“Truth in art is not a matter of a bill of sale, sir. The fruits—”
“Hush!” said Mr. Swinney, curtly, the way one might have spoken to a child, but there was distaste on his lips. He looked down at Buskirk from his lean, clean height. “You are a living, walking, talking anachronism. You are as bad as they. You condone. It is time the world learned a better truth than yours—that nothing matters but the difference between right and wrong.”
The Countess Amalie drew in a deep breath and veiled her eyes with her kohl-darkened lids.
Buskirk blustered, “You are insulting, sir. I am here as the guest of a Government official.”
“That’s just it,” said Mr. Swinney, but he said it to the retreating, outraged back of the little art expert.
“You have hurt his feelings,” said the Countess.
“Damn and hell,” said Mr. Swinney from the depths of his growing anger. “It is sickening.”
He stopped speaking and the Countess turned her enveloping gaze on him interrogatively to see whether he would continue and tell what was sickening.
Mr. Swinney did not do so. His thin lips closed and his indignant eyes roved over the room and the restless groups of people. But he knew—quite everything. The pattern was clear, unmistakable, and mathematically logical, but it was the perverted, graceless mathematics of the most evil men the world had ever known.
For three years the Germans had been looting captured Europe of its art treasures. Over and beyond what the Görings and Von Ribbentrops had pilfered for themselves and their estates, millions upon millions of dollars’ worth of world-famous and historic paintings, sculptures, and antiquities had been pouring into Munich from gutted museums of Poland, Holland, France, Belgium, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Norway, from galleries and private collections stripped bare, from ransacked homes.
Mr. Swinney knew that in every occupied city Quislings had waited with lists prepared of every art object of value in the vicinity. Like locusts the Gestapo and party boys had descended upon the communities with vans and trucks and carted it away. Germany might be losing the war in the military sense, but her thieves had cornered the art market of the world. Now the discredited and bankrupt party heelers were preparing to fence the swag for the dollar credits needed to bolster their collapsing financial bastions.
The German mind was no mystery to Mr. Swinney, who had traveled among them and done business with them. Crude and brash though their methods were, they knew they needed a sponsor for their transactions at least once removed from their persons, some group to act at once as window dressing, front, and buffer and raise some slight incense smoke screen of legitimacy to offset the stench of intrinsic German crookedness.
What was more logical than to turn to the strongest and wealthiest and most powerful South American nation, the only one whose Government was openly friendly and helpful to the Nazis and secretly hostile to the United States and the Allies?
Even Mr. Swinney had to admit that the use of the name of Dr. José Calderriega as sponsor of the exhibition had been brilliantly conceived. For if this show was not exactly a Government affair, yet Dr. Calderriega was of the Government, as Sub-Minister of Culture. The Germans had calculated well that his name and position would stifle criticism and opposition from the outset.
The use of Alfonso de Paraná had been clever too. Known as one of the wealthiest men in the country, and connoisseur of art in his own right, with a notable private collection, the turning up of a famous picture in his possession was just the right touch.
But Mr. Swinney had no illusions about De Paraná. He was an out-and-out fascist and Germanophile. Enough of the booty would stick to his fingers to make it worth his while, but his role was strictly that of middleman. Mr. Swinney thought with disgust of the greed that would bring art dealers through these salons in the days to come, perhaps some of his own countrymen among them.
Nor did Mr. Swinney need the rumors, or pickups, or snatches of conversation caught on the fly to tell him how the stuff was to get there. Light, small, compact, a rolled-up canvas by Raphael would fit into any cranny in an undersea boat; a twelfth-century triptych, a medallion by Benvenuto Cellini, a tapestry by Gobelin, ancient jeweled candlesticks from Polish churches, encrusted chalices of the early popes, would take up little more space. One U-boat could load enough boodle to pay for a day of war. Mr. Swinney had no doubt that a Nazi submarine was lurking somewhere near by, waiting to unload the rest of its cargo if it had not already done so.
Once they had got away with the transfer and sale of the Rembrandt as a trial, the Nazis would flood the market for all the traffic would bear. It all dovetailed, even to that pompous ass Buskirk.
Fascists or no fascists, Calderriega and De Paraná were no fools. They knew their Germans and had cleverly protected themselves against having a fake put over on them. But in addition Buskirk’s presence had served to set a further seal upon the affair.
A kind of silence fell over the room again, and Mr. Swinney saw that the icily gray Dr. Calderriega was about to say a few words. They came out in Spanish, as neat and clipped as his gray mustache, as tight and spare and reserved as his figure:
“Presence of this great painting…under the roof of Señor de Paraná…milestone in and monument to Latin-American culture…congratulations due this great art patron of Buenos Aires….”
The Germans nudged one another, smirked, raised their champagne glasses as in a military drill, and said, “Hoch!”
A few desultory “Hear, hear”s came from the British contingent; a Frenchman cried, “Epatant!” the Russians glowered silently and shifted their feet uncomfortably. People in the room milled about a little.
Mr. Swinney’s gorge rose. Fire and damnation, he thought to himself. Not only I know; they all know! Every one of them! Everyone here knows, and the Germans and that gray Argentine and the fat one with the pouches know they know, and are ramming it down their throats.
This, then, was the second lie that was being circulated there that afternoon, as lightly as the canapés and the Venetian cocktail glasses, as hushed and hidden as that other diplomatic fiction of the nonpresence of diplomats of countries engaged in war.
The British knew—it was in their tight lips and frigid bearing. The Russians knew, and showed it in their scowls and uneasily moving feet. The Swiss, the Slavs, the French, the Italians knew it. The Spaniards were laughing up their sleeves. The fashionably gowned women knew it, and showed it in the sly casting of their eyes and the heads bent forward to whisper. The men from the embassies had known it for weeks and merely moved a little more stiffly from the hips.
Everyone was privy to the same logic, the same reasoning, the same rumors, the same information as Mr. Augustus A. Swinney, simple loyal American citizen, refrigeration engineer, and fascist-hater.
But no one said anything.
Over them all, like an unseen, viscous garment, constricting and attenuating thought and movement and behavior, lay the cloak of diplomatic conduct. The soft net of protocol was tougher than steel. They might know what they knew, or whisper behind their hands what they pleased, but until something was said or done, the truth that they knew was not a truth at all, but a lie sealed in their bosoms.
Cleverly the net spun in the musty office of the Pinakothek had been cast the long way from Munich and ensnared them all.
That is, with one notable and fatal exception, that exception being the curious mathematical mind of Mr. Swinney, who lived by the addition of two and two.
Alfonso de Paraná was replying to the speech of the Sub-Minister of Culture, his voice oily with success and content:
“Let us not say that I am to be congratulated, but rather Argentina. The country that is permitted to be the host to such a peerless work of art is fortunate indeed. I am proud…”
Between the end of the speech, the polite murmurs of applause, the reiterated �
��Hoch!” of the Nazis, and what Mr. Swinney said and did, no more than a second or two elapsed. But in that brief interim in which his limbs were chill with rage, his mind leaped back to a tale he remembered reading as a boy, the story of the King’s new suit of clothes, in which the three rascally tailors clad the King with imaginary thread and fabric, and none in the sycophant court dared contradict that the nonexistent garment was not as beautiful as they claimed it to be.
He remembered even, as sharply as though it had been thrown up on a screen before him, the illustration of the King walking through the streets mother-naked, past the cheering throngs lined up to view his fine new suit, the train-bearer behind, holding up the ends of the nonexistent cloak. And he remembered the little child in the throng at the curb who looked up and cried, “But the King hasn’t any clothes on!”
Mr. Swinney took a sudden step forward, quite unaware of the gentle, detaining touch of the hand of the Countess Amalie upon his arm. His voice, clear, incisive, and steady, cut through the room and sheared a gaping rent in the binding fabric that ensnared them all.
“That picture has been stolen!”
In the awful silence someone dropped a glass and it shivered daintily with the sound of a Balinese cymbal.
Dr. José Calderriega, stiff, motionless, frosty as an icicle, sucked in his breath like a Japanese. Only his eyes were alive. No one moved. De Paraná blinked heavily. A slow purple crept into the pouches beneath his heavy eyes.
Mr. Swinney spoke again, and because there was now no sound but the tinkle and rustle and chatter from the outer salon, his voice had the terrible quality of a sledge hammer shattering heavy glass:
“That picture was stolen by the Germans in Amsterdam from a private house. It is the property of Mynheer Jan van Schouven, a Dutch refugee now living in New York.”
A voice hissed in German, “Was hat er gesagt?” and was immediately stifled. The monocle of Baron von Schleuder dropped into his hand with a little meaty sound. Still no one moved. They were all in the grip of the horror that comes when a terrible truth is held aloft by the hair like a Gorgon’s head to stare them to stone.
But Dr. José Calderriega, Sub-Minister of Culture, was in the grip of a worse horror than that. For the first time in his gray, icy, correct diplomatic life he was face to face with an insoluble situation. His breath kept hissing in and out between his gray lips and a kind of film like a lizard’s lid had come over his eyes.
Mr. Swinney moved forward slowly with a kind of measured pace, a careful rhythm. It brought him to where the picture hung upon the paneled wall. It was as though he himself was the captive of a dream as he faced them once more. He said, quietly this time, to hold the static mood:
“I am removing this picture, which is the property of no one present, and taking it into custody until it can be returned to its rightful owner.”
He lifted the picture from the wall, tucked the heavy frame under his arm, and began his fantastic march from the room.
He should have been pinioned, leaped upon, held, stopped a thousand times, but he was not. They were hypnotized by the shocking audacity of what he had said and what he was doing. For, that first dangerous moment, they did not even believe what they were seeing.
Three steps, four steps….The cat-eyes of the Countess Amalie were round and staring and deep violet, and her small white teeth were showing like seeds through the red fruit of her lips.
Five—six—seven…through the open lane. The British were grinning. A big Russian had his head thrown back and mouth open in silent laughter. The Germans were blocked off in the far corner of the room. Mr. Swinney could no longer see them. When—? When would someone leap upon his back and carry him to the floor?
Nine, ten….He was through the door and into the buffet room. He saw the back of Buskirk’s toupee at the buffet table. The little man was helping himself to some more ham and did not turn around. Another moment and Mr. Swinney was in the outer salon.
No one there paid any attention to a tall gentleman carrying a gold picture frame under his arm, though several made room politely to permit him to pass.
How long? How long? Mr. Swinney thought to himself. How long have I? They are none of them men of action except Von Schleuder, and he has none of his Nazi thugs with him. They are all gentlemen and not used to direct action. But sooner or later they must—
He was on the broad, carved staircase of ancient Spanish oak that curved to the marble foyer below.
Now at last from above he was conscious of confused sounds at higher pitch than normal cocktail-party babel, a cry and a muffled thumping.
Through the greatest effort of his life, Mr. Swinney did not quicken his step, but kept his even, measured tread, nodded pleasantly to the footman who opened the heavy, grilled wrought-iron door for him, and went out into the balmy January summer twilight.
The lights were just beginning to come on bordering the broad, tree-lined Avenida Alvear. Slick, shiny cars with liveried chauffeurs and footmen waited in a long, elegant line for their masters outside the white mansion of Señor de Paraná. A green-and-black-checkered taxicab drifted by. Mr. Swinney hailed it and climbed in. “Vamos al ciudad—subito!”
“Sí, señor.”
The cab moved away down the broad residential avenue in the direction of the city.
When the first of the pursuit led by the tawny-headed Baron von Schleuder and Señor de Paraná poured into the street, there was nothing to be seen of either Mr. Augustus Swinney or the Old Woman of Haarlem, or, for that matter, to indicate where they had gone.
* * *
—
The driver leaned back and inquired, “Where to, señor?” and when he received no reply, knocked on the window separating him from his passenger and inquired again, but received only a vague wave to proceed. Mr. Augustus A. Swinney was suffering from reaction. He was quite incapable for the moment of telling where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do.
He thought to himself, Great and little gods, what have I done, and why did I do it? What ever possessed me? And what will I do next? And furthermore what will they do?
Mr. Swinney needed time to think, to collect himself, to prepare for the unquestionably unpleasant consequences that were certain to follow upon the heels of his rash act.
He wrapped on the window. “Eighteen, Calle Garibaldi. Swift & Company.”
“Sí, señor!”
When Mr. Swinney was in trouble or needed to reflect, somehow he gravitated to his office over the giant refrigerating plant near the waterfront docks. He could think there.
It was a little after six o’clock when he arrived and paid off the driver. Still bearing the heavy gold frame of the portrait carefully under his arm, he let himself in with his night key and went up the stairs.
* * *
—
Later, in the library of Alfonso de Paraná, Dr. Calderriega was addressing a group of the guests. The doors to the library were shut. Beyond in the other two salons the party still continued.
He said with icy self-containment, “Only you who were present in this room and who are here now were witness to—what occurred here. It is of the utmost importance to the Government that no hint, no word of this is permitted to leak out. If there is such a leak, we shall know where and how to trace it and the consequences will be of the utmost seriousness. We have to deal obviously with a man who is either drunk or insane. The picture will be recovered shortly. Until that time I must insist upon your silence.”
But still later, closeted in another room with De Paraná and Baron von Schleuder, Dr. Calderriega was not quite so certain, though his doubts were never permitted to penetrate the smooth, chill correctness of his exterior.
The Baron adjusted his monocle and stared coldly at Dr. Calderriega.
“Na, my friend. You are in a pretty fix.”
Dr. Calderriega elevated his gray eyebro
ws an eighth of an inch, the most violent display of emotion permitted himself. “If you will permit me, Herr Baron, so are you.”
“Pah! Let me handle it my way and we will have the picture back in an hour. Who is this maniac?”
De Paraná consulted a small slip of paper. “His name is Augustus A. Swinney. He is an American engineer employed by Swift & Company. He lives alone in an apartment at No. 17 Avenida Manuel Quintana.”
Dr. Calderriega made a note of the address. “I will pay a visit to this gentleman and persuade him to return it.”
The Baron said significantly: “If you do not succeed—we shall take steps. If this man escapes—”
“My dear Baron,” said Dr. Calderriega patiently, “consider the utter impossibility of a man, the employee of a large American firm, leaving Buenos Aires accompanied by one of the most valuable pictures in the world. But in the meantime I strongly suggest that you hold the further development of this transaction in abeyance. I will be in touch with you and with Señor de Paraná later in the evening.”
* * *
—
In New York City, where it was an hour earlier, Curtis Henry said to his wife over cocktails, “I can’t get that little Dutchman, Van Schouven, out of my mind. He’s got such dignity. There’s a fellow who once had the best of everything, probably living on nothing now. I doubt whether even his own countrymen here know how hard up he must be. I wonder what one could do for a chap like that. Probably nothing.”
In the damp, bare, dingy room that looked out over the dirty, noisy, winter-bound slum street, Jan van Schouven pondered over what the doctor had told him of the dire necessity of moving the woman with whom he had lived for all his life in faith and harmony to a warmer climate and wondered what he should do, for there was nothing more left to sell. And because he did not know, he did something he and many of his people had learned to do since the coming of the war. He turned to prayer and asked for help.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 47
