VI
The car was turned in the narrow road, and followed the mulo perezoso, which means lazy, and after an hour or so of the laziest possible motoring they entered an estate with gateposts falling over and grass growing high in the badly rutted driveway. In the darkness they couldn’t see much of the mansion, but by the lights of the car they observed a strip of cornice hanging loose over the door; nobody had bothered either to fasten it up or to take it down. Lanny took the precaution to slip the automatic into his pocket before they stepped out of the car and entered this almost black building—the only light visible coming from one kerosene lamp in the entrance hall.
“Sirvase Vd. entrar,” said a voice, and thus Lanny made the acquaintance of what he thought was the most depressing human specimen he had ever gazed upon. Don Pedro Ruiz Bustamente y Bastida was about six feet three inches tall, but narrower than a small man, and stoop-shouldered as if he were trying to get down to a level where he could talk comfortably with others. He had raven-black hair which he might have cut for himself, and which had not been brushed since. Apparently he had recently shaved himself and made two cuts on his chin. He had a long thin fox-face, with a hanging jaw, wet drooping lips, and bleary eyes. Lanny thought: “Either he has just been on a spree, or else he takes dope.”
The master of the estate had put on for this occasion a black velvet suit with knickerbockers and dirty ruffed sleeves; like a stage costume which has been worn by a generation of actors in a stock theater. Doubtless it was a heritage, taken out of a dusty old trunk. He bowed low, and mades speech of welcome which might have come from that king of Castile who had a lisp and who has caused hundreds of millions of Spaniards ever since to mispronounce the letter “c.” All the formalities of courtesy were complied with, even to the pouring of glasses of lukewarm and rather sour wine. The visitors were escorted into a large apartment which might once have been a ballroom; it seemed to be entirely bare, and Lanny formed the guess that Don Pedro had been living by selling off his furniture bit by bit, and perhaps using the trim of his mansion for the kitchen fires.
Against a wall near the door was a painting with no frame. Doubtless there had once been a splendid gold frame and it had been carted to town and sold. The canvas was held by four nails, one at each corner, and had a bulge showing that it had been rolled up; the dust, which had only been partly brushed off, suggested that it had been deposited in an attic or perhaps in a corner of this room. Anyhow, here it was, and Lanny advanced upon it, with Don Pedro holding the lamp—which was fortunate, for Lanny might have dropped it. One look, and in his soul there was a shout: A Goya!
Another of those many pictures—Lanny had sold two of them in his life, and had just been looking at others in the Prado—in which a painter who was a revolutionary ahead of his time had depicted his rulers and masters with such subtle art as to make them into scarecrows without their being able to realize it. He had painted them taller than natural, with longer and thinner hands and smaller feet—all those symptoms of degeneracy which they esteemed as proofs of noble blood. He had painted their elaborate uniforms and orders, their gold lace and ruffles and jeweled sword handles exactly true to life, and so magnificent that they forgot about their features. He had painted these as it were idealized in reverse: they were cunning, cruel, bestial, greedy, stupid, whatever they had been, only more so. Several kings, several court circles—and there was no recorded case of one who had objected to being held up to the dismay of posterity!
Here was the portrait of El Gran Comendador Humfredo Fernando Bustamente y Bastida. Lanny had never heard of him, but that proved little. He was the living image of his great-great-grandson, except that one was a live and eager fox while the other was a sick and drooping one. He was painted in the very gorgeous uniform of the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece, with a collar composed of alternate links of furisons and double steels, interlaced to form the letter B, which stood for Burgundy, where tte order was established more than five hundred years ago. How many Comendadores the Spanish branch had had in that time—and doubtless every single one of them having his portrait painted in uniform!
With his handkerchief Lanny brushed off the dust from the lower right corner of the canvas and looked for the signature, but there was none. Even if there had been, it wouldn’t have been proof positive, since many painters have had pupils who imitated their work, often with help from the master, so that with darkness and layers of dust the best expert might be in doubt. But Lanny felt pretty sure that he had come upon a Goya.
VII
A moral problem of no small proportions. If Lanny was right, this painting would bring twenty or thirty thousand dollars. So far in his life he had never taken advantage of anybody in a picture deal; he had always said exactly what he was buying or selling, and what he considered a reasonable price. If he dealt in that way with this decayed Spanish grandee he would say: “I shall have to see the picture by daylight, and perhaps ask a colleague to come and advise me. If it is a real Goya, I may be able to find some American collector to pay you one or two hundred thousand pesetas for it, and he will pay me a commission, so that you will owe me nothing. All this, of course, dependent upon my being permitted to carry the painting out of Spain.”
But hovering in the background watching the proceedings Lanny observed a dark-eyed, gypsy-looking young woman with overpainted lips and cheeks, and he guessed what was her position in this household and where the money would go. A swarm of relatives would gather like buzzards, and a poor degenerate would drink himself to death, or slip into his grave by the quicker route of cocaine or morphine. At the same time Lanny remembered the news he had been hearing over the radio, the desperate peril in which his friends stood not merely in Spain, but also in France and other lands. He couldn’t expect to compete with the tobacco king of the Iberian Peninsula, but if he owned a real Goya he might be able to purchase a Budd-Erling P7—or even two of them, if Robbie would give him cost price—and those might turn the tide in the fight that was so near!
Lanny said: “This is an old painting, and most of them are junk.”
“De ningun valor,” translated Raoul, with dignity.
“I have been told that this is a very valuable painting,” insisted Don Pedro.
“It is a gamble,” declared Lanny; and his friend translated, still more politely: “El es una duda”—an uncertainty.
“How much will you pay for it?” asked the master.
“You will have to set the price.” And this became, in translation: “I should prefer that your esteemed self should state what you consider the picture to be worth.”
However politely phrased, that was a soul-torturing demand. There was a long silence, during which Lanny observed a spittle of greed drooling from the lips of the great-great-grandson of a Comendador. His clenched hands behaved as if he were holding a live mouse inside each one. He caught his breath several times, but could not bring out a sound, and finally it was a new voice which broke the suspense. “Ten thousand pesetas,” said the gypsy-looking woman in the shadows.
Lanny waited; he wasn’t negotiating with her. She repeated the demand, more insistently, and only then did Don Pedro bring out the words: “Ten thousand pesetas.”
Lanny was sure that if he accepted the offer at once it would be regretted and perhaps withdrawn. The only respectable way was to bargain closely, fight hard, and yield only to superior moral force. He said to Raoul: “I am afraid the Senor has a very exaggerated idea as to the amount of money which Americans possess. Explain to him, please.”
So Raoul made a speech, of which his friend could understand perhaps half. This was a far from wealthy gentleman, who had to earn what he spent; he was traveling here on behalf of others: in short, a hard-luck story, depressing to all hearers.
“How much will the Senor americano pay?” inquired Don Pedro; and Lanny replied that six thousand pesetas would be a fabulous amount for an old dusty portrait of a man a hundred years buried—and the picture did not even have
a frame! “Where is the frame?” asked the visitor, and made a great deal of it, and learned that his guess was correct—it had been sold to the alcalde of the town of Calatayud, who had had a photograph of his deceased mother greatly enlarged and beautifully tinted. But perhaps the frame could be bought back if the Senor americano especially required it.
They bargained back and forth; and Raoul, who had never before taken part in the purchase of a painting, must have been surprised by his friend’s competence in this ancient art. Lanny even went so far as the door, threatening to depart, with Raoul following—this when the gypsy lady, who had taken over the conversation, insisted upon standing firm at nine thousand pesetas. But before he had started down the rickety steps, she said: “Bueno! Eight thousand!” and it was a deal.
VIII
The next problem became the paying of the money. Lanny had about three thousand in cash; the rest he would have to get from a bank, either in Calatayud or Saragossa, he wasn’t sure. But who was to hold the picture in the meantime? A delicate matter, which Raoul had to handle with extreme care in the polite Spanish language. Don Pedro and his lady friend wanted to see the three thousand at once; but they would hardly be willing for the American stranger to carry the painting away until the full sum had been paid. Raoul said this, and waited an interval to let Don Pedro say that he wouldn’t mind; but he didn’t say it. Instead he proposed that the travelers should spend the night here; but Lanny hastened to say that he had made an engagement in town which he must keep.
So finally it was decided that they would all four go down to town; Lanny and Raoul would shift their bags so as to make room for the Senorita Rosa—now properly introduced—in the back seat of the car. The painting, rolled up, would lie safely on top of the front and rear seats, lengthwise with the car, extending between the shoulders of the driver and his friend. Don Pedro would bestride his dependable mulo.
Before setting out on this journey, both parties desired to nail down the deal. Raoul brought in the typewriter and a bag from the car, got out some paper and carbon paper, and proceeded to type in the formal Spanish language a bill of sale for a portrait of the Comendador Humfredo Fernando Bustamente y Bastida at the price of eight thousand pesetas. “The receipt of three thousand is acknowledged by the signing of this document, and the balance shall be paid within three days in the city of Calatayud; or if, by reason of civil difficulty interfering with the transmission of money from France, the sum cannot be obtained within that time, the picture shall be left in escrow with the alcalde of Calatayud for a period of not more than thirty days during which the final payment must be made.” Lanny demanded this arrangement because of news which he had heard while driving, to the effect that the government was contemplating steps against certain of the Rightist leaders in Madrid.
A copy of this document was placed in the hands of Don Pedro so that he might study it. Could he read? Lanny guessed not, but waited patiently so that he might pretend to. After a proper time he pronounced the agreement satisfactory, and took Lanny’s fountain-pen and with painful slowness wrote his name on the copy and the carbon. Lanny also signed, and Raoul as a witness, whereupon Lanny produced his billfold and counted out the money which had been intended to take him and his secretary from Madrid to the Spanish border. It was equal to about four hundred and twenty dollars, but to this starving household it seemed as many thousands; the long fingers of Don Pedro shook as he counted them, and Rosa hovered over him in a sort of fever of greed. She was going along so as to see that her master did not part with the painting until he had got the rest of the cash, and then to see that nobody but herself got any of it.
So to the painting. There appeared to be not a scrap of rope or string on the place, and Lanny had to take some of the cord with which the linens had been tied. He and Raoul rolled the canvas, not too tightly, and bound it near each end and the middle. They bore it reverently to the car, and laid a towel over the top of each seat to protect the upholstery. The Senorita got into her place, and Don Pedro led the way on that bony mule, which meanwhile had had a rest and presumably some feed. Riding out there before the bright headlights, with his threadbare black velvet knickerbockers and rumpled stockings, the abnormally tall and lean Spaniard presented a truly quixotic appearance; all he needed was a lance and some windmills, and you would have known that another motion-picture company was on location in the homeland of Cervantes.
IX
It was late when they drove into the thousand-year-old town of Calatayud, but the Hotel Fornos opened its doors for them. Lanny had invited the couple to be his guests, and he saw them provided with a suite with connecting rooms, so that he would not be taking too much for granted. They had agreed after some hesitation that the painting should be left locked in the car in the hotel garage.
Alone in his room with his friend, Lanny said: “I am paying over a thousand dollars for this painting, and I am doing it on a gamble that the authorities at the border, or wherever they may look into this car, will not consider it as a part of the national art treasure.”
“Is it really?” inquired Raoul.
Lanny employed a Spanish phrase which he had just learned: “El es una duda”—it is an uncertainty. “I shall have to have it cleaned, and then have Zoltan examine it. I am taking a gamble. What I want to be sure of is that it is not inconsistent with your revolutionary conscience to smuggle a painting out of Spain. What is in my mind is that if it should turn out to be valuable and I make a profit on it, I will use it for the cause. It seems to me the painting wasn’t doing any good in that tumbledown mansion in the hills, and the profits would not do much good to Don Pedro if he got them.”
“I agree with all that,” said Raoul. “You do not have to worry about my revolutionary conscience; but you may have to worry a lot about getting the painting out.”
In the morning the Comendador was still in the car, so Don Quixote and his Dulcinea felt less uneasy, and the four companeros breakfasted, then repaired to the banking-house of Gaspar y Hijo, in the business part of this clay-built town.
The proprietor, stoutish, with yellow jowls and a gray mustache, evinced alarm when the americano rico proceeded to unfold his wild idea. Ten thousand pesetas—and by telephone! To be sure, the banker had been to the movies, and learned how americanos ricos wave their hands and cause money to fall from the skies. But ten thousand pesetas! And this very morning! The banker had never heard of the bank in Cannes where Lanny kept his wealth. To be sure, it was listed in a volume which the firm possessed—but, then, how could anyone be sure what had happened since that volume was printed? Ten thousand pesetas! Perdone Vd., Senor!
Lanny asked the name of the bank with which Senor Gaspar did business in Madrid and whether he felt certain that this bank was still solvent. Lanny proposed to telephone to his Cannes bankers, using the Senor’s facilities and paying for them—he laid a hundred-peseta note upon the desk and the permission was granted. Lanny’s bankers were used to his habit of transferring large sums to various parts of the world, and would not be startled by any order. He identified himself by a code sentence, and instructed them to telegraph the sum of ten thousand pesetas, something more than thirty thousand francs, to the Madrid bank, with instructions to pay it to the account of the firm of Gaspar y Hijo of Calatayud, Spain. The Madrid bank was to telephone the Gaspar firm immediately upon receipt of the telegram, the cost of the message to be charged against the transaction. Just as simple as that; and Senor Gaspar wiped the perspiration from his forehead, remarking that it was a hot morning.
Lanny perceived that his new friends wished to keep him under observation, lest he should step into his car and disappear with the painting; so he permitted them to escort him and Raoul to view the Church of Santa Maria. He inspected a portal of the sixteenth century, and he and Raoul climbed into a tall octagonal tower to look at the view; Don Pedro pleaded ill health and waited with his lady, feeling sure that the americano couldn’t fly. Later they went back to the hotel for dinner, at twen
ty pesetas for the four—never in all his days had the great-great-grandson of a Comendador heard or dreamed of such luxury. Food enough to have lasted a man for two days—and Lanny saw the proud hidalgo slipping lumps of sugar into the pocket of his black velvet suit.
The money had not yet come, so they looked at more churches and learned about Mudejar towers, built by Moors after this land had been reconquered from the race. Telephoning again to the banker, Lanny learned that the message had just arrived, so the four of them repaired to the bank, where Lanny received his ten thousand pesetas, less the costs of the transaction. He counted out five thousand to the trembling scarecrow and obtained his receipt in full, taking the precaution to have the signature of Senor Gaspar as witness to the proceedings. They all bowed to the banker, who assured them that it had been honradisimo de haberle concido. Incidentally he tried, but without success, to persuade Don Pedro and his Rosa to leave the money in his care.
Lanny saw his guests safely delivered to the stable where rested the long-suffering creature which was going to carry the pair of them back into those barren brown hills—and at once, before Don Pedro was lured into any gambling-house or bank! Lanny paid his hotel bill, distributed his propinas, saw his bags safely stowed, and set out upon the highway to Saragossa in the company of his secretary and the Comendador of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
X
They tuned their radio to the government station of Madrid. It was Friday, and they learned that in Melilla, capital of Spanish Morocco, the Foreign Legion, marching, had been booed by Socialists from their headquarters; the troops had broken ranks, charged the building, and thrown the Socialists out of their own windows. Then came a portentous announcement: the people of Madrid were urged to stand by, to stay tuned to this station; grave events were in progress, and the government would soon have a statement to make. Stay tuned to this station! There followed music, rather tantalizing under the circumstances.
Wide Is the Gate Page 49
