by Howard Mason
“Victor, how much do you think of the great Renoir forgery tempest Ellis Blaise has whipped up in our teapot?”
“Why?” asked Grandi guardedly.
“It’s interesting,” she said casually. “It will be a sensation in the art business, won’t it?”
“If it’s true,” said Grandi.
“Yes. If it’s true.”
The technician smiled suddenly. “Do you think our friend Blaise is risking his reputation?”
“It’s his to risk, isn’t it?” was her noncommittal reply.
“Cassy!” he said reproachfully. “My eyes are trained to observe. Not only canvas but what goes on around me.”
A hint of a blush colored her cheeks. “Does it show on me, Victor?”
“It’s very becoming.”
“It’s true,” she murmured. “Imagine my falling for the first city slicker that came whistling down the pike.” And then earnestly, “He isn’t just making a fool of himself, is he, Victor? I don’t want that to happen.”
“He’s a clever man,” mused Grandi, “but he’s honest. He may not be in the right business to capitalize on these attributes. In the matter of the Renoirs, however, I believe he will be vindicated.”
She brightened. “I knew it. I just wanted an expert opinion.” Then briskly, she went on, “Now show me some books dealing with art and fakes. If he does get into trouble I want to be able to defend him. What the hell, Portia did it, and she didn’t even go to Vassar.”
Grandi placed a ladder along the stack of books, pulling out a few titles so that they projected visibly. “Read these, pay attention, and you should be able to manufacture your own Rembrandts in a short time.”
“Thanks, Victor.” As he started out, she said, “I haven’t announced anything yet. Not even,” she put in reflectively, “to Blaise. I want to surprise Uncle Lucas.”
“He will be overjoyed, I’m sure,” said Grandi. He went out as Cassy settled herself at the desk with one of the bulky, extra-illustrated volumes he had chosen.
She was deep in a tortured maze of pigments, Roentgen tests, characteristics of brushwork, chemical analysis of paint and other such snappy subjects, her brow furrowed in the effort of word-by-word concentration on the text, when the telephone pulled her away. It was the gateman, asking if Ellis Blaise was there, and when she informed him that Blaise was expected soon, the man told her that Paul Weldon was at the gate.
“Send him up,” said Cassy, after a moment’s thought. “He can wait here.”
Weldon seemed to be self-consciously aware of the assorted bruises and contusions that stood out on his vague, indeterminate features. He mumbled a greeting to Cassy and looked around the gallery with only a flicker of interest.
“You look awful,” she said with her characteristic candor. “Did you go right on fighting last night?”
“I guess so. I’m not too sure.” His bruised lips formed some equivalent of a grin. “I was drinking, you might say.”
“Yes, you might. Want one now?”
He heaved a grateful affirmative. While she was pouring a drink at the cupboard, she said, “What do you want with Blaise?”
His expression grew somber again. “I’ve got something he can use.”
“Paintings?”
“Maybe.”
She handed him the glass. “Vague, aren’t you?”
He drained the glass, a formidable drink, at one prolonged swallow. Then he glanced at his watch, moved restlessly to the curtained windows, staring intently out at the driveway.
“He’ll be along,” said Cassy. “Relax.”
Weldon came back to the desk and sat down. He was still taut and tightly wound but he forced himself to some polite expressions. “I’ve never been here before. It’s quite a place.”
“Want to look around?”
“Not today. I’m too jumpy.” He smiled ruefully. “Imagine passing up a chance to look at the Edgerton collection. When I was a student I pulled strings and wrote letters for years—never even got to the gate. Last year I asked Simon if he could get me in and he told me that even he was barred.” He laughed mirthlessly, then quickly added, “I’m sorry.” He was in such a state of turbulence as to seem to be all but foaming. He crossed and recrossed his legs and his thin, sensitive fingers tapped frantic, excited rhythms on the carved wooden edge of the chair. From time to time he licked his dry lips anxiously.
After a few moments of silence, Cassy said quietly, “It’s about the Renoir, isn’t it?”
Weldon was staring down at the floor and his head came up slowly. “Renoir? The painter?”
Cassy smiled. “No. Max Renoir, who runs a general store in Oxnard.”
“In a way,” said Weldon, “that is what I want to talk about with Mr. Blaise.” Cautiously, placing one word after the other like a man fitting together a complicated mosaic, he said, “I heard that he was inquiring about some Renoirs. I’ve got a lot of friends and connections here and I picked up some news yesterday about something like that. It’s second-hand information,” he explained elaborately, “but it may be useful to him.” He was fiddling with a pencil from the holder on the desk. “Naturally, if it helps him, he might be able to do something for me.”
“Naturally,” said Cass.
“I’ve been thinking,” went on the painter, “that I’d like to go away somewhere. Just take it easy, paint a bit, forget about some things that have been fretting me.”
“Good idea.”
Weldon was making idle sketching movements on the pad near the telephone. They were semiautomatic, apparently aimless motions of the hand; he didn’t do more than glance down at the pad in a random, sightless way. “I’m too emotional,” he volunteered. “People take advantage of me. I ought to go away somewhere and get it out of my system.”
He dropped the pencil, looked anxiously at his watch and got up to peer out the windows again.
“You’re sure he’s coming?”
“He’ll be along,” promised Cassy. “I’ll get you another drink.” She picked up his glass and went past the desk to the cupboard. Quite accidentally she glanced down at the pad on which Weldon had been doodling and as she moved on her footsteps faltered and slowed. She turned to look again. The pad was covered with tiny, lovely drawings of the heads of women and children, and each was a perfect Renoir. She looked up at Weldon, who was still at the window but he was just turning. She looked away from the pad and went on to the cupboard. She poured the drink, trying to steady the trembling of her hand, then brought it back to Weldon, who had seated himself once more at the desk.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the glass. He was staring down at the drawings before him, but completely unaware of them or of their significance. “Paris would be nice again,” he mused. The pencil was in his hand again, the automatic sketching resumed. “I lived there for years. Must be changed now though. Probably full of Communists.”
Cassy forced a smile. She was trying desperately to avoid looking at the pad on which he was sketching. “I didn’t see any last summer,” she said. “Of course, they probably don’t hang out at the Ritz and the Crillon or Maxim’s.” She cocked her head toward the window. “Is that a car?”
Weldon got up at once, striding to the window. In one swift motion, Cassy stepped to the desk, flicked off the top page of the pad and took her seat again, the paper stuffed in the pocket of her skirt.
Weldon turned from the window. “Nothing,” he said in a disappointed voice.
“Sorry. Must have been a delivery in the back.”
The painter sat down again, picked up his whiskey with one hand and instinctively reached for the pencil.
“Where did you live in Paris?” asked Cassy, intent on making conversation.
“I had a little house in Neuilly. Nice little place, with a pretty garden. I shared it with another painter who was studying th
ere then.” His hand had resumed the idle sketching motions on the clean page but while Cassy watched with her heart in her mouth, the movements slowed little by little and then stopped. Weldon’s eyes searched the top of the desk. He lifted the pad, turned it over. She could see the muscles around his mouth twitching. His expression, when he looked up at her at last, was pained, almost reproachful.
“What’s the matter?” asked Cassy, her voice faltering a bit.
“Now you know,” said Weldon softly. He shook his head in a troubled, worried way. “So now you know,” he said again, pushing his chair back as his right hand dropped into the pocket of his coat. “I always liked you,” he said, in a dreamy, distant voice. “I said to Simon a couple of times how much I liked you.” His hand came slowly out of the pocket and she saw the gleam of the gun. He extended his free hand, palm up. “Give me the paper.”
“That won’t solve anything,” said Cass, but as he gestured impatiently with the gun, she produced the paper from her skirt. “Blaise knows all about you,” she ventured.
“Does he?” said Weldon caustically, as he snatched at the piece of paper. “How?”
Cassy felt herself slipping. “Your confederate. Molly,” she said tentatively.
A thin little smile curved across Weldon’s bruised lips. He gestured to the gallery with the gun. “Get in there.”
Cass backed slowly into the gallery, Weldon matching her little steps with his own. She kept her gaze fixed on the gun in his right hand. There was a cool, unhurried air about Weldon now, as if the flurry of violence had shocked him out of the jangled, hung-over state in which he arrived.
“I won’t say anything,” pleaded Cassy. “I’ll give you a chance to get away. I’ll help you!”
Weldon moved her inflexibly to the open door of the vault. He circled her to look down into it and to examine the spring lock.
“Now, don’t get Victorian,” said Cassy. “You want me to stifle down there?”
“It’s air-conditioned,” said Weldon, indicating a knowledge of the premises at least equal to her own. He shifted the gun to his left hand, took up a section of wiring with his right, then braced himself in the narrow doorway. A solid yank freed the wiring, plunging the vault into darkness.
“Downstairs,” said Weldon.
Cassy faced him defiantly. Weldon reversed the gun, holding it club-like by the barrel. “Downstairs,” he said again. “I’m in a hurry.” There was a flushed, raving quality to his actions and speech and Cassy moved reluctantly to the door.
“You can trust me,” she said urgently, “I’ll help you.”
Weldon pushed the girl, who caught at the railing on the dark stairs to keep from falling. Then the door slammed shut and the lock clicked. She knew it was futile unless someone was in the gallery, that neither her cries for help nor the drumming of her fists on the door would penetrate the steel and concrete sufficiently to be heard more than a few feet away, but she couldn’t help making the effort. Then exhausted and frightened, she groped timidly along the staircase, hoping to locate some sort of emergency switch or alarm. At the bottom step, having found nothing, she sank down on the rough cold stone and started to cry.
Chapter 22
In the total, impenetrable dark of the vault, Cass sniffled away the last tear of the freshet launched by the initial shock of her imprisonment. She could detect the comforting whine of the air-conditioning system, making her feel that she was at least one up on Juliet in the tomb of the Capulets. She thought of going up the stairs again to renew her assault on the door, but she knew that only a few minutes had elapsed since Weldon put her in storage and that her best chance to be heard would be in an hour or two, after lunch, when Edgerton or Miriam would probably be working in the library.
Meanwhile, she sat up very straight on the bottom step which was her temporary H.Q., and with this as a focal point tried to project an image of the unfamiliar maze of stacks and shelving. It was not a wide room, there would hardly be more than seven or eight aisles between the picture bins, and at the other end was a desk in which there might conceivably be any number of useful articles.
She stood up and carefully groped to the beginning of the shelves, then held to the woodwork and moved cautiously through the aisle. She had one painful encounter with a ladder but reached the clear space at the other end with no other difficulty. She found the desk abruptly when she backed away from the shelves and into the sharp point. Rubbing herself gratefully she inched around it and into the chair. She groped over every inch of the middle drawer without coming on anything more useful than some scraps of paper and a stub of pencil. Her first thought, that she might scribble her last words and impressions like Scott of the Antarctic, she put firmly from her. The drawer on the right was bare of anything but a layer of dust, but her heart bumped as she tackled the one on the left with eager fingertips, and she heaved a sigh of thanksgiving as her hand closed on a crushed package of cigarettes, miraculously half full, and a little paper book of matches. She counted eight precious stems still attached, then put them on the desk and continued methodically through the remaining compartments. There was no further yield, and she sat back to think. She wanted a cigarette desperately, but it would involve striking a match and she determined to put it off until she could combine the treat with a planned look around.
She remembered a movie in which the hero, immured in something like her own cavern, had simply gathered paper and wood, set fire to the joint and in so doing touched off the sprinkler system and the fire alarm. In the vicinity of fine art, however, sprinklers were taboo, being capable of as much damage as the flame itself. But even here, reason prompted, some form of thermostatic switch must exist to warn the household and the brave fire laddies of sharply rising temperatures. It might be anywhere, she thought dolefully, but on the other hand, with some enthusiasm, it must be somewhere.
If I were a thermostatic switch, she asked herself, where would I be, and after some reflection she came to the conclusion that if she were a thermostatic switch with an ounce of intelligence—not one of those silly gadabout thermostatic switches—she would certainly be in close proximity to the paintings it was her sworn duty to protect. What better place than the bins themselves, and since maintenance of these sensitive devices would be a constant chore, they should be on the outside where a person could get at them.
She took a cigarette from the pack on the desk and with the matches in hand fumbled her way to the closest stack, then edged sideways until she was in approximately the middle. Then she struck the match and as it flared up, lit the cigarette in one quick inhalation, promptly holding the match aloft to scan the outside surface of the shelving. She held the match until it burned down almost to the nail polish, then dropped it and groped her way back to the desk. The cigarette made a bright incandescent beacon in the surrounding blackness. It was comforting and a source of much hope. She finished the cigarette slowly, then mindful that what she needed was not a roaring blaze, but a planned, orderly little fire, she crushed it carefully on the stone floor before resuming her examination of the vault.
* * * *
Lucas Edgerton was in fine voice again. Ascending the staircase to his second-floor retreat, Blaise could hear the booming vibrations of Edgerton’s tirade, and an occasional splutter as the luckless Lieutenant Ives raised a mild demurrer—ineffectually and in vain. It was the old Edgerton with a rich command of bullying invective, his vituperative powers enhanced, if anything, by the three-day lay-off.
“…you’re wallowing in taxpayers’ money,” Edgerton was raging. “Sitting back in your office, or joy-riding up and down the beach, waiting for the murderer to come in, confess, put on the handcuffs and march himself to the County Jail. You’ll look pretty foolish, Lieutenant, if I have to send East for a detective. Stop hiding back of trees and billboards to catch speeders. I want action, or by God, I’ll make such a stink in Sacramento that your whole staff will tur
n honest in the shock.”
Blaise had the door open. Miriam Wayne was standing by the window, her back to the room, politely trying to pretend she wasn’t present. Ives, red-faced and angry, was holding his own temper down with both hands.
With all stops available on the organ, Edgerton now switched to a gentle, withering sarcasm. “I realize, of course, Lieutenant, that you’re busy with many other things. Desperate men and women who keep unlicensed spaniels and who have to be tracked down and punished; fiends in human form who park facing the wrong way on streets and highways; lawless scoundrels peddling Good Humors in restricted areas, and…”
“Just a minute,” said Ives heavily. “I may not be handling this the way you like, but I’m handling it. You can bring in anybody you like, go over my head clear up to the Chief, or the Governor, or the Atomic Energy Commission. I don’t care if you call out the National Guard—I’m still in charge of the investigation and I tell you I’m doing what I can. I know you hot-stove crusaders,” he went on bitterly. “You’ll holler ‘uncle’ and scramble to hush it up or buy me off the minute I step on one of your sensitive toes. All right. I’ll give you action. But don’t forget, that’s what makes headlines and brings out the mob.”
He stood up and snatched his hat off Edgerton’s table.
“Attaboy,” cheered Blaise.
Edgerton looked at him, a quick, searing glance, then turned back to Ives. He was already in retreat. “Now don’t start jumping to conclusions, Lieutenant,” he said soothingly. “After all, we’re both out for the same thing.” He stood up with Ives and shook the detective’s reluctant hand energetically. “I’m an ornery old bastard,” he confessed, “but I mean well.”
Despite himself, Ives couldn’t suppress the thaw he felt coming on. “Okay,” he murmured.
“Soft soap,” said Blaise gently, “turneth away wrath.”
“Now what the hell do you want?” roared Edgerton. “My niece isn’t here, so that winds up any interest you may have in what’s going on.”
