From London Far (22 page)

‘Two or three Giorgiones!’ Meredith in turn could not restrain his indignation. Was it possible that even amid all the vastness of the United States there could be men at once so wealthy and so crazily depraved as to give large sums of money for stolen pictures which they could never do more than hide away?

‘But we gotta Titian.’ Properjohn, his pride evidently piqued by what he had misinterpreted as excessive admiration in Meredith’s voice, was boastful once more. ‘We gotta Titian, we gotta Giotto–’

‘And you’ve got a very treacherous and incompetent London agent.’ It would not do, Meredith had decided, to let Properjohn get up again on too confident a perch – or not until much more information had been extracted from him. They were now on a low terrace that ran before Carron Lodge; this sinister dwelling, tricked in all its abundant bunting of Hunting Stuart, was about to receive them. Meredith laid a finger on his host’s shoulder and brought him to a halt. ‘Yes, my friend! A very treacherous fellow whom we shall lay by the heels tonight. And I think it is this same Bubear who has let you suppose that I am responsible for losing the Mykonos Marbles to Marsden’s lot –
hein
?’

Properjohn made a deprecating but guilty noise. ‘I get a code telegram Bubear that way,’ he said. ‘Same as I get a telegram Bubear shot Vogelsang and the place blowed up.’

‘The place is blown up. Make no mistake about that. But all the stuff he’ll tell you was destroyed there went into his own pocket long ago.’

Properjohn let out a sudden wail, altogether inappropriate to a highland laird standing by his own threshold. ‘But, Herr Vogelsang, Bubear’s got the Titian, Bubear’s got the Giotto! He’s supposed bringing them himself tonight.’ Properjohn’s wail became a howl. ‘Almost we gotta Titian, almost we gotta Giotto. And now–’

‘I doubt whether it’s as bad as that.’ Here was a point, Meredith saw, at which caution and foresight were required. ‘Small pickings are what constitute Bubear’s line, and I don’t think he could handle a Titian. Perhaps you remember a little matter of an Aubusson carpet?’

Properjohn stared. ‘Sure. But I don’t get how you know these thinks. Puttikly seeing–’

‘Well, the last time I saw Bubear he was standing on it. And I don’t doubt he told you it was lost in transit.’

‘Exak that.’ Properjohn was breathing heavily, and it was plain that he was much stirred by these revelations. ‘Once I only get Bubear here–’

‘But I dare say he’s merely been taking what he regards as a fair commission.’ Meredith, who was now well launched upon the part of a modern Iago, realized that the appearance of assuaging suspicion was here his most potent means of rousing it. ‘What is an Aubusson carpet, after all? Or even two or three thousand pounds worth of second-rate stuff supposed to have been destroyed in a basement? You and I, Herr Properjohn, need take small account of such trifles.’

‘Trifles! You call the Mykonos Marbles trifles?’ And Properjohn tugged in a sort of frenzy at his gentleman’s droopy moustache.

‘Come, come. I didn’t say he took the Marbles. I said you were a fool to believe his story that I was concerned in it. It is not possible greatly to admire the efficiency of your organization, my friend.’

‘Why, our organization has made all the biggest most importantest deals for gentlemen thinking leave Europe since almost Stalingrad or Battle of Britain back of that. And nobody ever criticized fine, efficient service we give before.’

‘Shaftesbury,’ said Meredith inexorably.

Properjohn appeared much disposed to vary tugging his moustache with tearing his hair. ‘Passworts!’ he cried. ‘I tell you passworts isn’t efficient, is only kids’ acting. Most likeliest it was dam’ fool London’s-going Berlin’s-burning talk lost us those marbles to Marsden.’

‘Ah,’ said Meredith, massively oracular.

‘Hey?’

‘I suppose you weren’t even told that they had got hold of one of Marsden’s girls?’

‘Certain I was told. Most all importantest things is told to me at once. But Bubear reports last code wire this girl lost dead.’ Properjohn frowned. ‘Vogelsang lost dead and this girl lost dead. Fishlike, huh?’

Meredith nodded. ‘Very fishlike, my friend. I begin to think that, after all, this Bubear must be playing for large stakes. He knew I was bringing the girl–’

‘
Hey
?’

‘–whereupon he declares that we are both dead. And – mark you – he had carefully misdirected us to that castle. Do you think he meant us ever to leave it –
or to leave it the way we came
?’

This last was a reckless shot in the dark. But then the whole piece of mystification upon which he was embarked was so nightmarishly tenuous, so vulnerable to the first effort of coherent thought that Properjohn should achieve that Meredith was convinced of its being only a matter of minutes till disaster overtook him. His dive back into the role of Vogelsang had been shrewd enough. The species of return from the dead which it posited had thrown Properjohn off his balance; and this Meredith had been able to follow up with a good deal of convincing information and reference. But the imposture started more hazards than it could possibly circumvent. All that could be done was to play for a little more time on the off chance that some favourable opportunity for a bolt would present itself. And meanwhile the more Meredith drew upon his fancy the better. He knew various bells that could be more or less effectively sounded in Properjohn’s head. On these he must ring the changes as rapidly as he could.

‘You gotta girl of Marsden’s?’ Properjohn had led the way into his incongruous domicile; now they were standing in a flashy veneer and chromium room before what Meredith conjectured to be a cocktail cabinet.

‘Certainly I have. Marsden’s
best
girl. Didn’t you see her?’

‘And her eating out of your fist?’

‘Of course.’ Meredith endeavoured to look like one before whose sexy charms an enemy’s retainers melted away. And this put him in mind of another bell that might be sounded. ‘And what about Higbed, my friend! It seems to have been a matter of Shaftesbury again, does it not?’

‘They let him get away for a bit, sure.’ Properjohn was abashed. But suddenly he looked at Meredith with bewilderment and supicion. ‘Say!’ he said. ‘Signor Pantelli, rather mean Herr Vogelsang, I don’t get how you up on Higbed, seeing Higbed is no more than little private insurance-cover idea of mine.’

‘I’m not up on him.’ Meredith spoke rather hastily. ‘I merely mean that it’s known all over this district that you have been pursuing an escaped madman called Higbed. It seems to me a matter which might cause gossip, and into which the police would inquire. Please remember that you are asking me to associate myself with your undertaking, Herr Properjohn. And all I meet is muddle, muddle, and again muddle! All over Europe I have note of hidden works of art of the first quality. Naturally, I expect an organization of the first quality to deal with them. Would you like six wax figures by Michelangelo–’

‘Hey!’

‘–or a large Leonardo cartoon? Would you like’ – and Meredith became at once specific and reckless – ‘the Van Eyk altar-piece from Ghent, the
Mona Lisa
–’

‘We gotta Titian. I
hope
we gotta Titian. But the
Mona Lisa!
’

‘–the
Night Watch
, the
Burial of Count Orgaz
–’

‘But hey! That burial of the guy Orgaz is certain almost–’

‘Never mind!’ Meredith raised a distracting hand and found Properjohn obsequiously pressing into it a luridly tinted decoction from his cocktail cabinet. ‘Never mind what you have been led to believe, my friend.
I know
. You have a customer wants an El Greco, a Velasquez, a Goya? I can point to the very spot where it can be procured – and with no more trouble than in shovelling the earth off a trapdoor to a cellar, or pushing past a bundle of hay in a barn.
But I expect efficiency
.’

‘Natchly, your Excellency.’ Properjohn was now bowing and bobbing after a fashion very uncommon in gentlemen in knickerbockers and Connemara cloth. ‘Please excuse shockink mistake take our importantest almost Continental connexion for small Wop dealer Pantelli goes across tonight with two three dud Giorgiones!’

‘Ah,’ said Meredith. ‘About this Pantelli. He may be turning up at any time?’

Properjohn nodded. ‘Most any time. Which is why when I heard about a stranger being at the castle I thought well better call in case small Wop Pantelli gone direk there by mistake.’

‘I see.’ Meredith, having in a fit of high spirits hoisted Vogelsang to the bad eminence of one with whom plundered Leonardos and El Grecos were matters of everyday, was beating his brains for some further monstrous absurdity for which to barter small pocketfuls of time. So far nobody had appeared except Properjohn himself, and not five paces from where host and guest stood sipping their cocktails was a window giving almost directly on deserted moor. Would not his best course be to endeavour to catch Properjohn for a moment unawares, serve him as he had served the subordinate Bubear not long ago, and then bolt from Carron Lodge as quickly as he could? To do so would be to give an alarm which must inevitably send the whole organization to earth with a speed rivalling even that with which the London warehouse had been abandoned and blown sky-high. And as it would be hours before any effective force could be summoned to these fastnesses, the final result might be unsatisfactory in the extreme. But was not even this better than the certainty of exposure either within minutes (as was still overwhelmingly probable) or hard upon the arrival of Bubear later in the evening?

Meredith looked round for a weapon – and remarked that for the sanctum of one given to trading in Titians and Giottos this retreat of Properjohn’s was singularly devoid of traditional beauties. On the walls, it was true, were several excellent sporting prints, but these evidently went with the knickerbockers and the moustache as part of the build-up of the laird. The carpet showed a senseless design of squares and cubes in half a dozen impure colours, and the several objects reposing on it spoke equally of
l’art moderne
in the depressing form in which this percolates down to cheap furnishing concerns. Connoisseurship, it appeared, was something from which, in his off hours, Properjohn was pleased to escape. The only articles suggesting any pride of ownership were the cocktail cabinet and a large model galleon in full sail, entirely executed in chromium plating and silver wire. It was when Meredith’s eye fell on this last absurdity that his mind was made up. The shape was somewhat awkward and only the hull would be strong enough to do the necessary damage. Nevertheless, he was resolved. He would pick up the galleon and bring it down hard on Properjohn’s head. And then he would make a run for it.

With this plan in mind Meredith edged towards the galleon – cautiously at first and then with a rapid swoop as he remarked Properjohn’s attention to be occupied with mixing another drink. He had reached out for it, indeed, when an entirely new thought struck him. Somewhere in this house was the unfortunate Dr Higbed – an unsound philosopher, it was true, but yet a fellow man and even, in a fashion, a fellow scholar. For reasons utterly obscure, he had been dogged by furniture vans, kidnapped, and subjected to various trials and indignities which had, it would appear, temporarily deprived him of his reason. If Meredith fled now would there be any substantial chance of rescuing the unhappy man before he was carried off to some more secure hiding-place? Meredith saw that he must first hit Properjohn on the head and then hunt for Higbed. This obligation would enormously decrease his chances of getting away. Yet only if he got away was there any substantial possibility of crushing the abominable organization through the channel of whose Flying Foxes some of the major art treasures of Europe were being conveyed to madmen far less innocent than the imprisoned psychologist. Here, in fact, was the old dilemma once more – the dilemma, not of Fénelon or the pretty maidservant, but of Higbed or the Horton
Venus
(and much else). And Meredith was so struck by the force of his predicament that he was actually standing in meditation upon it, and with his arms held out towards the galleon, when Properjohn turned round again holding a couple of glasses.

Fortunately, Properjohn misinterpreted his gesture as one of unrestrained admiration. He cocked his head on one side. ‘Toppin’ little think, eh what, m’dear fellow?’ Chuckling at this return to his favourite comedy of the laird, Properjohn held out a glass. Then his face grew serious and it was clear that he saw his guest once more against the background of a veritable promised land of Rembrandts and Goyas. Soberly he set down both glasses the better to make a formal bow. ‘Better your Excellency come alonk see the boss,’ he said. ‘Not like small Wop Pantelli dealt with efficient by me and not know any better than that I run it.’

‘The boss?’ asked Meredith stupidly – but feeling as he did so that a great light dawned. This grotesque Properjohn, so lamentably deficient in an aura of the higher criminality, was but a screen behind which moved superior powers. And these superior powers were on the premises. An introduction was imminent.

For now Properjohn had turned and was leading the way out through a farther door. His head showed a bald patch behind. Here, had Meredith still so desired, was the right target for the galleon. Alternatively, he could assay the pleasure of leaping upon Properjohn from behind and throttling him. Or he could simply try one tremendous kick and then race for freedom. But none of these proposals had any charm for Meredith at this moment. Not even the business of saving the art treasures of Europe was sovereign with him. Once more – as upon a fateful occasion in a tobacconist’s shop – simple intellectual curiosity held sway.

Properjohn walked down several corridors and mounted a staircase. Meredith had a fleeting impression of a butler or factotum carrying a tray, of maidservants of a respectable but personable sort flitting about with the cans of hot water proper to this evening hour – of these and other fugitive evidences of a gentleman’s well conducted house. And then Properjohn had opened a door and momentarily disappeared; his barbarous lingo was queerly mingled with a cultivated voice in rapid question and answer; he emerged and gestured somewhat after the fashion of a Lord Chamberlain according the
grande entrée
to a visitor of consequence.