‘To be sure.’ Don Perez helped himself to port and stretched out his hand towards the walnuts. ‘Bubear is altogether unreliable, we are agreed. And – dear me! – here he is.’
It was deplorably true. Had Meredith not fallen into a muse on the subject of primitive man, footsteps or voices might have given him some seconds’ further notice of what was coming. For Bubear – as also, no doubt, the Horton Venus and the Giotto fresco – had arrived; here, already standing in the doorway, were both the displeasing person whom he had once hit on the head and his more recent acquaintance Properjohn. It was evident that the two had already been in fierce dispute; so much had Meredith’s Iago-whisperings of earlier in the evening achieved. But now, surely, the end had come. For Bubear was raising an accusing finger. Denunciation was upon his lips.
‘Ah,’ said Meredith. ‘I think you scarcely expected to see me again, my friend.’
Bubear was disconcerted. Properjohn was perplexed. Don Perez Sierra y Campo sipped port.
‘Perhaps’ – Meredith continued – ‘you will explain to us about your friends the old ladies in the castle, to whom you were good enough to misdirect Marsden’s girl and myself? And this story of having had to blow up your warehouse and much valuable property belonging to the Society? And a little matter of a carpet? And a very big matter’ – for suddenly the memory of a valuable confession of Bubear’s had returned to Meredith – ‘concerning the Tobermoray figurines?’
Don Perez abruptly set down his glass. ‘The Tobermoray figurines!’ he exclaimed.
Meredith nodded. ‘But certainly. Bubear appropriated them to himself. I found out. And because of that – But you have only to look at him, Don Perez. His guilt is written plain upon his face.’
It was certainly true that Bubear presented a picture of guilt. That the man whom he had believed blown to fragments in a vast explosion should have turned up here claiming to be Vogelsang still was a circumstance confounding in itself; but the raising of the fatal matter of the Tobermoray figurines was plainly a death blow. Bubear was ashen. Yet he endeavoured to rally. He licked his lips and spoke in a sudden high surprising voice. ‘This man is a spy! Vogelsang is dead, I tell you, and this man killed him. He and the girl–’
Don Perez got quietly to his feet and held up a hand before which the voice of his wretched subordinate tailed into silence. ‘Mr Bubear,’ he said, ‘this is idle talk. Herr Vogelsang, though you have been unaware of the fact, has long been personally known to me. He is my honoured guest tonight.’ And Don Perez bowed suavely to Meredith.
Meredith bowed back. What fantastic game was now afoot? But Don Perez had paused only for a second. Now he continued to address Bubear in an even tone. ‘So lies are useless. The carpet I would have let you have taken without animadversion; it is as if a servant removed a bottle of inferior wine or a dish of game. But the misappropriation of the figurines was a major breach of trust. Do I understand that you admit it?’
Bubear, who was now totally unnerved, made what appeared to be an affirmative noise. He also – what was to Meredith extremely unpleasant – slid to his knees and raised his arms in a grotesque convention of supplication.
‘Very well.’ And Don Perez made an almost imperceptible sign to Properjohn. ‘Mr Bubear, you are dismissed from the employment of the Society.’
Properjohn’s arm moved and there was a dull report. Bubear fell on the floor, quite dead.
X
But it would be difficult, Meredith thought, to say who had killed the man. For it was he, Meredith, who had revealed the incriminating matter of the figurines – and this in what was still no more than a frantic playing for time. If he had concealed that major peculation Bubear might not have been (in his employer’s pleasant phrase) dismissed from the employment of the Society. Was he at all justified in what he had done? Meredith doubted it. Nor could the rights or wrongs of the matter be at all affected by its remoter consequences; by the fact of whether it did, or did not, enable him to retrieve the whole desperate situation.
And what, indeed, was the state of affairs now? Bubear, whose dead body was jerking with a last reflex on the floor, had been cut off in the moment of denouncing the false Vogelsang; and thus the chief danger which Meredith had been called upon to face was eliminated. Don Perez had claimed to be fully assured that it was indeed Vogelsang who was dining with him. But this he had done by means of a direct lie and with the obvious intention of driving Bubear to a confession of his treachery. Did he really believe that his guest was the director of some great German picture-gallery, proposing to do a deal on the basis of much valuable information on hidden works of art? Meredith had received more than one hint to the contrary. And this in some degree tempered his horror and dismay at Bubear’s end. For it meant the substantial likelihood still of mortal danger. And in mortal danger a man cannot afford the luxury of a scrupulous conscience.
‘And now we can all sit down.’ Don Perez spoke in brisker tones than Meredith had heard him use so far. It was almost as if he was about to call for the minutes of the last meeting. ‘Properjohn, you may take a glass of port.’
Properjohn (who was supposed to be the laird of Carron and the support of an invalid uncle) sat down meekly and with an ingratiating bob. Meredith sat down too, though with considerable effort. So far as he knew, he had never before proposed to take wine with a couple of murderers, and the notion profoundly revolted him. At the same time he became aware of an even more disturbing prompting deep in his own mind. Why, he thought –
why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature?
And the horrid suggestion was simply this: that he should repeat – perfectly deliberately this time – his technique for prompting Don Perez to murder. His revealing the matter of the figurines had spelt the end of Bubear. By revealing that Properjohn too was up to some game of his own in the mysterious affair of Higbed might it not be possible to have this other enemy dismissed from the employment of the Society?
Meredith’s mind turned from Macbeth to the equally sensational story of Little Black Quasha – in which at a critical juncture the tigers (all save two) are induced to gobble each other up. Would he be justified in engineering a somewhat similar state of affairs in the ranks of the Society for the Diffusion of Cultural Objects? But Meredith saw that it was no good debating this ethical point with himself, for the idea of thus eliminating Properjohn had such a thrill of unholy enticement to it that he knew he must turn it down at once. And, anyway, Don Perez was markedly dictating the course things should take at the moment, and Meredith saw no present means of seizing the initiative.
‘And first,’ said Don Perez, ‘what of the Italian – Pantelli, is it not? Has he arrived?’
Properjohn shook his head. ‘Like maybe he got lost,’ he said. ‘Udderwise ought to be here long ago.’
‘But I don’t like this of people getting lost.’ Don Perez was suavely severe. ‘And I am unable to believe that Bubear had anything to gain by directing Herr Vogelsang to the castle. There is much that requires sorting out in all this.’
Properjohn looked worried. ‘Looks like maybe something we don’t figure right yet. But at least Herr Vogelsang not fishlike same as I thought he might be when I heard the castle having visitors.’
Don Perez sighed wearily. ‘Unfortunately, Herr Vogelsang is fishlike. Or better, perhaps, he is a very fish.’ And Don Perez looked blandly at his guest. ‘Perhaps even the dolphin, my good Properjohn, the dolphin that is the king of fishes. But, if so, the king of fishes is in a net.’
And Don Perez Sierra y Campo made an almost imperceptible sign. It was a sign very freshly familiar to Meredith, who now turned to Properjohn and found himself looking down the barrel of a revolver.
‘But for the moment you may
refrain from shooting.’ Don Perez sipped his port. ‘The gentleman, after all, has never been in the employment of the Society, and our customary summary dismissal might not be altogether in order.’
‘Like maybe it’s not Vogelsang at all?’
‘Vogelsang? This man killed Vogelsang. Or so you heard Bubear say, and it was one of his few statements lately that I see no reason to doubt. So you have admitted to our counsels, my good Properjohn, a dangerous and extremely inquisitive outsider. He has, it is true, a little wit, and I am not ungrateful for the evening’s diversion. Did he not offer to find me the Locri Fawn out of Norman Douglas’ incomparable South Wind? Still, this must be a warning to me of the hazards of employing a person like yourself, totally lacking in cultivation. I feel that the Secretaryship of the Society may shortly be declared vacant. It is inconvenient to have a man who does not recognize an eminent classical scholar when he meets him in a Scottish castle or on a grouse moor.’
Properjohn was a picture of dismay; his moustache, beaded with port, drooped more than ever, and this gave him the appearance of a discouraged cur. ‘But, Don Perez, seeing he had Marsden’s girl, I natchly figured–’
‘I do not at all suppose the girl to be Marsden’s. I suspect her to be the girl Halliwell, who was to be kept under observation because of her curiosity concerning the affair near Edinburgh. And this is Richard Meredith, author of a sound, if conservative, edition of Martial. He is an authority on the Latin epigrammatists and satirists in general. He made his first reputation, however, by a severe examination of the textual side of Wilamowitz-Moellendorf’s Platon.’
‘But hey!’ Properjohn was indignant as well as dismayed. ‘He talks big same as if it was his puttikler business collect art. The Night Watch, and Mona Lisa, and Burial of the Guy Orgaz–’
Don Perez pushed away his glass with an impatient movement. ‘My good fellow, any educated man with his wits about him could contrive such talk.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘Am I not right in thinking that we have had a good many inquiries lately from American and other collectors prepared to interest themselves in Codices and ancient manuscripts generally?’
‘Sure, that’s correk, Don Perez.’ Properjohn was plainly anxious to vindicate his secretarial efficiency. ‘Bauernstern and Gedgoud and Homer S Codcroft, some the biggest book-collectors ever operated, all going that way now.’
‘Precisely.’ And Don Perez turned to his guest. ‘Mr Meredith,’ he said, ‘I take pleasure in offering you the position of Secretary to the International Society for the Diffusion of Cultural Objects. The emoluments of the office will be at the rate of five thousand pounds a year, together with a substantial commission. As for our late Secretary’ – and Don Perez looked witheringly at Properjohn – ‘he will be transferred to the Department of Crates and Boxes.’
‘Say, Don Perez!’ Properjohn turned the name into a sort of melancholy howl. ‘I gotta Titian, I gotta Giotto–’
‘Go away!’ Don Perez was now holding a revolver of his own. ‘Go away, my man, and get some practice with a hammer and nails. The Secretary and I have important business to discuss. And take Bubear’s body with you. In fact, begin on a coffin. But don’t use any of the superior woods.’ He waited until Properjohn had lugged the corpse to the door. ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘if it should happen that I want two coffins, I’ll ring.’ And Don Perez smiled pleasantly at Meredith. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we can talk.’
The President of the International Society, still with a revolver in hand, produced a box of cigars. Meredith – because the affair had become utterly dreamlike and unreal – accepted one. ‘You don’t seriously suppose’, he said, ‘that any stranger you encounter is likely to join your criminal organization for the asking?’
‘For the asking?’ Don Perez shook his head. ‘Assuredly not. But five thousand a year is a different matter. You would be unlikely to come by that through the ordinary exercise of your profession.’
‘But I come by quite enough. I have a salary, and rather more money of my own than a man ought, perhaps, to have – and then, you know, I am unmarried. So I am afraid there really isn’t any inducement.’
‘In five years you could have not just ample money, but a fortune. Very likely, Mr Meredith, your life would then surprisingly change. Forgotten or suppressed capacities for pleasure – immediate as well as intellectual pleasure – would be reborn in you. Your cellar would be incomparable. Unmarried as you are, you would find the world’s most alluring–’
‘I cannot understand how a man controlling what is evidently a large and successful organization can talk such nonsense.’ Meredith was nettled. ‘It is like a parody of Mephistopheles tempting Faust. Your own port, I may say, is admirable. But I finished with wine-cellars long ago.’
‘At least you still relish a sound cigar.’ Don Perez smiled urbanely. ‘And you race about Scotland on hazardous missions with what is doubtless an attractive and intelligent girl. Is your heart then so little romantic? I suggest that the quadrangles of Oxford and the reading rooms of great libraries have never quite satisfied you. Your generation was brought up under the shadow of Pater. As undergraduates you taught yourselves that your business in life was to burn with a hard, gem-like flame. Not the fruit of experience, you know, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point–’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ exclaimed Meredith. ‘If Pater passed swiftly from point to point it was no more than from his own rooms at Brasenose to those of some other don. And if he counted his pulses it was because he was rather scared of all the great husky undergraduates he had to scurry past on the way. Have you ever looked at a portrait of him? Only a man chronically scared of life would have hidden behind that immense moustache. And I don’t think I’m particularly scared myself even though I’ve fallen into a den of thieves. Don’t talk nonsense about Pater to me.’
What this speech lacked in logic it more than made up for in simple feeling, and after he had delivered himself of it Meredith felt much better. He even began to enjoy his cigar. The people who had paid for it – to wit, the lawful owners of sundry stolen works of art – would scarcely grudge it, he thought, to an honest man engaged in the task of restoring their property. Not that there now appeared to be the slightest chance of his succeeding – for here was Don Perez with, as it were, his grotesque proposal in one hand and a loaded revolver in the other. At any moment he might ring the bell and commission that second coffin.
‘I don’t suppose’ – Don Perez, quite unruffled, seemed prepared for debate into the small hours – ‘that you have ever much studied that aspect of the history of art which collectors call provenance? Who owned the picture last, you know, and who before that. The ideal is to trace it right back to the studio. Well, there are very few major works of art which have changed hands in what you would term an honest manner as often as in a dishonest one. Indeed, there is possibly no study that gives one a queerer angle on human conduct. Unless, of course, one takes jewels, in which I have never greatly interested myself. The history of great jewels is almost invariably one, not of simple theft, but of blood. Recently, and rather exceptionally, the Society acquired and disposed of the Taprobane Diamond. Not only had it been responsible, in its comparatively short career, for the deaths of three men and one very beautiful woman. On two other occasions, as I happen to know, its transfer had taken place amid such sinister passions that the immediate consequences were a good deal more horrible than simple homicide.’ And Don Perez looked reflectively at that spot on his dining-room floor from which the disgraced Properjohn had lately lugged the body of Bubear. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it would interest you to hear about that. But it is one of those stories which I must keep for my memoirs.’
Meredith was very willing that he should keep it. His cigar was not only stolen; it was, in a sense, soaked in blo
od. He took another puff at it. Unquestionably, it was just the same cigar. And from this Meredith conjectured that his nerves remained in tolerably good order. So why not, he thought, continue to play for time? It had been his role ever since this affair started. And even if the effort led nowhere – or led, rather, inevitably to a coffin or a sack – he might as well, as he followed that road, continue to exercise what acquired skill in delaying tactics he now possessed. It was the nearest he could get to that burning with a hard gem-like flame.
So Meredith watched the cigar smoke wreathing upwards and pondered. Should he make some tentative move towards closing with the offer made by Don Perez on behalf of the International Society? But that would be rash.
‘What I haven’t seen for a long time’, Meredith said, ‘is a really distinguished liqueur brandy.’
Don Perez rose at once. It is not easy simultaneously to play the gracious host and keep one’s guest covered with a firearm. But this talented man had no difficulty in achieving it. Within a minute he had produced the brandy, poured it into two great rummers, and drawn a couple of arm chairs hospitably up to the fire. ‘And now to return’, he said, ‘to the very interesting point of the morality of our proceedings. I will admit at once that there are aspects of the business which are liable a little to offend people like ourselves.’
People like ourselves. This was something for Meredith to digest. Perhaps there was a sense in which, if one regarded the community at large, Don Perez and he would appear to stand tolerably close together. Were they not both a sort of cultured parasite, each pursuing his own socially irresponsible fancy? And what were those aspects of the business which might a little offend? Meredith half expected his host to be looking once more at the spot where Bubear had fallen. But Don Perez, his rummer cupped in one hand and his revolver conveniently disposed towards the other, was gazing mildly into the fire.
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