Georges Braque that morning, he knew him for the man at the Tate, even though that first real sight of him made it seem preposterous that he should ever have descended to the surreptitious. For Braque was a man of immense dignity—the dignity, one might say, of the perfect salesman or shopwalker. In age he was about forty, and in appearance aggressively French, with a face that was typical Third Empire, and bore a distinct resemblance to that of Napoleon the Third. But that last was before he removed his hat, for then his head was seen to be bald, except for patches above the ears, and that somehow increased his dignity and made him look much older than he was.

  “Monsieur Travers?” he said, with a little bow from the waist.

  Travers nodded genially. “And you’re Monsieur Braque. Do sit down, won’t you? And let me take your hat and coat.”

  Braque stood his ground and bowed again. “Monsieur, my English is very bad. You perhaps speak French—yes?”

  “In a way, yes,” smiled Travers. “But your letter was perfect English.”

  “I employ a—a—”

  “Secretary?” suggested Travers.

  “Ah, yes—a secretary.”

  The situation was eased at once. Braque took a fireside chair, and Travers, never one to suffer from false modesty, plunged into not at all bad French.

  “You would like to see my picture at once?”

  “If it is without disturbing you,” Braque said.

  Travers brought it in and stood it in what he thought the best available light. Braque rose and contemplated it, giving many a little nod and his fingers toying with his short imperial. Then at last he waved a hand and delivered judgment.

  “You will pardon me, but a very good example. It is perhaps late?” His shrewd, heavy eyes were suddenly on Travers’s face. “Three years ago or more?”

  “It was just about three years ago when I bought it,” Travers told him.

  “It cost you a considerable sum? No?”

  “That depends,” Travers told him guilefully. “What’s a lot of money to one, might be a mere trifling sum to another.” He smiled enquiringly. “The whole point is this. Assuming I’m prepared to sell, what are you prepared to give?”

  Braque gave a shrug of the shoulders.

  “For myself I never buy. For a client, yes. If I have such a client, perhaps you would be prepared to sell?”

  “Always assuming the price is right,” smiled Travers.

  Braque was suddenly looking up with a look of crafty challenge. “You would take four hundred pounds?”

  Travers shook his head.

  “You gave four hundred pounds for it perhaps— yes?”

  “Perhaps,” said Travers off-handedly.

  There was an awkward silence, and Braque was the one to break it.

  “You permit that I take the picture to the window? I would like to see it a little more closely.”

  He took the picture to the window that overlooked St. Martin’s, and as the bulk of his body hid it from Travers’s watchful gaze, it was impossible to see what special features were his main interest.
But there was no funny business with a camera— Travers was sure enough about that—and in a couple of minutes he was bringing the picture back and replacing it with an exaggerated reverence.

  “It is as good an example as I have seen,” he said. “I congratulate you, monsieur, on its possession.”

  “You have seen a good deal of Larne’s work?” Travers asked him.

  “Not a great deal. He is not what you might call a prolific painter.”

  “You know our Tate Gallery?”

  “Tate Gallery?” He seemed puzzled, and Travers could not keep back a quick look of surprise. Then he shrugged his shoulders and gave a deprecating smile. “A dealer is not interested in Galleries, monsieur. One does not buy from Galleries. One buys from people like yourself.”

  “I know,” Travers said. “But if you’re trying to see as much of Larne’s work as possible, you ought to go to the Tate. There’s a very fine example on exhibition at this very moment.”

  “Indeed?” There was something of gratitude in the look. “If I have time I will certainly go.”

  Then the heavy-lidded eyes were raised again.

  “The Gallery, it buys this picture itself?”

  “It was bequeathed to it by the late Lord Draigne.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, and nodded to himself. Then he began looking round for his hat, and Travers promptly got to his feet.

  “Your Paris business is a pretty extensive one?” he asked politely.

  Braque shrugged his shoulders. “We do not make much talk, monsieur, but we contrive to live. You yourself are in Paris often?”

  “Not very often,” Travers said. “But I shall be there in about ten days’ time. My wife and I hope to spend a fortnight or so there.”

  Braque’s face lighted up.

  “Then you must certainly come to see me, monsieur.” The eyes rose again, and they had a queerly repulsive suggestiveness. “There are things I have which I do not show to my ordinary clients, but to a private collector like yourself—yes.”

  “At the Boulevard Bastide?”

  Braque shook his head. “At my own apartment. I am a bachelor, monsieur, and it is a whim of mine to surround myself with things that appeal to me myself.” He was looking through his wallet for a card. “Voilà, monsieur: seventeen, rue Jourdoise, St. Sulpice. You know it perhaps?”

  “I know my way to St. Sulpice well enough,” Travers told him.

  Braque’s eyes rose once more, and his shrug of the shoulders was something of a cringe.

  “Then without doubt I shall see you, monsieur. A little discretion is necessary, perhaps, not to mention to all the world that I have this private collection which I do not show my clients.”

  Two minutes, and Braque was gone. Travers came back to the room with the queer feeling that the ceremonial thanks of the French dealer were still echoing round its walls, and he had also that uneasy feeling, somewhat akin to shame, that comes after a contact with the disagreeable or loathsome.

  That Braque was a slippery rascal he had no doubts, but what intrigued him now was the precise nature of his rascality. Was that house of his in St. Sulpice a private cinema or some such abode of filth that appealed to the vicious and abnormal? Or was it that he had amassed a collection of pornographic art which could not conceivably be shown to his ordinary clients?

  “And yet that doesn’t explain everything,” said Travers to himself. “Why that interest in Larne’s pictures? Larne never paints anything pornographic, at least as far as I know. Perhaps I might sound Gallois about that. And why did Braque lie about the Tate? If he saw Blaine’s picture and mine, why should he conceal the fact that he saw the one at the Tate?”

  But before the day had gone, Travers had found a theory that was partly satisfying. Braque had thought of the purchasers of Larne’s pictures as being—should one say?—modern and eccentric. He was interviewing them, with Larne’s name as a kind of introduction, with the real intention of inveigling them to that house of his. There doubtless they would be led into some devilishly devised indiscretion, after which would come the usual and highly profitable blackmail.

  “In any case,” said Travers to himself again, “there shouldn’t be the slightest harm in talking the whole thing over with Gallois in confidence. And, to make sure that Gallois is still in Paris, I might do worse than write him a line at once.”

  One other precaution Travers took before he left for that short holiday, which was to take the Pot au Feu round to his bank for safe custody.

  CHAPTER II

  THE SECOND MYSTERY

  ON the Monday afternoon the Traverses arrived at the Hotel Mirande, which lies within a stone’s throw of Notre Dame. Travers had used that hotel in his bachelor days, and it had been a recommendation of the ubiquitous Gallois.

  In the morning Bernice was to call on some old friends, and Travers was going to the Sûreté.

  After the considerable deal she had been hearing about him, Bernice was very interested to know what Gallois was like.

  “He’s a remarkably able fellow,” Travers said, “otherwise he wouldn’t be where he is.”

  “What a man’s description!” Bernice said scornfully. “What sort of a man is he? What does he look like?”

  Travers smiled. “Well, he’s six foot one and very good-looking in a way. His face is rather sallow and he has very soulful, expressive eyes. There’s something rather Jewish about him and he always looks very mournful and tired. Most people would take him for under thirty, but he’s certainly nearer forty. I think that’s all, except that he has the most charming smile and manner. He doesn’t even smile like other people, by the way. There’s something very sad and sympathetic about it, as though he could look into the future and see you were going to have a remarkably trying time. Oh, and he has the most beautiful hands, of which he’s rather proud. I always think he’d look best on a concert platform with a violin under his chin.”

  “Now I call that a lovely description,” Bernice said. “Does he speak English well? I was wondering about asking him to dinner.”

  “I’m going to ask him,” Travers told her. “When it will be I don’t know. He’s rather a busy man.” He smiled. “As for his English, well, it’s about the most fluent I’ve ever heard. What’s more, he generally contrives to get remarkably near to the right word.”

  Gallois had a new room at the Sûreté, and as Travers’s eyes first surveyed it, he knew it for a room of paradoxes that might have been specially designed for its occupant: tall and amply spaced, with no hampering of the thoughts of Gallois the artist and poet, and its walls close-packed with files and dossiers for Gallois the man of action.

  He came almost shambling across as soon as the door opened, and his face bore a smile that had in it all the sorrows of humanity. His English was as fluent, and at times as unexpected, as ever.

  “Ah, my friend, it is good to see you again.”

  “And you,” Travers said. “And still not a day older.”

  Gallois shook his head. “It is not what one calls the appearance that counts. One exists, and that is all.”

  Travers smiled. “But you’re looking extraordinarily well on it all?”

  Gallois gave a mournful shrug of the shoulders. A hand waved repugnantly at the desk, the books and the files.

  “One must surmount one’s difficulties, I owe that much to myself. All this, and nothing else, and I am dead in a month. As it is, one mixes with it a certain delicacy and finesse. There is—if you will pardon—the handling of the policeman, and the handling of the artist.”

  “Exactly,” said Travers. “And you, my friend, are an artist.”

  “A cigarette?” Gallois said. “And you will take coffee? Black coffee, is it not? Madame, your wife, she is well?”

  “Very well,” Travers said. “My letter must have been quite a surprise to you.”

  Gallois smiled sadly. Travers suddenly remembered that he had never yet heard him laugh.

  “Here one learns to be surprised at noth
ing.”

  The disquisition was broken off by the entry of a youngish man in plain clothes. He was medium in height and build, and his slightly snub nose gave him a friendly look.

  “Monsieur Travers, this is Charles, who commences to be a detective. Coffee, Charles, please. Black coffee.”

  “A pleasant-looking young fellow,” remarked Travers.

  “He is a young man of what you call promise,” Gallois said. “For the moment I am keeping him, as you say, beneath my eye. And now, my friend, what is this mystery that you mentioned?”

  “It’s really to do with that picture of mine—the Pot au Feu.”

  “It has been stolen?”

  “Oh, no,” Travers said. “What it may be, I don’t know.”

  He began his story and Gallois made never an interruption. But somehow he must have known when that story was nearing its end, for all at once he was writing something on a sheet of paper, and while Travers was still talking, he was again pushing the bell. There was something lethargically graceful about each movement of those long fingers.

  “That’s about all,” ended Travers, and once more there was a tap at the door, and Charles came in. Gallois handed him the paper.

  “At once, if you please.”

  The door closed on Charles, and Gallois swivelled round in his desk chair.

  “A strange story, as you say. You permit that I repeat the address of this Georges Braque, to see if I have it correct. Rue Jourdoise, seventeen, was it not?”

  “You remember that it’s his private address and he particularly emphasized the fact?” Travers reminded him.