“To--?”
“To have it varnished.”
“Ah!” He leaned back and poured himself a second glass of Chartreuse. The
smile he confided to its golden depths provoked me to challenge him with--
“What do you think of it?”
“The Rembrandt?” He lifted his eyes from the glass. “Just what you do.”
“It isn’t a Rembrandt.”
“I apologize again. You call it, I believe, a picture of the same period?”
“I’m uncertain of the period.”
“H’m.” He glanced appreciatively along his cigar. “What are you certain
of?”
“That it’s a damned bad picture,” I said savagely.
He nodded. “Just so. That’s all we wanted to know.”
“_We_?”
“We--I--the committee, in short. You see, my dear fellow, if you hadn’t
been certain it was a damned bad picture our position would have been a
little awkward. As it is, my remaining duty--I ought to explain that in
this matter I’m acting for the committee--is as simple as it’s agreeable.”
“I’ll be hanged,” I burst out, “if I understand one word you’re saying!”
He fixed me with a kind of cruel joyousness. “You will--you will,” he
assured me; “at least you’ll begin to, when you hear that I’ve seen Miss
Copt.”
“Miss Copt?”
“And that she has told me under what conditions the picture was bought.”
“She doesn’t know anything about the conditions! That is,” I added,
hastening to restrict the assertion, “she doesn’t know my opinion of the
picture.” I thirsted for five minutes with Eleanor.
“Are you quite sure?” Crozier took me up. “Mr. Jefferson Rose does.”
“Ah--I see.”
“I thought you would,” he reminded me. “As soon as I’d laid eyes on
the Rembrandt--I beg your pardon!--I saw that it--well, required some
explanation.”
“You might have come to me.”
“I meant to; but I happened to meet Miss Copt, whose encyclopædic
information has often before been of service to me. I always go to Miss
Copt when I want to look up anything; and I found she knew all about the
Rembrandt.”
“_All_?”
“Precisely. The knowledge was in fact causing her sleepless nights. Mr.
Rose, who was suffering from the same form of insomnia, had taken her into
his confidence, and she--ultimately--took me into hers.”
“Of course!”
“I must ask you to do your cousin justice. She didn’t speak till it became
evident to her uncommonly quick perceptions that your buying the picture on
its merits would have been infinitely worse for--for everybody--than your
diverting a small portion of the Museum’s funds to philanthropic uses. Then
she told me the moving incident of Mr. Rose. Good fellow, Rose. And the
old lady’s case was desperate. Somebody had to buy that picture.” I moved
uneasily in my seat “Wait a moment, will you? I haven’t finished my cigar.
There’s a little head of Il Fiammingo’s that you haven’t seen, by the way;
I picked it up the other day in Parma. We’ll go in and have a look at it
presently. But meanwhile what I want to say is that I’ve been charged--in
the most informal way--to express to you the committee’s appreciation of
your admirable promptness and energy in capturing the Bartley Reynolds. We
shouldn’t have got it at all if you hadn’t been uncommonly wide-awake, and
to get it at such a price is a double triumph. We’d have thought nothing of
a few more thousands--“
“I don’t see,” I impatiently interposed, “that, as far as I’m concerned,
that alters the case.”
“The case--?”
“Of Mrs. Fontage’s Rembrandt. I bought the picture because, as you say, the
situation was desperate, and I couldn’t raise a thousand myself. What I did
was of course indefensible; but the money shall be refunded tomorrow--“
Crozier raised a protesting hand. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking ex
cathedra. The money’s been refunded already. The fact is, the Museum has
sold the Rembrandt.”