From London Far (37 page)

The guests had been disposed in the billiard-room – the same to a smoky corner of which Mr Gipson would have relegated the Leonardo – and it soon became evident that their host was seeking an opportunity to slip away with the Pantellis. Perhaps he wanted to conclude the deal on the Giorgiones before packing his bag for London or the Pacific Coast next morning. Or perhaps, having so heroically denied his riches to the world at large, he was the more anxious to display them to persons who could be trusted in their own interests not to give away the secret.

But it became evident too that the prospect of this confidence threw Flosdorf more and more into a nervous flurry. He talked absently to those least important of Mr Neff’s guests whom it was his duty to entertain, and was plainly getting so hot under the collar that it was almost possible to fancy that one heard the hiss and bubble of the threatening volcano across the length of the room. Once or twice the agitated man made dives at Meredith, and eventually he ran him down behind the insecure shelter of a whisky decanter. Flosdorf raised this in air, as if knowing that the perturbation written upon his features had best be concealed from the company at large.

‘Keep your mouth shut,’ Flosdorf said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Meredith was so startled at having this abrupt injunction flung at him twice in an evening that for a moment he thought he must have misheard.

‘He’s taking you and your wife in to see all that stuff. I’d stop him if I could’ – this Flosdorf displeasingly snarled – ‘but I can’t. Don’t say a word. Remember the old fool is the goose who lays the golden eggs.’

‘Of course,’ said Meredith. ‘I’m not likely to forget it when I’m busy selling him three fake Giorgiones, am I? You back me up over them and my wife and I will be as discreet as you could wish.’

Flosdorf nodded and passed a glass – much as if this frank avowal of villainy had greatly raised Meredith in his estimation. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Live and let live. After all, the world would be a poor place if we weren’t prepared to lend each other a helping hand. And it’s eating candy, after all. Just don’t talk.’ He hesitated. ‘You see, a good deal of the stuff in there is a bit different from what he thinks. Naturally so.’

‘Oh, quite naturally so.’ Meredith considered. ‘But about all those experts and connoisseurs who have been about the place: has he never taken any of them through?’

Flosdorf looked horrified. ‘You’re crazy!’ he said. ‘Once let him think it’s safe to take anybody through that we haven’t got in our pocket and we’re done for.’

‘You mean they would give away the fact that it’s all stolen?’

‘Naturally they would. Seems all those high-ups in art – even most of the dealers when you get high enough – is plumb honest. But even suppose an expert who didn’t much care where the pictures and stuff come from. Soon as he opened his mouth in there–’

‘Hey, you – Flosdorf!’ This was Mr Neff calling. ‘Get that option out of the safe and show it to Mr Gipson. I’ve got to take Mr and Mrs Pantelli round the place soon as I’ve been through to Barcelona.’ And as Flosdorf went off obediently in one direction his employer disappeared in another.

Meredith took advantage of this respite to seek out Jean. ‘Do you know’, he said, ‘that I think I’ve made it out?’

Jean looked at him doubtfully. ‘Haven’t you said that before?’

‘Perhaps I have. But this is very much simpler. I have just been speaking to Flosdorf, who is thoroughly apprehensive about what is going to happen when we are taken in to see the pictures. He says that if we don’t keep our mouths shut we shall kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.’ And Meredith repeated his recent conversation. ‘Now, what do you think of that?’

‘But it’s you who are thinking. You’ve made it out.’

Meredith hesitated. ‘Well, I suppose it to be like this. One very special circumstance governs such a clandestine collection as Neff’s. No person really well informed on artistic matters can be let in on it. Eminent connoisseurs come and look at the honestly acquired cartoons and things displayed around the house, but, of course, they can’t be let into the secret of the hoard. Still, the fact that they accept and are impressed by what is visible must have the effect of reassuring Neff on the importance and worth of all that is
not
visible – the dishonestly acquired masterpieces he has hidden away. But, my dear Jean’ – and Meredith lowered his voice – ‘are they masterpieces, after all? Surely that is the question! Neff, quite evidently, has a real flair for art: an enjoyment of it and a sort of intuitive understanding of its governing principles. But, of course, he is no sort of connoisseur – and yet the vanity he has acquired by finding himself on equal terms with connoisseurs so far as simple appreciation goes will no doubt have given him a quite ill-grounded conceit of himself as judge of the authenticity of a picture. Yet, while he has been shelling out his money, Flosdorf and the rest have been gulling him all the time. That’s the explanation. The pictures will prove not to be authentic Old Masters at all, but simply competent copies, such as you see nice old women sitting and painting in all the galleries of Europe. Copying Day at the National Gallery. Earnest girls in short hair and painty overalls laboriously reproducing Hobbema’s Avenue. They are the true purveyors of Neff’s monumental collection.’

Jean shook her head. ‘I don’t see it at all. For surely it’s quite certain that the pictures Don Perez and his Society deal in are genuine enough. And they sell to Neff.’

‘Do they?’ And Meredith looked positively cunning. ‘Isn’t it likely that they keep their genuine wares for buyers better informed? Here is Neff as pleased as Punch with his flair for art; ready to buy what’s brought along as recklessly as he buys his wine. Only there’s this difference: the wine will sooner or later be presented to the palates of all and sundry, and eventually judged according to its actual worth. Whereas the paintings disappear for good and all, and only Neff himself and the unscrupulous Flosdorf ever commune with them.’

Jean considered. ‘Isn’t Neff unscrupulous too?’

‘Well, yes – of course he must be. Only I seem to have taken rather a liking to him. I was puzzled by his eye. There was something familiar in it. And of course the explanation was that it is, in a way, quite a scholar’s eye. He has had all those solitary times with the things he has collected – great monuments and milestones of human culture. For they remain that even in copies by nice old women or crop-haired girls.’

‘No doubt,’ said Jean. She was standing near the door of the billiard-room and appeared to be giving some of her attention to noises coming from outside.

‘And I am sure that the frequentation of great art must breed a certain dispassionateness. Don’t you think?’

‘In Neff? Well, as a matter of fact I don’t.’ And Jean threw open the door.

Mr Neff was carrying on his telephone conversation with Barcelona not ten yards away. The two girls with writing pads were beside him as before, and the man who coped with the machine and its flex stood by. But this time, evidently, things were not going so well. Barcelona, unlike Johannesburg, was far from standing well in Mr Neff’s regard. In fact, Mr Neff was bellowing into the machine as if it were necessary to outroar all the to-and-fro conflicting elements of the Atlantic Ocean. His features were contorted with fury; his complexion was a blackish blue; he danced with rage as he spoke. The effect was faintly comical and markedly improbable, like a conventionally exaggerated representation of anger in a strip cartoon. And even as they looked, Mr Neff gave a final howl of rage, pitched the telephone violently from him so that it shivered into fragments, snatched the writing pads of the girls and tossed them in their faces, gave a vicious but ineffective swipe at the male attendant, leapt upon a conveyor belt, and hurtled away. And all this (Meredith was bound to reflect) over merely commercial matters from which the heart of the man had long been substantially weaned. Whatever had gone wrong in Barcelona was not matter which really touched the core of Mr Neff’s vanity.

And Meredith looked seriously at Jean. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is possible that dispassionateness is somewhat too definite a term. But I still have a sneaking fondness for the ruffian. And I still think it probable that I’ve made it out.’

‘I don’t accept your new theory any more than your old one – the iconolagnia and Pygmalionism.’ Jean shook her head decidedly. ‘Indeed, it’s distinctly weaker. It’s weaker because it altogether fails to account for Higbed. If the expected trouble is just Neff’s finding out that a lot of the pictures are copies and fakes, whatever is going to be the good of poor old Higgy? Can you see him coping with the sort of outburst we’ve just watched?’

‘I don’t think I can. Still, that must be the idea, all the same. They’re afraid that Neff will go absolutely mad with rage; that he will rush out and give the show away–’

‘Give what show away?’

Meredith frowned. ‘Why, all this of buying stolen pictures, of course.’

‘But surely if the pictures are no more than copies after all, there can be no dishonesty in Neff’s owning them, and consequently no show to give away.’

‘My dear Jean, this is merely another of your quibbles, as you very well know. Doubtless there is a mingling of stolen pictures and mere replicas. And, as I say, Higbed is being retained as one skilled in the treatment of mental disturbance to cope with whatever insane burst of fury attends Neff’s discovery that he has been duped.’

‘I tell you it just won’t do. And you haven’t really very perfectly defined what you called the one special circumstance governing Neff’s clandestine collection. It isn’t that no really well-informed critic is ever let in on it. It’s that
nobody
is.’

‘Nobody?’ Meredith looked perplexed.

‘Nobody but Neff himself, and Flosdorf, and perhaps one or two people in with Flosdorf. We are the catastrophic exceptions there, which is why Flosdorf is so worked up tonight. Can we keep our mouths shut – even if we do know that Neff lays the golden eggs? Flosdorf doubts it. And why? Because we are going to be really surprised.’

Meredith considered this thoughtfully. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it must be admitted that the affair has already brought us more surprises than one. It may well be that another is in store. But of just what sort of surprise are you thinking?’

‘A big one – really a big one this time. We are going to be led by Neff, regularly swelling with pride, to view his collection. And the collection won’t be there.’

‘Won’t be there!’ Meredith stared. ‘You mean it will have been stolen?’

‘Not a bit of it. I mean it never has been there. I’m not sure, of course, that there won’t be frames. But I’m quite sure that there will be no pictures… You remember the story of the King and the Invisible Clothes?’

‘My dear Jean, I cannot conceive how Hans Andersen–’

‘He was persuaded that he had been made the most gorgeous clothes, and that to himself alone were they invisible. And so he was tricked into parading before his subjects in his shirt – something like that. Well, with Neff and his pictures it’s rather the same. The pictures aren’t there, but Neff is convinced that they are. He goes in and gloats over them and gets all sorts of lovely and refined aesthetic sensations. But it’s from bare walls or empty frames.’

‘I see.’ Meredith was reduced to simple sarcasm. ‘And have you yet arrived at any notion as to how this odd state of affairs is brought about?’

‘Dear me, yes! Are you at all familiar, I wonder, with the more recent developments of medical hypnotism?’

‘Really, if you must make up a tale of a cock and a bull–’

‘I assure you they are some of them extremely odd. Take the training of air crews. When that had to be speeded up it was found that with a certain degree of hypnotic control and a set of earphones a man could be very successfully taught in his sleep.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘It’s absolutely true. The earphones whispered away at him all night; the physiological and psychological effects of sleep were not in the least impaired; and the next morning he had eight hours’ hard learning securily in his head. With regular hypnosis you can do almost anything. And, what’s more, hypnotic states can now be superinduced upon sleep. Sleep comes first, then the hypnosis, and so the subject may know nothing about it.’

‘And you seriously suggest that Neff–’

‘And, of course, you know how stage hypnotists can make people do and actually believe the most absurd seeming things. But there’s always one condition. The thing to be done, however absurd it may seem, must always satisfy some unconscious wish of the person hypnotised. If somewhere I own a powerful unconscious death wish, then I can be hypnotized into going and lying down at the bottom of a tank of water–’

‘I doubt it. I think you would find that mere specific gravity would keep you bobbing up again.’

‘And who’s quibbling now? The point is that Neff quite powerfully wants to have lovely feelings among pictures, adventures of the soul amid masterpieces. Which definitely means that he could be hypnotized into seeing pictures on a bare wall, just as a hungry man can be hypnotized into eating a non-existent meal.’

‘And you suggest that quite regularly–’

‘Just that. The masterpieces were real, and they were worth millions. But nobody except Neff himself and Flosdorf was ever to see them. Secure a hypnotist, therefore, capable of getting at Neff in his sleep, and you can safely carry the masterpieces off one by one and sell them all over again to other Neffs elsewhere.’

‘I see. And then you have only to secure another hypnotist and you can repeat the process all over again.’

‘I never thought of that.’ Jean appeared seriously impressed. ‘But now you see the point of Higbed. After all, this invaluable hypnotist might just die in the night at any time. Whereupon the hypnotic suggestion would slowly fade; Neff would see his imaginary pictures more and more faintly; and at last he would just be looking at the wallpaper. Rather the situation of Alice and the Cheshire Cat.’

‘I never’, said Meredith, ‘judged
Alice in Wonderland
a very probable story.’