Jade Venus

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Hmm,” Bacon said. “Thanks. Ready, Carroll?”

  They started down the hall with Barry Gould. Murdock and Carl Watrous followed along until Murdock felt a hand on his arm. It was Gail Roberts’s hand.

  “Please, Kent,” she said. “You don’t have to go. You can stay a little while.”

  “Yes,” Louise said. “Please stay.… And Carl …”

  Murdock did not hear the rest of it, for he was looking at Gail and when he saw how small and forlorn she looked, when he realized how hard it was for her now, he nodded and took her hand and found an odd thickness in his throat when he spoke.

  “Okay,” he said, “for a little while.”

  He was wrong, however, about the length of his stay. Louise had talked Carl Watrous into staying too and both women insisted that they have lunch there. Murdock was still trying to get away at two o’clock when the telephone rang and Mrs. Higgins said it was for him.

  Lieutenant Bacon wasted no words. “Come and get your picture,” he said.

  “What?” Murdock yelled.

  “The picture,” Bacon said. “The Venus thing. I’m down at George Damon’s Art Mart.”

  Murdock found himself talking on a dead wire and when he recovered sufficiently to think he got the operator and gave her the number of the Courier-Herald.

  Louise and Gail and Watrous gathered round him as he waited and he told them what Bacon said and asked Gail if she would go with him. Watrous said he would like to see the picture too and then Gould answered.

  “Go down to the studio,” Murdock said when he repeated the information Bacon had given him. “I mean the Courier studio—and tell whoever’s there to give you my camera and plate-case. It should be in my old desk. And be sure you get some infra-red film and filters.”

  The Art Mart, in pre-war days, had been an automobile showroom. Now it had a heavy, modernistic door and its front window was tastefully draped to display water colors and canvases and a small card which said: Originals from $25-$300.

  Lieutenant Bacon and Barry Gould were waiting in the foyer when Murdock, Gail Roberts, and Carl Watrous entered. George Damon was talking to an auburn-haired girl with glasses, who sat behind the reception desk, and propped up against a corner of the desk was a medium- sized canvas in an antiqued frame, the focal point of which was a figure of Venus done in jade green.

  Murdock stopped in front of it, aware that his pulse was thumping and his mouth was dry. “Yes,” he said, though he had never seen the picture before, “that’s it.… Isn’t it, Gail?”

  When she hesitated he glanced at her and found her lips parted, her stare wide and oddly disturbed. “Yes,” she said in a small, husky voice. “Yes, that’s the one.”

  Murdock watched her turn away, heard Bacon say something and glanced at the lieutenant. “How did it get here?” Murdock asked.

  “Some kid brought it in—so Damon says.”

  “Yes.” George Damon nodded and rubbed his palms. “I was out to lunch and this boy came in and spoke to Miss Garber.” He nodded toward the receptionist. “She thought something was wrong—the boy was poorly dressed and not more than seventeen or so—but she told him to sit down and wait until I came back.”

  Damon spread his hands. “I guess he must have got scared and—”

  “Why should he get scared?” Murdock asked.

  “Well”—Damon glanced at Bacon and his manner became elaborately patient—“obviously it was not the boy’s. At least if what you told me last night was true, Murdock. And after a few minutes he told Miss Garber he’d be back. She tried to stop him but—”

  “Why should he bring it here anyway?”

  Damon shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. We do quite a bit of advertising. It might have been that. My own opinion is that he found it somewhere and hoped to sell it for a few dollars.”

  Murdock examined the other as he spoke. It was different now from the deep shadows of Damon’s library last night. He could see all he needed to see now and he was aware that outwardly there had been a great change in George Damon since the Prohibition days that had given him his start.

  In his late forties, he was plump, pink-faced, and very dapper indeed with his waxed mustache, striped trousers, and short Oxford-gray coat. A delicately embroidered handkerchief flowed from the breast pocket and his cravat was thick silk. His hands were soft and manicured and he still smelled of Eau-de-Cologne; only the opaque eyes, deepset beneath the thick black brows, told Murdock that behind it all was the same shrewd, hard ruthlessness that had made Damon the top man in any racket he ever touched.

  “You didn’t see this up at Professor Andrada’s the other day?”

  “As I told you,” Damon said, “the canvases I saw had value.”

  “And you figured this was the one I said had been stolen and so you reported it to the police and—”

  “Exactly.”

  “Anyway, we’ve got it,” Bacon said. “And if that comes under the head of Art, I’ve seen everything.” He turned to Carl Watrous. “That’s the thing you wanted to pay a thousand bucks for, huh?”

  “That and two others.”

  Murdock was still watching Damon. He saw the opaque, half-hidden eyes flick to Watrous, hesitate, and pass on; then Bacon touched Murdock’s arm.

  “Well, what do you want to do with it?”

  Murdock hesitated and looked through the doorway into the long, narrow showroom beyond, hands thrust deep in his trench coat pockets, his gaze darkly brooding. He could see a few men and women inspecting the paintings and etchings which adorned the walls and part of his brain became vaguely busy with what he saw. This was a new kind of art gallery. Here there was no atmosphere of plush and frock coats designed to cow prospective clients and art lovers into the proper state of humility; the part of the room he saw was well lighted and smartly decorated and there were comfortable chairs and settees for those who wanted to sit and look. The pictures on the walls were openly displayed and priced, and the customers were allowed to go their own gait without solicitation. Sergeant Keogh wandered through the doorway shaking his head.

  “Some stuff,” he said. “Not bad, either—some of it. You should get a load of it, Lieutenant.”

  The remark broke Murdock’s mood. “Is there some place where I can photograph this?” he asked Damon.

  George Damon said there was. Out back there was a room he was welcome to use.

  Murdock developed his films in the darkrooms of the Courier-Herald and when, finally, he had examined them against the glow of the safe-light, he slipped them into the hypo and stood staring blindly into the darkness, trying to put down his bitterness and disappointment. The films showed nothing more than his eyes had seen on the canvases, and now that he was sure he tried to tell himself that he had expected nothing more, that he could not expect to be that lucky. Yet, underlying the doubt that had crept into his mind ever since he talked to George Damon, there had always been hope; now weariness and dejection erased even that as he went down the corridor to the studio anteroom. Barry Gould, who had come back with him, swung his feet down from a desk top and looked expectant.

  “Find what you wanted?”

  Murdock shook his head. “Drew a blank,” he said woodenly.

  Gould studied him a moment. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his sandy hair and put the hat back on. He had a trick of bunching his brows when thinking so that a hump came over the bridge of his nose from which tiny wrinkles spread, like the segments of a fanlight above a door. The wrinkles were there now.

  “I haven’t asked a lot of questions,” he said. “I figured it was none of my business, otherwise someone would have told me. But you used infra-red films and filters because with that equipment you can tell if there’s another painting underneath the one the eye can see; because you figured there was something underneath that picture of the green Venus.”

  “Something like that,” Murdock said.

  “But you didn’t find it. Which means your idea was bad, or els
e there’s another picture and the one you got from Damon is only a copy of the original. Right?”

  “Right.”

  Gould stood up. He walked over to the window and looked out. “I guess you got your job with the A.M.G. because you were good at infra-red and ultra-violet stuff.”

  “Partly,” Murdock said. “Also I’d been in Italy for a summer and could speak the language a little.”

  “I didn’t say anything last night because Andrada was excited enough without me asking a lot of questions, but I know the sort of job your branch is doing and I know what the Germans have been doing with the things they’ve taken from museums and other collections. I heard about one case of wanton destruction. I don’t know how true it is but I think it was at Livardi. The Italians had brought over eight hundred cases of things dating from 1238—museum pieces, selected documents from state archives. There were registers of the Hohenstaufen and Angevin kings of Naples and stuff from the House of Aragon. I understand there were around sixty paintings including an early Botticelli and a Luini.… An incendiary squad destroyed the works.”

  “We know about that one,” Murdock said, “but we can’t prove it. Not yet.”

  Gould continued, still talking to the window. “It’s a lot different world than I thought it was when I used to be on the Courier. All I thought of then was Barry Gould and where he could make a few more fast bucks. I’ve seen a lot of death and suffering since then; and greed and treachery. From things I’ve heard I’m not so sure the Germans are the only ones doing the looting. I’ve got an idea there are a few Italians cashing in—the ones with a little power and the right connections.”

  He turned. “But anyway, you come all the way from Italy to get your hands on a painting and last night the painting is stolen and Andrada is murdered. That could hook the two up, and if it does it sort of makes that painting important. It sort of looks as if that painting was a key or a map or a code to some very valuable things you guys haven’t been able to locate.”

  “It was an idea I had,” Murdock said, aware that there was no point in denying such reasoning.

  “And if the idea is still good you have to come back to the possibility that the picture you got from Damon is a copy. And when you think of copy you have to think of Roger Carroll. The only thing is he couldn’t have made it. He hasn’t been in that house in three days—at least I don’t think he has.”

  He paused and suddenly his lids narrowed and a new brightness touched his gaze. “Look, could a copy have been made since the picture was stolen? Say from ten last night to two today—sixteen hours. Would there be time enough for a copy to dry?”

  Murdock thought it over. He had already considered this and he went all over it again. He said he didn’t think so. He said:

  “I think it would take a good man five or six hours to make a copy that good and I don’t think an oil like that would dry in ten hours, not enough to stand inspection. That one was dry. I felt it.”

  “Well”—Gould turned away and stopped by the door—“I don’t know. What you’re doing is a lot more important than any story I could get, but I still want the story and not just for the Courier. Written right it would make a good magazine piece. So I’m going to keep crowding you. How about dinner if you’re not doing anything? What’re you going to do now?”

  Murdock opened his plate-case. “I guess Carroll’s got a stack of paintings at his studio, hasn’t he? Where is his place, do you know?”

  Gould gave him the address. He said Carroll had plenty of paintings. “At least he did have when I stopped in a couple of days ago.”

  “I guess I have to photograph all of them,” Murdock said. “Whether I like it or not.”

  Roger Carroll’s rooms were in a two-story, grimy brick building that was flanked by two others like it but one story higher. On one side was a wholesale paper house and on the other was a hardware store; below Carroll’s rooms was a plumbing supply shop. There was a narrow doorway between this and the paper house and when Murdock trudged up the worn wooden stairs he found the interior as discouraging as the outside.

  Lieutenant Bacon, with Keogh and two plain-clothes men, were apparently just finishing a search of the place and Bacon scowled and said:

  “Now what?” He looked at Murdock’s two plate-cases. “If it wasn’t for that uniform I’d think you were back in the harness. More pictures? How did those others turn out?”

  Murdock put down his paraphernalia and glanced around. It was a big room, disordered and not very clean. There were racks filled with canvases, and easels, and a model stand, and tubes of paint; there was a rickety, overstuffed divan, a couple of tables and chairs, and in one corner a sink, a hot plate, and an old wooden icebox. Through an open doorway he could see a gloomy bedroom.

  “Where’s Carroll?” he asked.

  “We got him under glass. We’re keeping him that way awhile.”

  “You got a case?”

  “We got a start,” Keogh said.

  Bacon pulled his hand from a pocket and opened it. In the palm was an empty shell. “A .32,” he said. “Found it under the couch, probably from an automatic. A .32 killed Andrada.”

  “What else?” Murdock said.

  Bacon pointed to a spot between two worn scatter rugs.

  “Somebody did a lot of rubbing to get a stain off there—and recently.”

  Murdock pretended to be unimpressed. “Could have been paint.”

  “Could have been chocolate ice cream,” Bacon said. “But there might be some more on the rugs. We’ll take ’em down and let the chemist have a look. Now what about those pictures you took?”

  Murdock told Bacon what he had told Barry Gould.

  “Okay,” Bacon said. “Figure it for me.”

  Murdock said he thought the picture Damon turned in was a copy. He said it had to be a copy if his original premise was right and he intended to stick to that premise, and maybe Roger Carroll had made the copy.

  “It ain’t here now,” Bacon said. “We looked.”

  “If he made a copy and the original was here,” Murdock said, “and if he killed Andrada or knew anything about the killing, he wouldn’t dare leave the picture around for someone to find. To hide it he might have painted over it—plenty of paintings were smuggled out of Europe before the war that same way—and I’ve got an extra case of film and lights and bulbs to find out.”

  Bacon rubbed his nose. He took out a stogie and began to trim the end. “You still like George Damon, don’t you?”

  “The two lads that grabbed me were pros,” Murdock said. “A guy like Damon would know where to hire thugs.”

  “I’ll go along on that. So one of them swiped the picture and dropped it off at Damon’s place before they released you. Damon spotted it as a phony. Not just by looking at it.”

  “By photographing it—or having it photographed. The same way I did. He knows enough about fake paintings to use the infra-red method. He had it photographed and found there was nothing underneath and that told him it was a copy.”

  “Then why did he bother to turn it in today? You think some kid was hired to bring the picture in and tell the story to the receptionist?”

  Murdock took off his coat and cap and began to unfasten one plate-case. “Whoever has the original—if we find it—might have to stand trial for murder. The copy was no good to Damon and by turning it in with a phony story he saw a chance to divert suspicion from himself. There was no point in running the risk of keeping the copy. If he destroyed it, everyone would keep looking for the original; this way there was a chance we’d accept the copy for the original—at least long enough to give him a chance to look for the real one all by himself.”

  “That ain’t bad figuring. You don’t think he got the original?”

  “No.” Murdock straightened up, exasperation in his glance and his mouth a thin grim line. “And don’t ask me how Damon found out enough about the Jade Venus to want it. I don’t know. Roger Carroll might have made a copy—though how, I
don’t know either—and he may have been mixed up some way in the murder. But I think Andrada got some clue from something Erloff said or did. He started out to handle things himself and he tangled with Erloff and Erloff was too tough for him.”

  “Could be. But if you’re right, Damon is going to keep on looking for the original—if there is one.”

  “Sure, he’ll keep on looking.”

  Bacon examined the end of his stogie to see that it was burning evenly. “Well, you hunt for your picture and I’ll take the guy that did the killing.… Look, how long you gonna be?”

  “An hour; probably longer.”

  “Andy.” Bacon glanced at one of the plain-clothes men. “Stick around till he finishes; then seal the place. Let me know if you find anything, Murdock.”

  When they had gone, taking the rugs with them, Murdock began to sort out the canvases. He found about a dozen which were rolled and looked old and hurriedly done. There were eight or ten others, stretched and of varying sizes, and there were six more, neatly framed, and these were the best of all. Each had a small number pasted to the frame and of the six there were three that Murdock liked. One, about sixteen by twenty-four, was a waterfront scene that looked familiar to him; the other two were landscapes of the same size—about twenty-five by thirty—one a country valley done in a sort of blue mood, and the other a river and pine trees that might have been done somewhere along the upper Charles.

  The more he looked at the water-front scene the better he liked it and he was trying to identify the exact place it portrayed when the plain-clothes man cleared his throat.

  “You say you’ll be an hour?” the man said. “Then I guess there’s time for me to go out and pick up a sandwich and a beer, huh?”

  “Plenty of time,” Murdock said, and began to set up his camera.

  When he was ready he took off his blouse and rolled up his sleeves, eyeing the rack of canvases without enthusiasm. It would be a tedious job and he knew the rolled canvases would be hardest to handle so he decided to do them first.