‘Nothing of the sort. It’s green.’ Higbed, it was evident, felt extremely disgruntled at the altogether uninteresting nature of the professional task to which he had been so unscrupulously dragged across the ocean. ‘And there’s no question of any psychogenesis. Your trouble is congenital and incurable. You’ll go to your grave with it – and from your general condition I should say that will be in four or five years’ time.’
‘Congenital!’ Flosdorf’s voice rose to a scream almost like Mr Neff’s. ‘Didn’t you write a book saying–’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Disordered colour-sensation is sometimes functional and likely to yield to psychotherapy. But this is organic – some obscure condition of the nerve-endings. In fact, the man’s a Dalton – a modified Dalton of the kind who may never know until they really get talking about colour – but a Dalton all the same.’ And Higbed turned to Mr Neff. ‘You’re a Dalton,’ he repeated rudely; ‘just an ordinary modified Dalton.’
To Mr Neff, at once bemused and furious, this obscured insult was the last straw, ‘You, Flosdorf,’ he yelled, ‘how dare you bring a man here calls me a Dalton!’ And raising the bronze statuette he hurled it with all his force at his assistant’s head. ‘First you bring this girl says I can’t ever know art not even the planes and masses, and then you bring this man says in four years I’ll be dead.’ Flosdorf ducked; the bronze crashed against a door; a second later the door opened and Mr Gipson, followed by Mr Neff’s other friends and clients, entered the gallery.
‘Hey!’ said Mr Gipson. ‘What’s this?’
Mr Neff looked at him balefully. His breath was coming in deep painful gasps. ‘Get out of this, Jeff Gipson!’ he panted. ‘Get to hell out of here.’
‘Say! It’s his pictures.’ And Mr Gipson turned in delighted surprise to the followers. ‘Now, just come right in and listen to the connoisseur talk about the stuff he got from the giraffes and dromedaries. Any more Ardos, Neff?’ His eye fell on Higbed. ‘And is this guy Berenson, or is he just Venturi?’
‘I am Higbed.’ The harassed psychologist considered this information so important that he delivered it at a sort of bellow, thereby momentarily drowning a surprising yowling and choking noise which was now issuing from Mr Neff. ‘I am Higbed, and this screaming imbecile is I don’t know whom. But he seems to have surrounded himself with a lot of pictures which are little more good to him than if he hadn’t an eye in his head.’ And as he made this malicious overstatement Higbed grinned nastily at Mr Neff, whom he plainly held accountable for his sundry tribulations and imprisonments.
‘What’s that?’ Gipson’s voice held a wondering delight. ‘What’s that you said?’
‘The man can’t see his own pictures right. He’s colour-blind.’
‘Great snakes!’ Gipson gave a whoop of unholy joy. ‘If that doesn’t beat the band! Why, the poor cuss been and spent millions on them. Dotes on the things, too. It makes him feel all superior to reckon he knows art is beautiful. And all the time he couldn’t tell a red-head from a brunette. Jeepers creepers, it’s the cat’s pyjamas!’
Mr Neff, thus grossly brought to bay, glared round him like a demented thing. And then manfully (so that, despite the shivered Masaccio, Meredith almost admired him) he lied. ‘Pictures?’ he said. ‘Well, I never cared for them all that. A man like me must spend his money on something, and it’s kind of natural to talk big about what you put a bit of cash in.’ He waved a trembling hand round the gallery. ‘But you can take the lot, if you care for them. For some time now, I’ve been figuring to collect a little old furniture instead.’
‘Oho – so we can take the lot? I suppose that amount of money’ – and Gipson too gave a wave around the gallery – ‘don’t mean anything to a man like you?’
‘No, it doesn’t. I’m through with the stuff’, and suddenly Mr Neff’s voice rose again to a betraying scream – ‘I’m through with it, do you hear? And I don’t care what becomes of it. I don’t care, I say… I don’t care a damn!’ Mr Neff spoke chokingly and with a mounting hate which made Meredith shiver… For it came to him suddenly that it was hate directed, not against Neff’s old rival Gipson, but against those rows and vistas of immortally beautiful things by which the wretched man conceived himself to have been betrayed… ‘Pitch ’em in the lake, if you like,’ choked Mr Neff. ‘Only take ’em out of my sight.’
‘Your sight?’ jeered Gipson remorselessly. ‘Take ’em out of your screwy sight, eh? Well, as you’re offering them round, we’ll take one or two of the dirty ones – just as a memento of your old collecting days.’ And Gipson, with a quick glance round the gallery, advanced upon the great Rubens canvas which had first caught the attention of Higbed. ‘Come on, folks,’ he said. ‘Help yourselves. I’ll take this bunch of dames.’
It was as Gipson’s hands went out to the Rubens that sanity finally left Mr Neff. This second rape (as it were) of the Sabine women was too much for him. And when he acted it was with something like inspiration. Gipson, his friends and the fuming Higbed were all on the stationary conveyor belt. Mr Neff snatched up the little dial at the end of its flex and turned it. The conveyor belt moved forward. Mr Neff turned the dial again and the belt accelerated – with a rapidity so astounding that Higbed, the clients, and the unspeakable Gipson were in seconds a mere prone and supine mass, a congeries of waving legs and arms giving a momentary and nightmarish impression of some monstrous multi-limbed Hindoo god hurtling down the vista of Mr Neff’s gallery like some out-of-the-way projectile on a garish pin-table. At the farther end was an open archway giving upon a downward flight of marble steps. And such was the impetus of their flight that the enemies of Mr Neff (including the still unfortunate Dr Higbed) went straight through and down like the rebel angels raining from the Empyrean. Their shouts of terror and howls of rage changed briefly to yells and screams of pain; then Mr Neff ran to the wall and pressed a button – whereupon a great fireproof door descended at the end of the gallery. Instead of the pandemonium of a dozen soft males bemoaning bruised bodies and broken limbs, there was only the stertorous and lunatic breathing of Otis K Neff.
On all these disordered proceedings the dwarfs and grandees of Carreño and Velasquez, the peasants of van Ostade and the princes of Boltraffio, Botticelli centaurs and Duccio Madonnas, gallants by Watteau and wantons by Manet or Lautrec, Luini saints with their lurking and epicene Leonardo smiles, El Greco hermits nine feet high, impassively looked down. But not for long. Mr Neff had gabbled insanely but commandingly through a house telephone; and now he was hurling himself with demoniac fury upon those silent witnesses of his sensuous frailty. Flosdorf had disappeared. So, Meredith with consternation discovered, had Jean. The conveyor belt had been reversed, and now the Rubens came down and was pitched upon it. Appalled, Meredith stepped forward to resist. But as he did so a small army of men-servants, scared but obedient, hurried into the gallery and began tearing the pictures from the walls and piling them on the belt. Mr Neff dashed frantically about, urging on the work, screaming for more speed in corridors and elevators, commanding that everything be hurried to some lower entrance giving on the lake. His hideous purpose was plain. Art might be beautiful, but it had let him down. And so he was going to drown it – or all of it he could lay his hands on – deeper than ever Prospero drowned his book.
‘Stop!’ shouted Meredith. ‘He’s mad, demented! The pictures are stolen; they are masterpieces which no one can ever replace!’
But these rational persuasions were in vain. Mr Neff, sustained by an uncanny access of nervous force, carried everything before him. ‘Out with the lot!’ he screamed. ‘And those in the house too – plain as well as coloured! Don’t forget the statues; don’t forget that darn thing in the elevator; ring down to have the belts speeded up again; have the whole lot rowed out a good half-mile; anyone tries to keep anything on the quiet I’ll skin him alive.’ And Mr Neff charged at a Giovanni Bellini Doge as if he that
instant recognized his deadliest enemy.
Helpless and aghast, Meredith watched the walls grow bare, the resplendent marble and gold gallery become an empty shell, the long procession of doomed paintings trundle ever more rapidly away down a vista of unending corridor. There was a strange wailing note in his ear, like defunctive music or the lament of the parting genius being with sighing sent: it issued from the mechanism of those conveyor belts which at the command of their inventor were sweeping more and more swiftly through the unending passages and colonnades of Dove Cottage.
Meredith made his last effort. He advanced towards Mr Neff with open and imploring hands. ‘Stop!’ he said. ‘You understood those things – loved them. Your disability has been greatly exaggerated. When you are calm again you will realize the folly and horror of what you have caused to be done. I beg you to halt before it is too late.’
‘And clear him out too.’ Mr Neff pointed a quivering finger at Meredith. ‘Pitch him in with the rest of the junk. And his wife if you can find her. Let them swim for it or drown.’
Meredith looked round for a weapon, but even as he did so he was seized by a couple of powerful men and pitched bodily upon the conveyor belt. It was travelling at a great pace; the backs and fronts of canvases and panels surrounded him; the corners of massive gilt frames gouged his ribs and thighs. He struggled and there was an ominous crack. He desisted, not knowing what damage he was doing to some priceless surface. It was true that both he and Mr Neff’s late collection seemed alike doomed to a watery grave – nevertheless, he would not trample upon these things even in this moment of their common agony. So Meredith was hurtled down a corridor and into an elevator which dropped like a stone; thence he was ejected upon a turntable and trundled down a further cavernous corridor dimly lit – an incongruously human outcrop upon this monstrous funeral procession of pigment and bronze and marble, this glyptic and plastic twilight of the gods. And everywhere the attendants of Mr Neff pervasively infected by the hysteria of their employer, like impatient mutes whose dinner awaits them, hurried the cortège forward.
The journey from level to level and end to end of Mr Neff’s hypertrophied Cottage was dreamlike and endless, like a vast trans-Atlantic reflection of the troglodyte fantasies of Miss Dorcas Macleod; it wanted only the baying of Titian and Giotto to be like a fevered magnification of the hurtlings through Bubear’s warehouse; it was altogether more perilous and confounding than Meredith’s remotely kindred ride with the Flying Foxes over the crumbled battlements of Castle Moila… Another turntable received him; he felt a jolt as the mechanism momentarily faltered; there was a small landslide among the objects of art surrounding him, and a marble object came down hard on his head.
After that mere confusion was about him. It was dark and there was a raw, cold air; he heard the plash of water and dimly knew that he was out upon some landing-stage where the immense abode of Mr Neff touched the answering immensities of the Laurentic Basin. There were low voices about him and a sound as of the straining of oars in heavily laden boats. He listened more intently and could hear too, from far out in the darkness, a steady intermittent splash which told of a succession of objects being dropped into the engulfing waters of the lake… Meredith struggled to a sitting posture. It was quite dark except in one direction – and there he blinked at what was at first no more than a dazzle of light. But presently he saw that it was the vast front porch of Dove Cottage and that there stood Mr Neff himself, insanely dancing beneath the portico, his gold and ruby dove hovering above him while the solemn strains of William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ floated down through the air.
‘That’s the lot; now get him in quick.’ Meredith felt himself lifted and tumbled to the bottom of some small and rocking craft; he heard the creaking of oars and knew he was under way. The solemn strains of the massed choirs grew fainter. The splash…splash…splash of objects falling into water was louder in his ears. Interminably the rowing went on.
‘…green and pleasant land.’ The singing faded out. There was a gentle bump. Meredith was seized and heaved, not overboard, but up. Petrol vapour was in his nostrils.
‘OK,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Quit that splashing; we’ve got the old goat fooled. Jean, get out the barley sugar. We’ll be airborne in three minutes and I reckon there’s nothing like glucose.’
X
The flying-boat was up, and so was the moon. Mr Drummey looked at the water skimming a few feet beneath them. ‘It’s a load,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘Too much?’ Sucking barley sugar, Meredith peered out.
‘Not if we don’t meet headwinds…and once get out of this blamed bay.’ Drummey glanced at his instruments. ‘Joe,’ he called, ‘we’ll have to take the gap behind the house.’
‘Sure.’ Joe’s voice was even more impassive than usual. Meredith and Jean sat still, aware of some early crisis in the final phase of their adventure.
They were higher now; to Meredith it seemed very high. But Drummey sat slightly frowning, and on the controls his hands were as sensitive as a musician’s. He was a plain, snub-nosed man in the early thirties. But after all, thought Meredith, it is not only art that is beautiful – nor, among human kind, only the photogenic faces of Hollywood… He caught his breath. Dove Cottage had appeared again in the moonlight. And it was hurtling at them like a projectile through the air.
‘Right over the top,’ explained Joe. ‘Otherwise you’re wrong for the line of the valley beyond.’ He paused. ‘Yards, this time.’
‘Feet’, said Drummey. Dove Cottage disappeared. ‘Inches…hold tight!’
The flying-boat jarred and violently rocked in air. A second later it was flying on its way on an even keel. Joe picked himself up. ‘Hit it,’ he said. ‘Which is clean crazy. We ought to be dead.’
‘Only that fool tank.’ It was the young man called John who spoke. ‘Plastic stuff and we shivered it by catching the last centimetre of the top. Tricky materials always. Jiminy – have a look!’
Meredith and Jean scrambled to a point of vantage. Vast and fantastic in the clear moonlight, Dove Cottage was veering away behind them. But it was no longer a swell home; it had become in an instant an inverted Niagara, a fountain a hundred times more gigantic than any ever conceived by Louis Quatorze or Kubla Khan. ‘The swimming pool!’ said Jean. ‘And the sharks and octopode must be coming down like an unholy hail–’
‘Or like frogs in China,’ said Drummey without stirring. ‘But, of course, there it’s tadpoles chiefly. Always a bit of exaggeration in travellers’ tales.’
‘But I don’t see–’ And Jean stared in perplexity at this sudden Eighth Wonder of the World, now rapidly diminishing behind them. ‘All that water–’
‘Mains,’ said Drummey. ‘There’s three mains goes up there with booster pumps behind them. Any of them can recharge the tank in five minutes with water at a temperature how you like. And if it’s as you say, I reckon the valves must have gone when we got the tank. What’s falling over the old man’s palace is tens of thousands of gallons of cold water a minute. Dampening… Well, we’re clear. Nothing in front of us but the Mountains of Mayo and the Pennine Chain.’
Jean was still gazing backwards. Dove Cottage had shrunk to the dimensions of a toy, and presently the sides of the valley closed in and blotted it out – a tiny aqueous fantasy. ‘Higgy’s final indignity,’ she murmured. ‘The greatest shower-bath in history. And all because I took him on a petting-party to – what was it called? – Rest-and-be-thankful.’
For the first time Drummey looked up from his instruments. ‘What’s that?’
‘He never got there. He was captured instead.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Joe sagely, ‘it’s pretty well the same thing.’
The Atlantic was beneath them; behind shone great Arcturus; to the south was Antares rising; the clear white light of Lyra hung at the zenith of the pale blue dome above; the nose of the f
lying-boat pointed into Cygnus, the cross of which was sweeping on its side through the eastern sky. Interminably John murmured of these stars, of Capella and Aldebaran; interminably he mumbled over the sums they set him; interminably the engines droned. But it was all a great improvement on Captain von Schwiebus’ submarine. Meredith, rejoicing in this almost planetary progress, did not inquire whether headwinds were before them.
‘But I’m still not at all sure’, he said, ‘just how it was managed. Coffee – and sandwiches? How very delightful.’
Drummey grinned. ‘I jes’ thought I’d keep in contact. You know, there must have been something about Miss Halliwell put it in my head.’
‘Is that so?’ said Meredith, slightly puzzled.
‘We were to be out there, anyway, you know, tuning up for some fool trip to the Coast in the morning. But it couldn’t have been done if Jea – if Miss Halliwell hadn’t squared Flosdorf pretty quick.’
Jean set down her mug. ‘It was eating candy,’ she explained seriously. ‘Flosdorf realized it just couldn’t be kept quiet and that his best chance was to bolt. I dare say he’s in Cincinnati or St Louis by now. But he realized too that the less of that stolen property was destroyed the less bleak it would be for him if he was finally nobbled. So he came round in under three minutes and fixed as many of the underlings as were necessary. But with all those belts going at the pace they did it was very much what you might call working against time.’
‘And so we have virtually the whole collection on board?’
As Meredith spoke Joe squeezed himself through a hatch. ‘There’s just over five hundred paintings,’ he said, ‘and some of them about as big as a tennis-court. But that’s nothing – nor all the etchings and things either. The real freight’s the marbles and bronzes. Talk of blondes in your bomb-racks! We’ve got bevies of Venuses and the like cuddling themselves all over the ship.’
From London Far Page 31