November Night Tales
Page 22
“I thought so,” said he, with a sigh. “There he is now. What’s he doing to Winters? I must go down at once.”
“Bring him back with you,” said I, holding up significantly the tempting flask not yet empty.
As Barron left me, the servant reappeared with a fresh supply of the vintage, placed it on the table, and with a long taper, began lighting the wax candles in the Venetian chandelier. By the time the twinklings of innumerable pendants had conquered the twilight, my host reappeared with his enraged guest, colossal, grotesque, yet magnificent in his evening dress. He was perspiring. The belligerent blotchings of his face-scars had deepened. He had torn his sleeve, and his dishevelled cravat had wriggled itself into an ear pendant.
Rolling his browless eyes about the room, he at last grasped my hand, and sat down near the dressing table.
“It’s time to put a stop to Winters,” said he.
“Why should he refuse to look at the facts?” I asked sympathetically. “Doesn’t he admit the Titian print?”
“He says it’s a piece of engraver’s patchwork,” returned the frowning giant. “But it’s his infernal suggestions about the manuscript. Hints in place of words he doesn’t dare use.”
“Do you see this?” he cried fiercely, flourishing in our faces a gold headed rattan cane, broken off in the middle.
“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Barron. “It’s Winters’s walking stick. What have you done to him?”
“Not half enough. He got behind a tree.”
I listened in shocked amazement, while Barron’s polite efforts to change the subject failed, until at last, in spite of the Orvieto, the unfortunate affair which had embittered the afternoon, got the better of him.
“You misunderstand Winters,” he muttered angrily.
“What do you mean?” thundered the Doctor.
“I mean that this treasure story spoils your case. If you drop it, he may give in.”
“You don’t know the puffed up book-worm. I do. And he knows me.”
The excited scholar had got up overturning his chair, and turned scornfully upon his friend.
“The well you examined, was you say, full of rubbish?”
“I went over tons of it with a sieve.”
“But it was dry. There may have been two wells.”
“Impossible,” said Barron. “I searched every square foot of the ruins.”
“Nevertheless, I shall go back to Monte Corbo, and examine the place myself.”
Barron sighed. “You will be arrested before you begin,” he returned in a dismal protest.
He filled another glass with Orvieto, and handed it to the Doctor, while I looked intently at our host, and burst out laughing.
“What’s the matter?” asked Barron angrily.
Without answering, I walked to the sofa, pulled the paper bound package out of my cloak pocket, and placed it on the dressing table at his side. There was a small mirror just behind it.
“How do you account for this?” I asked, untying the string, and pulling away the paper, while the red stones reflected in the glass, caught the glow overhead. I picked it up, and shook it until the walls, ceiling and air of the sumptuous room seemed to dance to the echoes.
“Good God, my friend, what’s this?” shouted the Doctor.
“A trick,” cried Barron, who as I put down the thing, stared awhile at me, and then leaned forward with a half frightened look, and clutched the weird relic. “Where did you get it?”
“Where Durer had thrown it. In the castle well.”
“Do you mean to say that I missed this in the well?”
“You never saw the well. You cleaned out the cistern.”
“I told you so,” roared the Doctor. “Call back Winters.”
“No use of that,” said Barron nervously. “He’ll be here with a policeman soon enough.”
Lysander had tossed the shattered cane across the room, seized the relic and was holding it up under the chandelier.
“Buddhist!” he cried. “The head of a fish, one of the Mu Yu Temple bells of China.”
Barron objected. “The Mu Yu bells were made of wood.”
“Not always,” retorted the Doctor.
“And struck with a drumstick.”
“The drumstick is gone. The relic has been tampered with. In place of the drumstick the bronze has been heated and the ring balls inserted through the mouth slit.”
“Do you mean to tell us that this thing could have been brought from China in the time of Durer?”
“Long before that. It may be pre-Christian. Look at the modelling of the mouth and brows. A marvel of Chinese fancy. No wonder Durer appreciated it. The eyes are rubies of immense value.”
I tried to interrupt them. “You have overlooked something,” I managed to say. “Don’t forget the church legend.”
“What has that to do with it?” asked Barron contemptuously. “A myth.”
“No matter. It associates the thing with St. John the Baptist.”
“What if it does?”
“It explains Durer’s sketch,” I cried. “It recalls the Bible story, and the Bible story accounts for the landscape. Look at the mountains. Mary has come over the ‘Hill Country’ to meet Elizabeth. Read the text, ‘Over the Hill Country.’ Durer sees the ‘Hill Country’ in the Alps.”
A loud hurrah from the Doctor met my words.
“But the fish,” exclaimed Barron.
“The fish is a present, exactly appropriate to the occasion. A bell. A jingling fantastic toy to amuse the expected child.”
“Shake hands, my friend,” roared the Doctor, waving the relic in the air. “You have it.”
“I yield,” said Barron, as still staring at the thing, and again shaking it, he listened to the echoes.
“What do you intend to do with it?”
My glass was full. I raised it to my lips.
“I brought it here to give to you.”
I could see a quick dimming of his eyes in the protest that followed. But I asserted my moral right as an agent, who by chance had transformed his failure into a triumph.
“Here’s your man,” said he, looking up at the towering Colossus behind us.
“Never,” said the latter, sternly. “I refuse to take it.”
“But it proves your Durer letters.”
“No matter. I refuse.”
A lively argument followed, until at last, as a simple means of settlement, I produced a Napoleon.
“Heads or tails? Do you agree?” I asked the Doctor.
The gargoyle face twitched, while the chivalric scholar behind it hesitated, but at last, urged by Barron, yielded.
“Heads.”
The gold coin spun in the air, fell on the table and rolled on the floor. Heads. We tried again, and again heads.
“Doctor, the cup is yours. Let us drink to the Durer letters.”
* * * * * * * *
The final facts of the case are soon disposed of. When later in the year I met Barron at his old quarters at Frankfort, I was not surprised to learn that owing to the Doctor’s inflexible views as to private possession of objects of great historical value, he had placed the relic where he said it belonged, with the Durer letters in the Grand Ducal Library at M——.
“Of course he has had the satisfaction of demolishing his critics,” I remarked.
“No,” said Barron. “His publication of the manuscript has been indefinitely postponed. Whether because of the devoted Catholicism of the owner, church objection to publicity, in view of the late controversy, or historic doubts as to the antiquity of the relic, the details of the discovery have been hushed up.”
“But your own notes on the subject,” said I. “Your identification of the two landscapes sketc
hed at the same time by the two great masters ought not to be forgotten. If described in your graphic style, it would add to the interest of your forthcoming book.”
“It might entertain a few art students,” laughed Barron, “but I am in honor bound to publish nothing without permission. Book notoriety is out of the question this time. Besides, you are the real hero in the story.”