The First Mystery Novel

by Howard Mason

  “I’m not dressed for standing on ladders,” she said delicately.

  “I am,” said Blaise. “Just crawl along down there on the bottom and see that the numbers on the paintings and the shelves agree.”

  In an hour of laborious climbing and stooping, they worked up and down row after row until Cassy finally announced, “I’m up to P, for Pissarro. Also,” she added, with both hands in the small of her back, “for punchy.”

  “It was rather a good idea, don’t you think?” said Blaise sheepishly from the ladder on which he was resting.

  “On paper.”

  “I weave my web of dreams,” he said loftily. “Let others do the humdrum, practical everyday sleuthing.” He climbed down with some protest from aching, unaccustomed muscles. “Being a detective, I thought, would involve no more than coldly analytical thinking and, on the physical plane, occasionally belting a beautiful girl one in the beezer. Pride has dug a pitfall, Cassy, in which I now sprawl uncomfortably with my theory cut to ribbons.”

  “You’ll have another idea,” she consoled him.

  “But I like the idea I had,” was his wistful reply. “It was so tidy. It made such good sense.”

  “On paper,” she repeated.

  “I wish you’d stop saying that. It’s one of your worst habits.”

  “Blaise!”

  He turned to the steps at the sound of Edgerton’s voice in this isolated, air-conditioned sub-cellar.

  “Blaise—you down there?”

  “Present,” called Blaise, and then Lucas Edgerton came down the steps into the vault. He seemed surprised to see his niece in these surroundings.

  “Cassy’s helping me,” explained Blaise.

  The old man nodded. “Where are you putting the paintings?”

  “The paintings?” echoed Blaise stupidly. Then, “Oh, yes, the paintings.”

  “The stuff you were in such a hurry to assemble,” said Edgerton bitingly.

  “Those paintings,” said Cass sagely.

  Edgerton didn’t wait for an explanation. “Telegrams came for you,” he said, handing Blaise two envelopes. “The hotel sent them over.” He turned and stamped up the stairs heavily, looking back at the top for one more quizzical stare before he vanished into the gallery.

  “Any uncle with a grain of decency,” said Cass bitterly, “would have demanded to know your intentions on the spot.”

  Blaise was intent on the first of the two telegrams. It was from a customs agent he employed in New York, a go-between who handled the clearance of paintings and antiques for dealers and importers. It stated that some six months ago Jonas Astorg had imported a group of six paintings, “including two Renoirs, three-quarter portrait young girl in negligee, 1874, size 42 x 33 and landscape with figures, 1877, size 47x26, both unknown, new on market, consigned Astorg to Astorg.” The last phrase referred to the details of the shipment, Astorg apparently having acquired the paintings abroad and shipping them to himself from a European address.

  He tore open the second envelope. This was from his own secretary in New York: “Museum states Andrew Kullman, Hollywood, queried them on unknown Renoir, 1874—”

  Blaise stuffed both wires in his pocket. Cass was looking at him intently. “I’m getting to know that glazed look on your face. I’m about to be put back in my playpen while you go whirling off on some brain wave.”

  “I must learn to mask my true feelings,” said Blaise. “The fact is, Cassy, I think I am tottering on the brink of a good idea.”

  “Well, here we are in a nice, cool cellar.”

  “The idea,” he went on firmly, “concerns significant revelations in the field of modern art.”

  “Oh, great!”

  He lifted her to the second step on the stairs leading to the gallery, so that she was standing slightly above him. “A time for everything, Cassy. ‘Time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions.’ That’s from T. S. Eliot.”

  “What’s isn’t?”

  “‘There will be time to murder and create.’ That’s Eliot, too,” said Blaise softly. “It recalls the urgent matters I must put straight into execution.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders, keeping him on the level below. “Take me with you.”

  “Not now, Cassy. Come to the Inn later, though, and I’ll take you to dinner.” He looked at his watch. “Give me about two hours start.”

  “Start running,” said Cassy, as she stepped aside.

  Chapter 16

  It was almost seven o’clock when Blaise reached the Andrew Kullman studio, and the shabby, sprawling lot was all but deserted. The gateman directed him to the office and a weary secretary left the script she was typing to take him inside.

  Kullman was a small, slender man, almost invisible behind the heaps of books and papers on his enormous desk. He took off his heavy reading glasses and blinked his relief as he led Blaise to the opposite end of the large room where more informal and comfortable furniture was arranged around a low, wide coffee-table. The inevitable piles of script were ranged here, too, but Kullman pushed them aside and in a few moments the secretary brought in a tray with coffee.

  Blaise brought out the museum’s letter about the Degas. Kullman glanced at it, then looked up at Blaise uncertainly.

  “That was a long time ago,” said Kullman. “I was a patron of the arts then. Things have changed.”

  “Forget it,” said Blaise promptly.

  “I meant it then,” said Kullman. “I had a big year and fifty or sixty thousand didn’t matter—came out of taxes mostly. This year it’s been rough.”

  “Television?” asked Blaise.

  Kullman nodded. “Television, drive-in theatres, mounting costs…” With a sad smile, he added, “And just between us, I made a couple of dreadful movies.” He poured the coffee. “To tell you the truth, I forgot the offer to buy the painting months ago. When my secretary said you were working for Lucas Edgerton I thought it was about something else.”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t know,” said Kullman, “then I was wrong.”

  “Anything I can do, or bring to Mr. Edgerton’s attention?”

  Kullman looked at him gravely for a moment, then got up and went to an old break front secretary. He unlocked one of the tiny drawers with a key and came back to Blaise with some oblong slips of paper. They were I.O.U.’s, dated back some six months and the total of the four was thirty thousand dollars. They were made out to Andrew Kullman and signed Simon Edgerton.

  Blaise handed them back. “Gambling?” he asked, and when Kullman nodded, he said, “Want me to give them to Edgerton?”

  “Edgerton,” said Kullman, “is a mean son-of-a-bitch, but he doesn’t deserve that. Or, if he does, I won’t do it to him.” He tore the papers across, then gathered the pieces and tore them again. He dropped them on the table before Blaise. “You can give them to him now.”

  “You could have collected them,” Blaise pointed out. “Still can. Whatever you think of Edgerton, and for whatever reason, he pays.”

  “I know,” replied Kullman.

  “It’s a handy sum of money. This television fad might not blow over.”

  Kullman smiled thinly. “Maybe not.” He spread the torn shreds of the I.O.U.’s with his fingertips. “Put it down to ego. Maybe it’s worth the thirty thousand to feel that I did something nice. Just between us, the boy wasn’t much good, but he was gay and there were lots of likable things about him.”

  Blaise looked down at the ragged bits of paper. “Was that a gambling debt?”

  Kullman nodded. “A week-end in the mountains. The game went on all day and all night. Simon hit a bad losing streak and being that kind of a gambler, he stayed with it. I was a big winner,” he said casually, “so it doesn’t really matter. I tried to keep him out of the game—he didn’t have a chance in it—b
ut that wasn’t a good tactic with Simon. He played like a man who didn’t expect to pay, and then, like a chump, he paid.”

  “Any others he owed?” asked Blaise.

  Kullman shook his head. “I was the big winner, so I took it all.”

  “When did he offer you the Renoir?” asked Blaise casually. When Kullman didn’t immediately reply, he added, “Was it in payment, or was that a separate deal?”

  “What line are you in?” asked Kullman. His voice was flat and thin, no warmth or cordiality left in it.

  “I’m a dealer,” said Blaise. “You know that, but I don’t mind repeating it. I’m not out to track criminals, avenge anybody or anything, and I’m not running for any office, least of all sheriff. If I’m a busybody it’s because I’m an art dealer and I want to remain one. I think the painting you were offered is a fake.” At Huffman’s sharp look of surprise, he added, “A great fake. So good that it becomes a threat to everybody that buys or collects paintings. What television is to you,” he finished, with a grin, “that kind of a forgery is to me.”

  “I didn’t buy it,” said Kullman thoughtfully. “But by God, not because I thought it was a fake.”

  “You thought it was hot?”

  “Of course. I knew Simon pretty well, and while I don’t know the statistics on Edgerton’s collection, he must be wallowing in Renoirs. I just took it for granted that it belonged to the old man. I remember how embarrassed I was when he showed it to me. I just looked at him sadly and shook my head, and he must have known what I was thinking because he laughed out loud.”

  “You were interested, though,” Blaise pointed out. “You checked it with the museum.”

  “I’m a collector. It was an unusual offering. Besides, I was curious to see if the kid had stolen it. I sent the museum a photo and the specifications. They didn’t tell me a thing.” He looked at Blaise, as if much intrigued. “I’m not the greatest expert in the world, but it certainly looked good to me. What makes you think it’s a fake?”

  “I’ve never laid eyes on the painting,” confessed Blaise, and at Kullman’s astonished look, he said, “I’m building up a theory the way they build up a dinosaur, just from the discovery of a tooth, or an inch of the tail.”

  “You know more than that,” said Kullman. “I don’t care, unless maybe there is a movie in it, but you know something.”

  “What made you decide not to buy it?” asked Blaise.

  “I don’t exactly know,” said Kullman slowly. “It was too good. Too good for Simon to be handling, too good for him to be offering it to me. If this was the depression again, no buyers with cash, I could understand such an opportunity coming my way. Or, if the painting was only fair, or even just good, I could understand that, too. But this was great, rare—I had the impression that I was looking at a perfectly baited trap.”

  Blaise nodded. “I understand. I’ll bet you’ve got a hell of a good collection.”

  “Sight unseen?”

  “I like the way your mind works.”

  “Tell that to the exhibitors,” said Kullman wistfully. “The current joke in town is that I ought to burn my pictures and release my paintings.”

  “Did Simon give you any history on the painting?” asked Blaise.

  “Naturally. Even that was perfect. The owner was Roger Vernet, a refugee whose family once had a big artists’ supply house in Paris. Vernet’s grandfather supplied paint and materials to Renoir himself; that’s how he was supposed to have acquired this painting. You wouldn’t want a better, more respectable story on a canvas, and Vernet is on tap right here in Los Angeles to back it all up.”

  “It gets better and better,” sighed Blaise. “In time, you know, the forgeries will probably be worth more than the Renoirs.” He stood up, and Kullman rose with him.

  “I’d like you to see my paintings,” said his host. “After Edgerton’s I don’t expect you to be impressed, but some of them are worth a look. Come in tonight, if you can. I’m not on the waterfront, but Brentwood isn’t much of a drive. I’ll send a car for you.”

  “Thanks. I’ve got a car.”

  “Astorg is coming,” said Kullman, as they walked to the door, “and a local man named Kenneth Lurie.”

  “Know them both,” said Blaise.

  “I thought you would. Since you’re so keen on Renoir.” Kullman’s expression was innocently bland. He wrote an address on a slip of his notepaper and handed it to Blaise.

  “What did Simon offer you—a portrait or a landscape?”

  “A still life,” was Kullman’s reply. “Apples in a dish, a bottle of wine on a tray with two glasses. A table with a white cloth, painted slightly from above, a wall with flowered paper in the background.” Blaise could not restrain the sudden, pained grimace. “What’s the matter—bad news?”

  “We’re on virgin soil,” murmured Blaise. “I knew there were portraits and landscapes. The still life is a surprise.”

  “Why not?” shrugged Kullman. “You could get one Renoir a week until you had a complete set. The way we used to give away dishes.”

  “That’s a lovely thought,” said Blaise sadly. “I’ll be obliged if you’ll keep it to yourself.”

  “Come in tonight,” said Kullman in parting. “I’m a collector; I’ve got a stake in this. Perhaps I can help you with your second act.”

  Chapter 17

  The Terrace Restaurant, jutting into space from the ocean side of the hotel, had no walls or ceilings to tempt the decorators. It was, therefore, the handsomest part of the establishment. The lighting was soft and scattered, no more than the minimum candle-power specified by Los Angeles County law, and barely that in the back booth where Cass Edgerton and Blaise were finishing dinner.

  “Did the laird object to your going out?” asked Blaise.

  “He was delighted. Dr. Corum stayed on and they can talk happily about proofs, states, formulas and technical gibberish that makes my head spin.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “Yours? I should think you’d have the whole racket at your fingertips.”

  “When they get into proofs and states,” Blaise told her, “that’s etching talk. A special plane of fanaticism attained by only a few true believers. I’ve memorized some of the jargon, for emergencies, but I’d just as soon avoid being put to the test.”

  “Uncle Lucas sent you a message,” laughed Cassy. “He said, and I quote, tell that soft-headed idiot I didn’t bring him three thousand miles to make passes at my niece.”

  Blaise considered this. “Do you suppose he’d go for fifteen hundred? I might pay half the fare myself.”

  “Doctor Corum, on the other hand,” she continued, “gave it as his opinion that you were an extremely able and intelligent young man.”

  “I hope he’s right,” murmured Blaise earnestly. “I think I’ll know soon.”

  “The game’s afoot, eh? And the hounds in full cry?”

  “The 57th Street pack, Ellis Blaise, Master-of-the-Hounds,” he said sadly, “is at the moment being badly outdistanced. The trouble is, Cassy, that I’m the only one who really believes my tall tale about the great Renoir forgeries, and I myself, at times, am inclined to take it with a grain of salt. Dr. Corum knows I’m right but he won’t let himself believe it.”

  “Uncle Lucas trusts him,” said Cassy. “That must mean something. He trusts darn few people.”

  “The experts always take a beating when some great forgery passes for the real thing. Corum probably feels his reputation is at stake.” Blaise signed the check and pressed some money into the eager palm of the captain. “Ready, Cassy?”

  “Ready. Why are we going to Andrew Kullman’s house? He’s made some terrible pictures, but none of them were forgeries.”

  “He asked me to drop in tonight. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all,” said Cassy. “I like him. He offered me a screen test.
”

  “You’d be good in pictures,” said Blaise. “Mother parts, or the kind elder sisters who keep heroines pure for the fade-out. How was the test? Did you pass?”

  Cassy sighed. “For all my vast and compelling physical attractions, I knew that what he really wanted was a look at the collection. I invited him to lunch. That solved his problem and left me with my amateur standing.”

  “Doesn’t Uncle Lucas do nip-ups when you invite the peasantry for a meal?”

  “Oh, he had fits. He screamed about upstarts, interlopers, pants-manufacturers who spied on him—you know Uncle Lucas when he’s wound up and winging. I simply told him that if I couldn’t entertain my friends I would pack up and go somewhere else. That cooled him off. I can’t say that he actually fawned on poor Mr. Kullman, but he grunted cordially a couple of times. You know the trick painting he has by Rouault?”

  Blaise nodded. She was referring to an unusual canvas painted early in his career by the French artist, Georges Rouault. It was deceptively classical in conception and technique and only a few bits of vivid color gave any hint of the violent palette the artist was subsequently to employ. It was a favorite trap of Edgerton’s to refer to it casually as a Manet, which it did indeed resemble. Blaise himself had accepted it and endured Edgerton’s hoots and jeers for hours.

  “Don’t tell me Kullman spotted it?” When she nodded, he said, “Well, good for him.”

  “I tipped him off,” said Cassy modestly. “I knew he’d have it sprung on him and it was worth all the trouble to see Uncle Lucas’s jaw go slack and his eyes pop. Mr. Kullman just looked smug and self-satisfied, but he twinkled at me every chance he got and the next day he sent me about two hundred dollars’ worth of flowers.”

  Blaise chuckled. “You little sneak. Why didn’t you do as much for me?”

  “You’re an expert. It’s your business to know these things.”

  “Altogether too much is expected of us experts,” sighed Blaise. He led the way out through the lobby of the hotel and to his car, parked in the area provided by the management. “He lives in something called Brentwood,” said Blaise.