"Sure," I said. "We can get an X-ray shadowgraph, or make a picture by ultra-violet light. An expert would have to do it and the result might not tell us much. There isn't any way to have X-rays or ultra-violet light go through one layer of paint and not through others. Even at the best, we wouldn't get a clear look at what's underneath."
"Can't you lift off the top layers some way?"
"That's a job for a restorer. It could take weeks. You get a surgeon's knife and take away one tiny flake of paint after another. It's a terrific problem trying not to hurt the layers you want to save. While you're working you can't even be sure which layers ought to be saved. I have a knife that could be used but—"
"Go ahead and try it."
"I told you it could take weeks!"
"We don't have weeks. Let's do it right now."
"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "After a painting has been around for a while, the layers of paint fuse together. It's hard to tell where one begins and another ends."
"But Pete, this hasn't been around long. Anyway the top painting hasn't. Nick's landlady talked as if it was done only a couple of days ago. So maybe it will come off easily."
"I may wreck the bottom painting."
"It's mine," she said. "I'm willing to take the chance."
There was a queer feeling in my stomach. "I admit the top painting is yours, but what if the bottom one isn't?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Let's not talk about it. I might end up too scared to touch the thing. I'll tell you what. I'll make a test first."
I went into the gallery and got the stretcher that had held Accardi's painting. A strip of canvas had been left on the stretcher when the painting was cut off. I dug up a sharp knife and a spirit lamp. I warmed the blade over the lamp flame and went to work on the cut edge of the canvas on the stretcher. Under the magnifying glass there seemed to be a fairly clear division between two layers of pigment. I pried at it, warmed the blade, pried again. The top layer moved. I slipped the blade under it and lifted. The top layer came up slightly, almost like the skin of a tangerine, leaving a few clinging threads binding it to the layer below.
"It works!" Nancy cried.
"So far. I may have hit a freakish place, though. Do you want me to go ahead on the painting itself?"
"Of course I do. Hurry!"
"Hurry!" I grumbled. "At best we'll be here all night."
I started at a corner of the painting. At the first try I made a mistake and found I was getting into the upper layer. I took another try. This time it worked. There were two paintings, and when I hit the right spot I got that tangerine skin result. It was slow work, though, and took so much concentration that it made me jumpy and breathless. Nancy kept leaning over trying to watch, and once her hair brushed my face and I growled at her. In fifteen minutes I raised a triangular flap about an inch long. I got some wax paper to slide between the layers as I worked, so they wouldn't stick together again.
After getting that far the job went faster. The painting underneath had been varnished and dried thoroughly. That made a poor surface for over-painting. The top painting had been done recently with heavy blobs of pigment. Oil paints don't dry quickly, unless you use a drying agent in them, and so the top layer was still a bit soft. It was a real break. You'd never have
luck like that in ordinary restoration work. As I made progress I kept sliding the wax paper forward, and refused to let Nancy peek underneath. I was afraid of losing my touch if I stopped. In about an hour I had most of the top layer peeled back.
"All right," I said. "Let's take a look." I lifted the top layer and pulled out the wax paper.
"Wow!" Nancy said.
We were looking at a landscape. In the foreground, wheat was ripening under hot sunlight. There was a farmhouse with a sun-streaked roof. In the middle distance a lone cypress writhed up into the golden air. Purple hills rolled across the background. The wheat field sloped from left to right, flooding across the canvas in a green-gold torrent. There was a gray-blue sky with scorched puffs of clouds. The painting had been done with quick forceful brush strokes and lots of pigment. It boiled with life. It could have given 3D a lesson in how to jump out at people.
"Nick never dreamed that up," Nancy said in awe.
"You're so right."
"I wish there were a signature so we could tell who did it."
"The signature is all over it," I said. "It's in every brush stroke and every touch of color. The guy who dreamed this up was Vincent Van Gogh."
For a minute Nancy didn't say anything. In the silence I could almost feel the presence of the big violent Dutchman: the painter who took the raw colors of Impressionism and twisted them into a rainbow . . . the guy who shook up art so that it could never be the same again. The painting in front of us was from the year when he was painting at Aries in southern France. I had never seen it before but I couldn't miss on the thing. Nobody before or since ever painted sunlight like that. Just looking at it was almost enough to give you a tan.
Nancy said faintly, "It can't be a real Van Gogh, can it?"
I rummaged in a drawer until I found a needle. "I don't think so," I muttered. "But if I'm wrong I ought to be shot." I poked the needle carefully into the painting, near one corner. Then I pulled it out and used the magnifying glass to study the tiny hole. I breathed a little more easily. "It's a copy," I said.
"The original would have been done in 1888 or 1889. The paint should be quite hard, and a needle ought to make tiny cracks in it. But this needle didn't make any cracks. So the paint can't have been drying more than thirty or forty years. As a matter of fact, I'd guess it was done quite recently."
"Could Nick have copied a Van Gogh so perfectly?" "What it takes to copy any painting is technical skill, and knowing how the painter worked. Nick has the skill. And his other stuff shows he's been influenced by the Impressionists. Nick could do it." "It's still pretty wonderful to do such a fine copy, isn't it?" "You really work at building up Accardi, don't you? No, it isn't wonderful. A thousand guys could make a copy of the 'Mona Lisa.' But not one of them could create a Mona Lisa on his own."
Nancy said, "I'm not trying to build up Nick. I'm only trying to figure out why so many people want this painting."
"I can give you part of the answer. You won't like it, though. This is more than just a copy. A crooked dealer could sell it for a fortune. This thing is a forgery."
8.
The echo of my words slithered around the room and came back as a nasty whisper. Nancy looked white and sick. She said weakly, "I don't believe it. Just because he did a very good copy—"
"It's a deliberate fake. It's intended to sell as a real Van Gogh. That's why the painting is so hot."
"You're not being fairl You don't like Nick and so anything he does has to be bad."
"The guy used tricks that no honest painter would pull. I can prove it. Look." I handed her the magnifying glass. "See
those cracks in the paint? They're faked. This painting was done recently and it couldn't have developed cracks. Look at them under the glass. They're too shallow. They don't go deeply into the paint. Those cracks were cut into the paint with a needle."
She looked for a minute, and said, "But why would there have to be cracks to make people think it's a real Van Gogh?"
"People think a crack proves a painting was done long ago. Actually some Van Goghs are cracked and some aren't. But if you're faking a Van Gogh, cracks would help fool people."
"Are the cracks in this painting your only reason for accusing Nick of forgery?"
I gave her a lecture on some of the other things that pointed to forgery. Under the microscope there were tiny grains of color in the paint. That meant the color had been ground by hand; factory-ground colors are so smooth you can't see the grains. Van Gogh had ground most of his own colors while he was working in Aries. Any smart forger would know that, and would use hand-ground colors too.
The wood of the stretcher looked old and stained, and some
body who didn't know much about carpentry had put it together. In Aries, Van Gogh had made his own stretchers. So Nick had gone to a lot of trouble to imitate him in that way.
Nick had done his painting recently, but the varnish on it seemed old. I told Nancy how you could color varnish to make it give a painting the appearance of age. I got very technical and told her that Van Gogh had used a very hard bright chrome yellow, and explained how chrome yellow takes on a mysterious greenish-brown tint as it ages. I pointed out the greenish-brown tint in the chrome yellow Nick had used, and explained how you could fake that effect. Probably she didn't follow half of what I was saying. But one way or another it got home to her. I was just starting to show her that the back of the canvas had been given an aging treatment when she shoved the thing away and began to cry.
I patted her shoulder awkwardly, and muttered, "Nick means a lot to you, doesn't he?"
She said in an angry broken voice, "He doesn't mean anything to me."
"Sure, sure. Just take it easy and—"
"And you don't mean anything to me either!"
I couldn't understand why I was being dragged into this. "Nobody," I said meekly, "ever claimed I did."
"Oh, it's been such a maddening day!" she said furiously. "First I find you playing around with that Raymond woman and then I find Nick playing around with forgeries. I can't trust anybody!"
"Now wait a minute. The two things you're talking about are entirely different. I wasn't playing around with Kay. It—"
"Oh. You admit you were serious."
"You made me come up with a lot of proof about die forgery. But now you accuse me of something without any proof."
"No proof?" she cried. "It was right in front of my eyes. I didn't need a magnifying glass to see it, either. What I needed were sun glasses. I suppose she's just your type. Cheap, flashy, easy to get. You hadn't known her even a day before you were making passes at her. I'm certainly glad I'm not the type that appeals to you."
I walked across the room and back, to cool off. "Don't be too sure of that," I said.
She jumped up and faced me. "You don't scare me one little bit," she said. "You're the kind of man who runs a mile when he sees a nice girl."
The blood in my head was ticking away like coffee coming to a boil. She wasn't the only one who had had a maddening day. "Watch yourself," I said thickly. "Now and then my kind of man starts running the wrong way."
"Any month now you'll work up to holding my hand."
I grabbed her. She had been standing with her arms at her sides and one of my arms locked them so they couldn't move. My free hand came up and got a good grip in her hair. It was lovely soft hair, just the right length if you wanted to drag her around the room. That was a tempting idea but I had a better one. I yanked her head into the right position and kissed her.
My eyes were open and I could see one enormous blue eye, wide with shock, staring at me from an inch away. Then suddenly she closed the eye and her lips parted and her body began to feel like a flame wavering against me.
Inside my head a Fourth of July celebration started, and it didn't seem to be a very safe and sane one. All I had meant to do was teach the girl a lesson. But she seemed to know that one and maybe a couple I hadn't studied yet. I relaxed my grip to let her escape. Her arms linked around my waist, tightened. I couldn't breathe. My hands started out on little whirling trips over her body, like drunken skaters, and I couldn't make them come back. The fireworks in my head were sending out a lot of blinding sparks. With about my last touch of sanity I reached back and grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms away from my waist.
I held her at arm's length, and gasped, "We've got to stop this."
Those blue eyes of hers didn't look like pansies at the moment. More the color of flame from a blowtorch. "Look who got scared first," she said.
"I didn't mean to let it go that far. I—"
"No," she said in a mocking voice, "you didn't. You were merely going to kiss me and give me a horrible fright. It turned out you did run the wrong way, didn't you?"
"But all I-"
"I'm a nice girl, am I?" she said bitterly. "Well let me tell you a nice girl can be just as mean and bad as any Kay Raymond you ever met. So don't try things like that again."
She started walking out of the shop. I followed her, trying to coax her to listen to a few explanations. She reached the street and I told her she couldn't walk home alone this late at night. She paid no attention. A taxi came down Walnut Street and she flagged it.
"Nancy," I said. "Please—"
"We have nothing to discuss. I do not care to talk to you again, ever." She stepped into the cab and slammed the door
and then leaned out and said coldly, "I will expect you to call up tomorrow to apologize."
The cab drove away. I went back into the shop and gave myself a sanity hearing. During the evening I hadn't had a single drink, so obviously I could not be drunk. Nobody had hit me hard enough to give me even a mild concussion. I could repeat the Presidents of the United States in perfect order, not even forgetting Grover Cleveland's two separated terms, so I was not yet losing my mind. But nothing seemed to make sense.
We had been talking in a logical way about Nick and his forgery and then for no reason at all mad things had started to happen. First Nancy had indicated that I was a beast because I liked low women, and then it seemed I was a beast because I didn't like nice girls, and finally I was a beast because I wasn't really very beastly. A little more of this and I could set up business as a zoo. Then there was also the fact that she didn't want to talk to me again but I'd better call up and apologize.
I sighed. There were more ways than one in which a man could lose his head over a girl, and I seemed to be trying out several of them at once.
I turned my attention to the painting on my desk. The thing couldn't be left the way it was, with the top painting peeled back from the forged Van Gogh. The wrong people might get to it, and might not like the idea that Nancy and I shared their secret. I found some light glue and stuck the top painting back into place. Then I slid the canvas under the big blotter on my desk and put heavy books on top so the glue would take hold. I locked the shop carefully and went up to bed.
Nothing went wrong during the rest of the night, and when I checked my desk the next morning the painting was still safe under the blotter. Both the Inquirer and Bulletin had two-column spreads on the front page about what had happened at the one-man show. Several times my phone rang and reporters wanted to know if anything new had developed and if I had any theories about who stole the painting. I told them I had no theories, which was misleading but sort of true, since a theory is a guess and I knew who had stolen it.
I pottered around the shop and made myself wait until mid-afternoon before calling Nancy's house.
A man answered the phone and said, "This is the Vernon residence."
"My name is Peter Meadows," I said. "May I speak to Nancy?"
"How do you do, Mr. Meadows," the man said gravely. "I am William, the Vernon butler. I'm glad you called. I have some messages for you."
"Good. What are they?"
"Ah, let me see. It is now a little past three o'clock. I am instructed to tell you that you certainly took your time about calling."
"Can't you put her on the phone instead of relaying what she says?"
"But Mr. Meadows, she isn't at home."
"How do you know what she wanted you to tell me, then?"
The man cleared his throat. "I have very full written instructions on the subject. Miss Nancy spent quite a while this morning writing them out."
"Where is she?"
"Just a moment, sir. Here we are. Quote. Obviously you have lost all interest in helping Nick so I have gone out to do it myself. Unquote."
I said angrily, "She'll get herself hurt."
"One moment, Mr. Meadows. Quote. I don't suppose that will matter in the least to you. Unquote."
"Now wait a minute. This is fantastic. Do you mean to sa
y she actually wrote out that answer?"
"Yes indeed, Mr. Meadows. She wrote out a number of things you might say, and the answers to them."
"What if I had called at ten o'clock this morning? What would the first comment have been?"
"I'm sorry, sir. You didn't call at ten so I can't tell you."
"Will she have dinner with me tonight?"
"Quote. No. Unquote."
"Can I come around and see her tonight?"
"May I drop the quotes, Mr. Meadows? No."
"When may I see her again?"
"The answer seems to be: That depends."
"Oh, nuts," I said disgustedly.
"Perhaps I had better replace the quotes, Mr. Meadows. Quote. Nuts to you, too. Unquote."
"You're making that up. She couldn't possibly have figured out that I was going to say 'oh nuts.'"
"Really I'm not," he said in a worried tone. "Let me read you her instructions. Quote. If Mr. Meadows makes any remark indicating anger or irritation, please repeat it back to him. For example, if he says tell her she's crazy, tell him he's crazy. Unquote."
"William," I said, breathing hard, "you may tell me I'm crazy."
"Yes sir. Miss Nancy often has that effect on young men."
"All right, William. Thanks for all the messages. Please tell her that I called."
"One moment, sir. Quote. I am not interested in whether or not you called. Unquote. Good-by, sir."
"Good-by," I said dizzily, and hung up.
When I put the phone in its cradle and sat up, I found Miss Krim leaning over my shoulder. She smiled sweetly and said, "I couldn't help overhearing your talk."
"Couldn't help it? You're so close it's a wonder you didn't join in."
"It was too fascinating to miss. Do I understand that you and Miss Vernon have had a disagreement?"
"There isn't any disagreement. She has a poor opinion of me and so do I."
"I think she has a very high opinion of you," Miss Krim said. "The only trouble is, you don't live up to it."
"You've been taking lessons from her in double-talk. Well, I feel a touch of sanity coming on. So I'll go out to look for her and see if I can get rid of it."
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