Part 41 (1/2)

”Apple sauce?”

”I don't like apples in any shape. A sour kind of potato, I call them.

They eat an awful lot of apples in our country. That is what makes so many of our women as flat as boards, in front and behind--especially in the Eastern States. It's apple-eating. Apples ought to be taxed. They ruin the female figure. I'm not sure that they don't sour the character as well.”

”Don't you care about our English vegetables?”

”Can't say I'm much in love with them, Mr. Heard. Brussels sprouts, for instance--I'm very partial to Brussels sprouts. But the things they give you over there are the size of a bath sponge, and much the same taste, I reckon. And the carrots! A carrot ought to be small and round and yellow, it ought to melt in the mouth like a plum. Those carrots aren't carrots at all. They're walking sticks. And the peas! No, I don't care about English peas. Too large and too lively for me.”

”Lively?”

”That's it. Lively. I shall never forget my first experience of them,”

he went on, laughing. ”There were two or three in the dish; just two or three; filled it up nicely. Looked like cannon-b.a.l.l.s. What do they expect me to do with these things? I wondered. I didn't like to ask the waiter. One doesn't care to be taken for an ignorant stranger. Well, I landed one on my plate and began carving at it, to see if there was anything eatable inside the sh.e.l.l, when the durned thing slipped away from my knife and crashed on to the floor. Bounced up like a marble. I called for a nutcracker--'I shall want the largest you've got,' I said.

They couldn't find one. Now I'm not the sort of man, Mr. Heard, to be beaten by a vegetable, if it really was a vegetable. Because, you see, it behaved more like a blamed mineral. I sent for the head waiter, and took him into my confidence. I tried to talk English, like I'm talking to you. 'What d'ye call these things?' I asked. 'Marrowfats, Sir.' 'Ah, I thought they weren't peas. You've got PEt.i.tS POIS down on the bill of fare. Better get that put right. And now, how d'ye eat them?' 'You bite them!' That's what he said. 'You bite them.' Of course I didn't believe him. I thought it was just a bit of English humour, especially as the other waiter was looking the opposite way all the time. Well, like a fool, I said to myself: 'No harm in trying!' I've got pretty sharp teeth, you know, for a boy of my age. That's how I managed to do what a lot of you younger fellows couldn't have done. I got them fixed into the softest of that bunch of marrowfats. But as to pulling them out again! The head waiter, you bet, had disappeared. And the other fellow was standing at the window with his back to me. Looking up the street, I should say, to see if it was going to rain.”

After this little outburst, the millionaire seemed to have nothing more to say.

He was thinking....

Cornelius van Koppen loved a good liar. He knew something about the gentle art. It was an art, he used to say, which no fool should be allowed to cultivate. There were too many amateurs knocking about.

These bunglers spoiled the trade. Without doing any good to themselves, they roused distrust; they rubbed the fine bloom off human credulity.

His puritan conscience was enraged at petty thefts, petty forgeries, petty larcenies. That was why he despised that otherwise excellent person, the Financial Commissioner for Nicaragua, whose wildest flights of embezzlement never exceeded a few hundred dollars. He respected a man who, like himself, could work in the grand style. To play upon the credulity of a continent--it was Napoleonic, it was like stealing a kingdom; it was not stealing at all. This, he shrewdly suspected, was what his good friend the Count was engaged upon. That delightful old man was working in the grand style.

Bronzes, ancient or modern, were Greek to Mr. van Koppen. He could not tell the difference between the art of Clodion and of Myron--had, in fact, never heard the names of these good people and did not particularly care to hear them; he paid Sir Herbert Street for that part of the business. But he had picked up, in the course of his long humanitarian career, a good deal of general knowledge. Old Koppen was no fool. He was intelligent; intelligence, as the Count had said, being perfectly compatible with progress. The millionaire could put two and two together as fast as most men; he was celebrated, even among his quick-witted compatriots, for an uncanny faculty of walking round people without getting off his chair. Common sense, he called it.

Many a time he had listened to Count Caloveglia's rounded periods anent the Locri Faun. Taking his own personal experience as a guide, he had come to the conclusion that a man does not explain things quite so satisfactorily, unless he has some business in hand. Everything fitted into a hypothesis which had been slowly maturing in his mind, namely, that he was confronted by a fraud, a really n.o.ble fraud, a fraud after his own heart, a fraud deserving the fullest support of every sensible man and woman.

That vineyard, for instance, with those antiquities. A good many friends of his in the States had made their pile out of salted gold mines. Why not salt a vineyard? Oh yes; everything fitted in beautifully. The remoteness of that vineyard ... a town like Locri was obviously unsafe, too public a place for such important discoveries. The conscientious Sir Herbert would certainly want to make enquiries on the spot--enquiries which would prove that no Faun had ever been found there. And that would ruin everything. Therefore the statue had been ”carried” to the vineyard in ancient times by ”some young and ardent lover of art.” Carried, ha, ha! His knowledge of human nature made him doubt whether the Locri Faun had ever in its life made a further journey than to Caloveglia's shady courtyard from that mysterious, dusty shed at the back of his house. Or the Demeter either.

That ”sadly mutilated head” was a feeler--a rehearsal. They both came ”from the same workshop.” Excellent! That shed was the workshop--the birthplace of these two antiques; the Count himself their old h.e.l.lenic creator.

Andrea, no doubt, was the secret.

These art experts! Here was Street, one of the best of them, a man of celebrity in his department, solemnly p.r.o.nouncing for the authenticity of the fake--in the full and innocent conviction that it was really authentic. A sucking babe. This man, he could see by his simple society face, had not even made an arrangement with the Count as to a commission for himself in the event of a purchase being concluded. He was satisfied with his salary. These experts--what a crowd of fools they were! Especially the honest ones.

None the less, he was delighted with Sir Herbert's opinion. It was exactly what he wanted. For he meant to help the County who, he was sure, would never accept a cent from him save under a pretext like that of the sale of the Faun. He loved old Caloveglia. There was something clean and purposeful about him. His friends.h.i.+p with such a man filled up what he knew to be a void in his own equipment as citizen of the world. And the count was working--was lying--for a worthy purpose: a daughter's dowry. For that reason alone he was deserving of a.s.sistance.

Mr. van Koppen was unmarried. Knowing life as he did, from its more seamy or mercenary side, he had never brought himself to accept a single one of several hundred offers of marriage which had been more or less overtly made to him--to his millions. He loved the s.e.x, as a whole; but distrusted them individually. He thought he knew exactly what they were after. Pearl necklaces and things. He was a good American; fond of bestowing pearl necklaces. But he liked to give them when, and to whom, he fancied; he meant to be his own master and to keep his painfully gotten millions under his own control. All of which, far from extinguis.h.i.+ng, actually fostered that queer bachelor's feeling of reverential awe for the married state and its results. Every form of courage and success appealed to van Koppen--none more than the reckless impetuosity of a man who speculates in such a delirious lottery and sometimes actually draws a prize. Such had been Count Caloveglia's portion. His marriage had plainly been a love-match; a success; its result, this offspring--a daughter of whom any father might be proud.

Mr. van Koppen thoroughly understood the Count's position. These Italians need dowries for their girls. Well, he should have one! What did it signify? One pearl necklace the less, for some operatic charmer.

Not worth talking about. Among all h is various benefactions, none was ever projected with a lighter heart, with more sincere pleasure. It made him glad to be a millionaire.

All the details had been settled. The FLUTTERBY was sailing in a day or two. The relic would be brought on board, at dead of night, by the faithful Andrea, who would return to the Count with a cheque in his pocket. It was a considerable sum; so considerable that Caloveglia had displayed great hesitation in accepting it. But the millionaire pointed out that the parties must be guided by Sir Herbert's opinion. What was the good, he asked, of employing a specialist? Sir Herbert Street had declared the bronze to be priceless, unique. His employer, therefore, insisted on paying what the other had called ”an adequate amount, if the value of such a work of art can be expressed in monetary figures at all.” There was nothing more to be said. The Count gave way, with graceful reluctance. A sham ancestry having been manufactured for the masterpiece (it was proved to come from Asia Minor) in order to elude the vigilance of the Italian Government, the Locri Faun could thereafter be freely displayed to the American public, and Sir Herbert Street was probably right in foretelling that it would be the show piece of the millionaire's museum-artists and antiquarians flocking to see it from every part of the world.

And Mr. van Koppen, as he drove along, was thinking of that cheque; he was converting the dollars into francs. They made rather an awkward sum. He decided to round it off, if only for the sake of appearances; a further reason for not sending the cheque till the last moment, together with a carefully worded letter to allay the Count's scruples.

The old fellow might otherwise return the balance, in a fit of conscientiousness. Like himself, Count Caloveglia was infernally, and very properly, punctilious--in small matters.

Yes, there was some fun, at times, in being a millionaire. Or a sculptor either, for that matter! For it evidently took some doing--a little thing like that Locri Faun. It took some doing. And it was worth doing: that was the main point. A man who could bamboozle Sir Herbert Street--such a man deserved to be supported. And what if the truth ultimately leaked out? Had he not acted with the best intentions, under the written advice of an expert? Far from feeling uneasy, Mr. van Koppen smiled at the thought of how his millions, backed by the opinion of a connoisseur of international reputation, had enabled him to play yet one more trick upon that great Republic whose fathomless gullibility no one had ever exploited to a better purpose than himself....

Mr. Eames was waiting for the bishop, according to appointment.