MacQuarrie’s second chin quivered pleasurably. He spoke to the man beside him.
“Mr. Chalmers is an enthusiast,” he said. Then to Duddington. “You know Mr. Sheerness, I think.”
“Oh, yes,” said Duddington. He nodded to Sheerness, a big, gray-haired man with hard eyes and a heavy jaw. “How do you do?”
Sheerness greeted Duddington briefly; he fumbled with his watch guard; his hard eyes went here and there among the green glass pieces with a kind of resentment.
“When you see Mr. Chalmers in town on a hot day, something is going on,” said MacQuarrie to Sheerness. “There is a promise of the unusual.” He smiled and nodded his shining head. “A catalogue or announcement has told him something.”
Duddington lifted his brows.
“MacQuarrie seems to look upon his patrons as sort of salesroom barometers. I’ve heard that some of his most expert judgments are based upon who shows interest in what he’s offering.”
MacQuarrie laughed, Marsh rubbed his hands and nodded and smiled. But Sheerness stared, coldly.
“I’m favorably disposed toward this collection,” he said to the dealer. “It seems quite authentic.”
MacQuarrie gestured.
“I’ve been concerned in the sale of art objects and antiques for twenty years,” he said. “And I’ve never seen so many perfect pieces in one group.” He looked at Duddington as though hoping for a further expression; but the fat young man was admiring some tavern glasses and paid no attention. So the art dealer shifted his eyes to Marsh. “No one knows more about this kind of thing than Mr. Marsh,” he said to Sheerness, “You know him, I think.”
Sheerness merely glanced at the man, but Marsh put on his glasses with some eagerness.
“South Spanish is a new thing for the collector,” he said. “And in consequence there’s still some of it to be found outside the institutions. You are quite correct in your judgment, Mr. Sheerness: these pieces are absolutely authentic.”
Sheerness nodded, and then with a kind of contempt turned his back on the man; he spoke in a low tone to MacQuarrie, handing him a card upon which he’d written some memoranda. And then, without a word or a glance to one side or the other, he left the place. And when he’d gone Duddington beckoned to the proprietor.
“MacQuarrie,” he said, “any time that person comes into your place with his damned arrogance, I’ll take it as a favor if you’ll not call my attention, if I’m here, to anything he’s occupied with.”
“Mr. Chalmers,” said MacQuarrie, “really, now. I only meant to——”
“Very well,” said Duddington. “I’m making a point of this so you’ll not forget it. You have a habit, for your own advantage, of calling people into the range of his insolence.” He looked steadily at the man for a moment and added: “This is the first time it’s happened to me; if it happens again I shall have something to say to both Mr. Sheerness and yourself which neither of you will like.”
MacQuarrie protested and apologized, but Duddington frowned him away.
“Damned swine, both of them,” said the fat young man to Marsh.
“Mr. Sheerness is a hard person to approach,” said Marsh.
“The cure for that is to not approach him,” said Duddington.
“That would be quite an easy attitude for you, sir,” said Marsh. “But I have a living to make, you see. My knowledge of art matters and antiques is my chief asset, and if I’m to earn anything by it I must have the favor of rich collectors and active institutions.”
“I suppose that’s true enough,” said Duddington. “But what have you earned by way of Sheerness in the last, let us say, five years?”
“Nothing.” Marsh shook his head. “Not anything. There was a time when I was very useful to him; he was beginning his collections then, and I advised him and helped his judgments. But that affair of the Hals did for me, Mr. Chalmers. It ruined me, sir.”
“Well, what else could you expect:” said Duddington “You worked against Sheerness, didn’t you? He wanted that picture; he’d stated in the public prints he meant to buy it. Having had what he wanted all his life, he never considered that someone might overreach him. When you stepped in with the John Gregory money behind you and took the picture right from under his nose you did an unforgivable thing.”
“But,” protested Marsh, “it is all in the game. Everyone understands that.”
“Sheerness doesn’t. No man appreciates the sporting aspects of anything if he is accustomed to keeping constantly in the front of his mind that he is a very great person. And rules mean nothing to him. He wants what he wants and bears down all opposition. If you oppose him you are his enemy. If you are cleverer than he, or more ready, or have more information, you affront him. In buying the Hals for the John Gregory Museum when he desired it, you caused him to halt for a moment in his stride. He’ll never forgive you for that.”
“He bears MacQuarrie no ill will,” said Marsh, rubbing his hands together. “He comes here quite often; he’s, perhaps, the heaviest buyer the gallery has. And then there is Custis, of the John Gregory Museum. He was the person who gave me my authority in buying the picture, and Mr. Sheerness is on good terms with him.”
“Yes, I know,” said Duddington. He nodded; as he wiped the dust from one of the tavern glasses there was a puzzled look upon his face. “So he is.”
“It was Custis, Mr. Chalmers, who insisted on the purchase being made in the way it was. If Mr. Sheerness was publicly humiliated, Custis was to blame, not I. For, do you see, sir, he detested Mr. Sheerness and wanted to see him laughed at. I didn’t realize it then, but I do now. He detested Mr. Sheerness, and he still does. For all the good will Mr. Sheerness has shown him, for all the gifts he’s made his institution, Custis jeers behind his back. He derides him.”
Duddington did not reply to this. He called to MacQuarrie’s assistant, penciled a bid on the back of a card, and handed it to him. The man looked at the figures and lifted his brows.
“If you want to buy in this glass, Mr. Chalmers,” he said, “and cannot attend the sale, I don’t mind saying to you there is a higher price already offered. A gentleman desires this lot as a gift to an art institution, and his bid is very high. If you can see your way clear to raising this figure,” looking at the card, “I’ll be glad to put it down.”
“No,” said Duddington. “That’s my price, Curry. No more.”
The man went away, and Marsh nodded; there was a pale gleam in his light-colored eyes.
“Sheerness will make another gift to the John Gregory Museum, I think. This will be another gesture, showing how well disposed he is toward Custis. And, Mr. Chalmers, Custis will still make game of him.”
III
DUDDINGTON took a cab back to his rooms; the heat had grown; it was now past noon; his starched collar had melted and depressed him greatly. The apartment house was huge, and its shadow, because of that, seemed cool; the corridors were dim and quiet and pleasant after the glare of the street.
In a few moments he had reached the fifteenth floor. As he rounded a turn in the hall he saw something that made him chuckle.
“Now” he said to himself, “there’s a curious thing. It looked as though that man had come out of my rooms.”
But Duddington felt sure the man had not; for Turvy was never there at that hour. So he advanced, and as he drew near noted that the man was quite tall, and then, with a little surprise, that it was the same man he’d seen in the lower hall an hour or so before.
“How are you, sir?” said Duddington. “Anything I can do for you?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Chalmers,” said the tall man. He was thin and had rather untidy hair; his clothes were in need of pressing and rather well worn; and he had the full, rather overdone manner of the old school. “I’ve just rung his bell, but there’s been no answer.”
“No matter,” said Duddington good-humouredly. “It is all right. I am Mr. Chalmers.”
The tall man shook hands with him.
; “I saw you some time ago,” he said. “Downstairs. I had no idea it was you. This is the third time I’ve been here since. And I can’t tell you how pleased I am to meet you.”
“That’s fine,” said Duddington affably.
“My name’s Podmore,” said the tall man. “D. P. Podmore. I’m from Cincinnati. I’ve been in Boston on business, and I’ve stopped over on the way back especially to see you.”
“Good!” said Duddington. He unlocked the door. That is, he turned the key and to his surprise found the lock not set. “Will you come in?”
Mr. Podmore followed him in. The windows were open; the trees moved gently in the park; the street noises at that height were subdued to a drone.
“A wonderful little place,” said the man from Cincinnati as he went to a window and stood looking out. “Such a view! Do you know, Mr. Chalmers, a man could get nothing quite like this in my city no matter what price he’d offer.”
Duddington put the parcel of collars upon a side table; the tall man went to another window and looked out. This opened upon a court, and there was the platform of a high-railed fire escape directly outside. The fat young man gazed at his visitor; there was something eager and unusual about him; and for the first time it came to Duddington that Mr. Podmore’s being on the fifteenth floor, apparently without the knowledge of the clerk downstairs, was somewhat peculiar.
“We are away behind New York,” said the man. “Quite a distance behind.” He left the window, put his hands in his pockets, and took a turn or two up and down the floor. “Mr. Chalmers,” he said, looking at Duddington, “you have been known to me by reputation for a long time; not only by your name as a connoisseur of the fine arts, but also as a bon vivant. I might say as an epicure. The table, sir, is a fading tradition in this country; the knowledge of sound wine, and the proper time and condition to drink it, is becoming a mere memory.”
“Mr. Podmore,” said Duddington gravely, “you are quite right. People no longer give attention to cookery: what should be delicate and succulent dishes are left in the hands of clumsy pretenders for preparation; and as for wines, there are only a few well-selected cellars left in all New York.”
“No doubt,” said the man. “And, as time goes on, these, too, will disappear. A generation will come who have never put a leg under a table in the old sense. And then, Mr. Chalmers, the world, to all intents and purposes, will have come to a stop. But,” and Mr. Podmore gestured this away, “that’s not what I came to talk about; I’m here to have you settle a vexed question—a question that has not only been vexing me, but quite a number of others in my city.”
Duddington looked at the speaker in surprise; he waved his hand toward a chair, and they both sat down.
“Anything I can do,” said the fat young man, “I’ll do with pleasure.”
“I have been, in my day, a collector of rare wines,” said Mr. Podmore. “My knowledge, if I may say so, set many a gentleman’s feet upon the path he should go in the matter of vintages. And I have always been an admirer of those mixtures which existed in their most perfect form in the United States alone—mixtures, Mr. Chalmers, which, if they had not been abolished in a legal sense, would eventually have enabled this nation to take a place in the front rank with those others which have given creature comforts their proper share of attention.”
There was a too fervid color in this speech, and Duddington frowned a little and looked puzzled.
“Quite so, Mr. Podmore,” he said. “I see what you mean.”
Mr. Podmore got up once more; he seemed restless; the eager manner was more and more pronounced; he moved about the room.
“I am much older than you,” he said. “And consequently I have eaten a great many more dinners, and before those dinners I have been given many sorts of cocktails. But one memorable night a few years ago—in the city of Toledo, sir—I became acquainted with the Chalmers,” he nodded and waved one hand in a gesture of gratitude. “Sir, the absolute monarch of all before-dinner drinks.”
Duddington’s suspicious manner relaxed; indeed, he looked pleased.
“It is nothing of importance,” he said. “Just a little thing. Maybe clever, but that’s all.”
Mr. Podmore sat down upon a corner of the side table.
“I expected that,” he said. “True ability is always modest. I do not know how this cocktail was received in the East upon its first appearance; but in Toledo it was regarded with the utmost favor.”
“Awfully nice of them,” said Duddington, more pleased than ever. “I’m greatly obliged.”
“I was astonished at the texture of your thought, Mr. Chalmers; I was overjoyed. The drink had an exquisite balance that amazed me.” Becoming even more expansive, the man took more room on the table; the packet of collars was in his way, and he placed it upon a window sill. “The man who mixed it was a New Yorker,” he said, “a gentleman whom I’d never seen before, nor since, and he’d gone away before I had a chance to question him. In Cincinnati I asked for the drink at a number of clubs and at private gatherings. Mostly they were in ignorance of its existence; some few claimed to know how it was made; but it was always a shocking concoction; nothing like the real things at all.”
“That’s too bad,” said Duddington. “I’m awfully sorry.”
“No two results were alike,” said Mr. Podmore. “I’ve drunk probably threescore attempts at a Chalmers, and no two were alike.”
“It’s just stupidity, that’s what it is,” said Duddington. “I’m frightfully grieved, Mr. Podmore, I assure you.”
“When I questioned the correctness of the mixings,” said the man from Cincinnati, “I became engaged in contention. I had difficulties on every hand.” He was quite excited; he slipped from the table and stepped about the room, gesturing. “One night at the Merchants Club my remarks affronted a number of prominent members. They upheld the club’s idea of the Chalmers, and I denounced it. Stewards were sent for; butlers were questioned; afterward hotel keepers, local experts, old members with a known taste for such things, and even ex-barkeepers were cross-examined. But the result was chaos. The testimony was bewildering; recipes were tested and found to be worthless. The witnesses quarreled among themselves; what might be called a state of anarchy grew up; in the end the highly respectable Merchants Club found itself practically disorganized.”
“Dear me!” said Duddington, aghast, “Why, that was a devil of a state of things, wasn’t it?”
Mr. Podmore, very much flushed, sat down upon the window sill and fanned himself with his hat.
“That is precisely what I thought myself,” he said. “Precisely. In a sense, Mr. Chalmers, the situation was ridiculous. And I resolved, at my first opportunity, to drop off in New York, see you, and get the facts of the recipe from your own lips.”
“Well, of course, Mr. Podmore, I feel immensely flattered. It never occurred to me that my little idea for a cocktail would ever cause a stir like this. But, fortunately, the whole matter can be settled at once, and, no doubt, to the satisfaction of all interested parties.” Duddington nodded good-humouredly. “Have you a pencil? Good. It would be best to put it down so you’ll be quite sure of it. First, you take a glass shaker——”
“What!” interrupted the man from Cincinnati. “A glass shaker? Why, not one of them used that.”
Duddington shook his head; he had an air of distress.
“There, you see. What can you expect? They were wrong at the very start. The glass shaker is absolutely necessary, because the other sort always leaves a metallic taste. This is, of course, slight, but it is noticeable to a sensitive palate. I never use one.”
“Glass!” said Mr. Podmore admiringly. “That’s a delicate stroke. I begin to see the reason for your success, sir, in these matters.”
“The ice should be cracked, but not too fine,” said Duddington. “Bear this in mind. Shaved ice will not do. It is altogether wrong and must never be used by a person who hopes for quality. The gin should be Holland’s——”
“No!” cried Mr. Podmore excitedly. “Surely not, Mr. Chalmers!”
“Holland’s,” repeated Duddington firmly. “Gordon is well enough when you can get it good, but it has no place in the Chalmers. One part of Holland’s, one of French vermouth, a scant six drops of Peyschaud Bitters——”
“And then the drop of absinthe,” said Mr. Podmore, his pencil poised.
“Absinthe!” Duddington looked at him in horror. “No, no!”
“What, no absinthe?”
“By no means,” said Duddington. “Not a breath of it.”
“Why, then,” said Mr. Podmore, much astonished, “I now see the reason for all our trouble. The metal shaker in the first place, the wrong sort of gin, and then the absinthe. Every so-called Chalmers I ever saw mixed in Cincinnati had absinthe in it. They were all so fixed in their belief that this was one of the fundamentals that I never for a moment doubted it. Mr. Chalmers,” after he had scribbled the last facts into a small book with a hand that shook, so agitated was he, “I am indeed grateful to you for putting me right in this.” He arose to grasp Duddington by the hand, and in doing so struck the parcel of collars and toppled it from the window sill and into the courtyard below. “Well, now, that was extremely awkward of me,” said Mr. Podmore. “I trust it was nothing of a breakable nature, sir.”
“Some soft collars,” said Duddington. “It’s no matter. I’ll call the office; one of the boys will bring them up to me.”
“By no means,” said the man from Cincinnati. “You shall not be put to further trouble on my account, Mr. Chalmers. I’ll get them; it will take but a minute.”
The Museum Murder Page 2